One of the rules of Washington sports reporting is that it's critical not to state the obvious concerns with the hometown teams. Any reporter that does so finds that his or her editors don't back them up, and pretty soon they are off the beat, assigned to far-off Fairfax County or the forgotten continent of the business section.

The two current examples are the Wizards and the Redskins. The big unreported story (you can only see hints) is the downside of the return of Gilbert Arenas. He's back after a long injury lay-off. And when he's in the defense disappears. Perhaps he cannot move laterally. Perhaps he should rest the knee until the next year. Or perhaps, as a former Wizards coach told me one time, he is death to any team because for him there is never a thought about the team because the whole world revolves around his ego.

Arenas is a beautiful offensive player. But his defense is so awful that he may never be able to lead a team deep into the play-offs. This is the big story: and you can scarcely find a hint of it in the local newspapers.

The huge unreported Redskins story is that Vinny Cerrato has taken charge of personnel acquisition, hired an obscure coach (Zorn!), emerged into the media spotlight -- and then acquired no players in free agency. None. The holes in the team cry out for patches: the offensive line is old and injured; the defense needs a pass rusher and a cornerback; the offense needs a large wide receiver. Cerrato apparently offered only minimum contracts to a couple of players: insults that were not accepted by the recipients, who went elsewhere. Meanwhile, Cerrato restructured contracts so that he has plenty of money under the salary cap. What is he doing with it?

My conspiracy theory is this: Snyder and Cerrato are going to give Zorn a year to see if he can squeeze a winning season out of Gibbs' old team, But barring a miraculous performance by Zorn, 12 months from now they are going to go after the Steelers' former coach, Bill Cowher, and lure him with not only a fat contract but also plenty of room under the cap for him to spend on acquiring a play-off team.

The local papers don't have to agree with this theory. Maybe it's not true. But they should find out what's going on.

The way they report the sports is the way they report the local politics too. What's big and mysterious isn't necessarily investigated. And in the world's capital we are talking about important politics that isn't discussed in depth. A whole different style of reporting is required, in both sports and politics, which after all are mirror images of each other.