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Slights Keep Redskins' Fletcher Motivated
Linebacker London Fletcher has been his team's top tackler for nine straight seasons.
(By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)
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"But London is mature. He's a professional who studies tape. I trust him on game day. I can give a little piece of information and he can manufacture an entire essay out of it. If all the guys prepared as professionally and hard as he did, we'd be unbeatable."
Fletcher's 11-year NFL résumé is loaded with numbers. No player has more tackles this decade (1,126). He's led three different teams for nine straight years in tackling, including Buffalo, where he was credited with a phenomenal 202 tackles in the 2002 season. Only two other players, Derrick Brooks and Donnie Edwards, have had more consecutive seasons with 100 or more tackles.
But mostly, he's a hovering intangible, flying about the field, closing space and time at intervals no one with his diminutive size is supposed to be able to.
Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman, Dr. Z, the dean of American football writers, recently opined that Fletcher is the best current NFL player to never be selected to a Pro Bowl, taking the place of Fred Taylor, who finally went to Hawaii last February.
"That means I guess I'm the best of the worst," Fletcher said of the distinction, laughing.
Underneath the humor, though, he admits to some professional hurt.
"It does baffle me," he said. "I mean, there are days when I think about it and say, 'I can't believe this happened again.' I don't understand why.
"A lot of it is hype. You have a good day on a nationally televised game and that can catapult you. You don't necessarily have to have a great season. I've seen it happen."
He shrugged his shoulders, and said: "I would put myself up against anybody in the league at my position. Anybody."
The slight is another opportunity to take stock not of where Fletcher is going but rather where the native Clevelander -- John Carroll University's own -- came from.
After all, a stumpy Division III linebacker usually has all the credentials in the world to make it -- as an insurance salesman or high school position coach.
"I felt like I had the talent to play, but it was just a matter of would I be given a true opportunity," he recalled.
