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The Redskins see your mean tweets

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(By Toni L. Sandys/ The Washington Post)

If there’s one thing we know about professional athletes, it’s that they don’t waste their time or energy reading sports coverage.

“I see everything,” Redskins lineman Terrance Knighton said this week. “Everything.”

Okay, fine, but they don’t pay attention to online detritus like NFL power rankings, and certainly don’t take any of this personally, correct?

“There’s a lot of doubters and a lot of haters that really had a lot of negative things to say about this franchise before the season — about this team,” Redskins Coach Jay Gruden said on Wednesday, not long after running through those preseason power rankings with his players. “And you should take it personally.”

[Bog archives: Redskins are last in every preseason ranking. Just lots of them.]

Well, yeah, but these guys just breezily brush off such criticism and go on with their comfortable lives. Um, right?

“Everybody’s a human being,” linebacker Will Compton said. “We all have the same psychology. Words hurt.”

Compton delivered that line with a grin. And some of his teammates would disagree, taking the classical position that they’re deaf to criticism. Still, there’s something refreshing about a good-natured and professional locker room where so many men happily admit the obvious: that they read the things that have been written about them. That they use such barbs as motivation. And that they relish the occasional chance to respond.

“Some guys pretend that they don’t … but I’m pretty sure guys see what’s going on,” Knighton said. “You know, athletes, we already have enough motivation. But sometimes you like to hear it from the outside world to prove a point.”

The Redskins wasted no time plastering external slights on their locker-room walls this season; a quote from Eagles linebacker Mychal Kendricks hung from a column this week. Gruden joked early in the year about criticism he received from a fairly obscure sports-radio host, and on Wednesday cited poor preseason predictions from ESPN, CBS Sports and Pro Football Talk. (“I try not to buy into what people say, but to an extent, I think it was important to let them know what the views are,” he said of his team.)

[Eagles’ Cox: ‘Yeah, I’m guaranteeing a win’ over Redskins]

Players don’t have to flip on their television or pick up the newspaper (though they should!) to access such views. Instead, the skepticism flows directly into their social media bloodstream. Former general manager and current CSN analyst Charley Casserly told a story this week about Joe Gibbs firing up his team before the 1992 Super Bowl with a video in which a Bills assistant slandered the Hogs. Today’s Redskins would have been tweeting about that video within minutes of its release; Gibbs would have needed to scour Instagram for some fresher pregame material, or at least remix the speech with a few emoji on Snapchat.

“Especially with Twitter and social media, I think everybody kind of sees” criticism, linebacker Mason Foster said. “I think it definitely fuels people. You get people hitting you up all the time talking negative. I think it has to kind of register in the back of your head, even if you don’t acknowledge it or bring it up.”

This is hardly an NFL phenomenon. Media members search for their own name and strike back at online critics. So do players in other sports. The Wizards’ John Wall and Marcin Gortat have both taken inspiration from social media slights, as have countless other athletes. It’s just that the Redskins seem to do this so joyfully.

“Sometimes when we win a game I can’t wait to get on Twitter,” said Knighton, who saves insulting mentions so he can later respond to their authors. “You always look for some motivation, look for bulletin board material.”

Compton found a tweet from a fan calling him an average-at-best linebacker; he sent it to his followers, saying, “This is the type of stuff that will always motivate me. And I will CONTINUE to prove that wrong.”

“That just makes it more fun,” he said this week. “In my mind, if they want to say something about me — especially if I feel like they’re wrong — then the floor’s opened up and we can go back and forth. … It would be so entertaining to me if we could watch people go through their day-to-day and then have a nice camera view of it and say what we wanted to say. I like a little back and forth, because honestly, at the end of the day, they’re not going to hurt my feelings. There’s way bigger obstacles that we’ve overcame, and that I’ve overcame personally [than] some comment.”

This isn’t to say that any of the skeptics were wrong for being skeptical. As Compton admitted, he is an undrafted free agent and former practice squad player. He may have known he could thrive as an NFL starter, but the rest of us didn’t.

The team, meanwhile, had won seven games in two seasons; a .500 record on Christmas felt like a stretch. That’s why at least one local columnist planned his honeymoon for this week, never imagining that Washington’s trip to Philly would include a chance to clinch the division. (Yeah, that was me. Sorry, bosses. Sorry, Redskins. I can send along my travel itinerary, if you’ve got any space left on that bulletin board.)

Acknowledging your critics doesn’t always pay off, as Odell Beckham Jr. demonstrated last weekend by flinging his body into his critic’s head. Redskins lineman Ricky Jean Francois pointed out that Washington’s dramatic rise in those power rankings means about as much as the lists themselves. (“Nothing against Jay  — I love him, that’s my coach — but who the hell cares about a power ranking?” Francois asked. “This ain’t the BCS. This ain’t college.”) And Compton talked about the need for discretion online, saying, “It must be nice to not have all those walls, and to say what you want.”

Even those players who said they’re inspired by critics also said that has been a minor part of their season, and it goes without saying that winning a division title is grander than winning a Twitter battle. “Not wanting to let these guys down is my biggest motivation, and me wanting to be great,” Compton said.

This particular team, though, keeps at least one eye on the outside world. Insults will not be missed by team leaders. Power rankings will not be ignored by the coach. Doubters and haters will be recognized.

“I see what you all were talking about, how sorry we were,” Chris Baker joked this week. “I’m into social media, so I read all that [stuff].”

“Trust me, with me in the room, I’m going to make sure they know,” Knighton added. “Because I see everything.”

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