Redskin Lineman Pourdanesh Meets His Critics Head-On

A couple drove six hours from North Carolina. One man paid $200 for a same-day, round-trip flight from New York. Another man came from Maryland, squeezing in the trip before battling rush-hour traffic to get to an important Little League game back home.

The four Washington Redskin fans sacrificed time, money and a sunny Friday afternoon to take up an extraordinary challenge from a man they had criticized so harshly in print: 6-foot-6, 310-pound right tackle Shar Pourdanesh.

“He’s not really mad, is he?” said Erhard Robertson, who wrote in a fan magazine that a grade of D-plus would be a “generous assessment” of Pourdanesh’s season. “Is he really going to rip our throats out?”

No, not really, although Pourdanesh did his best to look scary when he greeted the foursome by banging on a door and yelling “Aaaargh!”

“The reason I’m doing this is not because of my ego,” Pourdanesh told the group. “I care what the fans think.”

After handshakes were exchanged and autographs given, Pourdanesh did something rarely seen in the NFL. He took his detractors to a meeting room inside Redskin Park, ordered pizza, turned on the projector and showed them tapes from his season, a genuine effort by a belittled player to prove that he’s not such a bad offensive lineman after all.

“This is embarrassing,” Pourdanesh said, narrating a running play in which he blows a blocking assignment. “I’m here to show you guys the good and the bad.”

The challenge grew from a lively and controversial column Pourdanesh wrote last year for the Skins Report magazine. Pourdanesh used the column to repeatedly criticize fans for giving up on the team during its 0-7 start, and he frequently accused radio analyst and former Redskin center Jeff Bostic of picking on the offensive line as an excuse to relive the glory days of the famed Hogs.

The fans responded with venom, filling columns of the magazine with angry letters. One fan called Pourdanesh a “baby.” Another said he had a “massive ego.” Another said he didn’t have the “intellectual capabilities to play in the NFL.” Some fans demanded that the team get rid of Pourdanesh, while many wondered how he could dare say anything bad about their old hero, Bostic.

Finally, Pourdanesh threw down the gauntlet, challenging any of his critics to come to Redskin Park and watch film. The four chosen were Robertson from Columbia, Md., Keley King and his wife, Amy, from Granite Falls, N.C., and George Kott from Farmingdale, N.Y.

“Two things I think you do wrong,” Kott told Pourdanesh. “One, I don’t think you get enough leverage. I think you play too tall. Two, you let the play come to you. It seems like you’re executing, but you should be more aggressive in punching these guys and bring it to ‘em.”

Pourdanesh agreed to both counts, but he also reminded the four fans that he played all last year with a double hernia that wasn’t diagnosed until the end of the season. Even so, Pourdanesh said he gave up only five of the Redskins franchise-record 61 sacks.

“Playing hurt, it’s a different story,” Keley King said. “If you played with a double hernia, that changes a lot of people’s minds.”

Pourdanesh fast-forwarded the tape to the first sack he allowed against Michael Strahan of the New York Giants in last year’s season opener. Hitting the slow motion button, he showed how he was knocked off balance on the play by running back Brian Mitchell.

“He hit you,” Amy King said, staring at the screen. “You don’t see that at home.”

The only Iranian-born player in the NFL, Pourdanesh arrived in Washington with much attention in 1996 because of his story of flight from Teheran during the 1979 revolution.

He has always been a nervous player, sensitive to fan and media criticism. He needed almost two months to recover his confidence, and his starting job, when newspapers panned his NFL debut performance in the 1996 season opener against Philadelphia defensive end Mike Mamula.

Pourdanesh has since learned how to handle such criticism, but he’s still keen on knowing what the fans are thinking.

“Artists usually don’t get paid very much money,” Pourdanesh said. “They do it because they love it. . . . I’m not saying I’m an artist, believe me, but my reward is that the fans say, ‘You know what? He’s busting his butt.”’

Pourdanesh spent more than two hours with the four fans, telling stories and answering questions about the team. By the time it was over, he had won over the group with his hospitality--and his candor.

“One thing I’ll take out of this is that you’re a class act,” Robertson said before dashing off to Little League.

“Shar’s a standup guy,” said Kott, on his way to the airport. “Not many guys would take the time out to do that.”

“Every fan should have the opportunity to come and see what it’s like,” Keley King said. “He showed the bad plays and he showed the good plays. He opened my eyes. It was well worth the trip.”