The Washington Post Is Under Fire For Taking A Cheap Shot At Marty Schottenheimer After His Death

The obituary writer for The Washington Post clearly was not a big fan of Marty Schottenheimer. On Tuesday morning it was announced that the longtime NFL head coach had passed away at the age of 77 after years of battling Alzheimer’s disease. The Washington Post used this news to take one last cheap shot at the former NFL coach. The headline got so much criticism, The Washington post decided to edit and update it.

The original headline:

Show a little respect ⁦@washingtonpost⁩. Obituary headlines aren’t the place for cheap shots. pic.twitter.com/dYk5kEQTDj

— Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) February 9, 2021

The updated headline without the cheap shot:

They changed it. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/ucawDcVxMC

— Mark Harris (@itismarkharris) February 9, 2021

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If you’re going to take a cheap shot at someone they at least need the opportunity to be able to respond. Obituaries are not the place for subtle jabs at someone’s success or lack thereof. As if the headline wasn’t bad enough, the lede was even worse.

Here’s a snippet of the lede for the WaPo article in question:

“Marty Schottenheimer, one of the winningest coaches in the National Football League who never found success in the playoffs and failed to lead any of his teams to the Super Bowl, died Feb. 8 at a hospice center in Charlotte.”

I’m not sure what was going through the obit writer’s head at the time, but they clearly had some animosity with Marty Schottenheimer. The jab was uncalled for and was a total low blow. There are plenty of winning coaches who were never able to get it done in the Super Bowl. The time of death is not the time for that kind of criticism.

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