Ol' Ricky's Redskins Tales

Ol’ Ricky isn’t scared by angry players. Sure, they’re bigger and could probably hurt him if they wanted, but the key is knowing they won’t. The only person who actually tried was a drunk fan angry over no Little League coverage.

But even teammates were afraid of Daryl Gardener. The defensive end arrived in 2002 when camp started only because owner Dan Snyder overruled every single person in his personnel department and signed Miami’s 1996 first-rounder. Amazingly, I spent all night trying to track Gardener down on whether he was coming and my photographer came back to the dorm and said he’d been hanging out with Gardener at the nearby Gingerbread Man.

Anyway, Gardener was 6-feet-6, 295 pounds of lion’s roar. Once when there were no chairs to join a players’ game in the locker room, Gardener yelled at a rookie to get up. That guy was gone in two seconds. Gardener then laughed and said he was only kidding, but sat down anyway.

Snyder was right about Gardener. The latter was the defense’s best player that year. Amazingly, Snyder was right again by not re-signing Gardener, who was signed by Denver coach Mike Shanahan. After a late-night fight in a parking lot, Gardener played only briefly for the Broncos and was then out of the NFL.

Tomorrow: The G-Man. Lots of stories in my book and these are the types of tales I’ll tell on my “Pizza and Pigskins Tours” later this summer.

Rick Snider is an award-winning sports writer who has covered Washington sports since 1978. He first wrote about the Redskins in 1983 before becoming a beat writer in 1993. Snider currently writes for several national and international publications and is a Washington tour guide. Follow Rick on Twitter at @Snide_Remarks.