Is it Doom and Gloom for the Commanders?

In this episode, I break down the Commanders' past two preseason games and share my thoughts on the lack of starters seeing the field and why I believe they needed more reps. I also discuss the commander's roster, the AP's role in player selection, and whether he has done a good job selecting players and coaches.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Overreacting Since Kickoff podcast, your place for DMV sports conversations and discussions about all things DMV sports. In today's episode, we're going to discuss the Commanders' preseason performance, where I think they're headed after the two preseason games and some of the practices that they did with the Miami Dolphins a week ago. So let's jump in. So last night they played a preseason game against the Lions. This is the second of three preseason games. This would be traditionally the third preseason game since they've moved from four preseason games to three preseason games. So this would be like what it used to be in the days, the dress rehearsal, where the players come out, they play a like a half to get comfortable with, you know, being tackled, get comfortable with playing against other opponents, not just against themselves. But that's not really what we got. Uh the defense did show a lot more effort and energy than they did against the Miami Dolphins. It was sort of night and day. They got one drive against the Dolphins, the starters, at least we'll say most of the starters, by most of the starters, I mean probably nobody actually. And they were horrific against the Dolphins that opening drive. And that they went Miami went right down the field, 14 plays, scored a touchdown. I know the Dolphins had more of their starters playing than the Commanders, but it was lifeless. There was nothing. They didn't do anything. They couldn't stop anybody. And consensus is the Dolphins are a bad team. They're going to be a really bad team this year. And they made at least the backups or with backups with a mix of some of the starters look lost. Sonny Styles looked completely lost. I know everybody was showing the all 22s, showing that, oh no, no, no, he didn't really look lost. It was a little bit here there. No, Sonny Styles looked lost. And there's some concerns about Sonny Styles, which I'll talk about in a second. Now I know the practice, the joint practice against Miami, apparently was a night and day. Jaden looked amazing. He was ripping apart the Dolphins' defense. He was slinging it, throwing dimes, everything was great. The defense was just crushing it. Okay. But at least on the field, when it sort of mattered a little bit more, they showed nothing. The offense, obviously Mariota got hurt. Shocker, he always gets hurt. And Sam Hartman, why is he still on the team? There is no reason Sam Hartman should be on the team. He's not an NFL quarterback. He's not an NFL backup. He's not even a third string. He shouldn't be on the team. He is wasting reps on somebody who should be like McIntest's name. The guy they drafted in the seventh round. I'm never going to pronounce his name right. That should be your third string. That should be your third guy. And at this point, since Mariota is hurt, he should be the second string at the moment. Because he at least looks the part. He's not a starter in the NFL, but he looks the part. He throws the ball with poise. He stands in the pocket with poise. He doesn't look lost, which Hartman does. He doesn't have these errant throws that you see with Hartman. And he is somebody, if he came in, that's really bad because that means you're down three quarterbacks. But that should be your backup right now. It should be Jaden Mariota. I wish I could pronounce his name. I am sorry. And Hartman should be gone. There's no reason to have Hartman. He looked horrible against Miami. He looked horrible against Detroit. There's no reason for him to be on the team. It's just, I don't get it. I don't get why Hartman's still there. Like, and I'm starting to question Adam Peters a little bit more. But I understand it's just a quarterback. It's a backup quarterback. If you're going to a third string, you're screwed anyways. But still, you kind of want to have some competence in your first, second, and third quarterbacks. Not great, Jaden Daniels. Mariota can win a few games. And then Sam Hartman. Like if Sam Hartman comes in, we're done. It's over. It doesn't matter about any of the injuries. He's just going to throw picks left and right. So the defense wasn't good against Miami. And then against Detroit, somebody got the message. More starters played, of course, and they came out aggressive. And they got a basic, I'm I'm going to call it a strip sack. It was kind of weird, but they definitely aggressively went after Josh Dobbs, which again, this is Josh Dobbs they're going after, not Jared Goff. So it is a difference between the quarterback play. I assume Jared Goff would not have, maybe he would have, I don't know. Got the fumble, returned it. It was good. But it was more of an exotic blitz that you normally don't see in the preseason. So they sort of dialed it up a little bit. It was just a corner blitz, but generally you don't do some of those things in the preseason. That was good. And of course, they turned right around and let Josh Dobbs run 50 yards. There was a couple missed plays, a couple missed tackles, and then he's off to the races. So whatever positives they got, and they got five sacks, they had two interceptions, they got that 50-yard TB run by Josh Dobbs, which makes them look terrible. Like he was basically untouched. Bad angle by Will Hare. It's just you could just, they're just not there yet. They're rusty. And that's the reason I wanted starters to play in the preseason. You don't need to play in the preseason to demonstrate that you can be the starting quarterback or you could be the starting safety. It's just to knock the rust off. I don't want them knocking the rust off during week one against the Eagles. I think that's stupid. They should be knocking the rust off in preseason games. That's what a preseason game is for. You know, and don't give me, oh, the Rams never play. I don't care. All right? I don't care. We're only looking at our team, the commanders, and Jaden hasn't done anything in it seems like in almost an entire year. And he gets three plays. He gets first down, incredible pass. It's not even an incredible pass rush by the Lions. Just the offensive line is horrific right now. And he has to scramble and he throws it away. Very smart that he threw it away. I'm happy he threw it away. Second down, gets sacked. Offensive line can't hold anybody. Don't give me that it was John Bates' job. The offensive line needs to hold up a little bit more than that. All right. And again, John Bates hasn't played much in training camp because he's been injured. So he's knocking off the rust as well. So this is where you can find mistakes. This is where you can knock off Rust during the preseason. I'm glad Jaden wasn't hurt. And then, of course, it's third and 20. You're not going to do anything. Great handoff by him. Immaculate handoff. And then he's done for the game. Like, you got to put him in for another drive. You got to let him at least complete a pass. That's all you needed to do. Just let him complete a pass. If he starts knocking off the rust against the Eagles, it's not going to go well. We saw that last year. He didn't do anything the preseason. And then against the Giants, he was pretty bad because he was knocking off the rust. He was just getting into the groove and playing in training camp, playing against, practicing against your own team, practicing against another team is not the same as real game. It's different. And so they needed to put him in there for at least two drives. Let him complete a pass. Honestly, it could have been first down. He could have thrown in bubble screen, and then you could have yanked him and thrown in Sam Hartman right after that on second down. That would have been fine. That would have been proof. Okay, we wanted to see him complete a pass. He complete a pass, get out of it. That's what they should have done. Just to knock off the rust. In no way, shape, or form, Jaden Daniels going against the backups or whatever Detroit was doing, the base defense Detroit was playing, is going to increase Jaden Daniels' skill level. It's just going to get him to be comfortable in an NFL situation. Hey, I can complete a pass, all good, and leave. And they're not doing that. Like I get the injuries. I do. And I know that a lot of the players have been banged up. Way too many players have been banged up. The one thing I would like to know is all of these injuries, which of these injuries during the regular season would prevent these players from actually playing in a game? That's one of the questions I would ask. Like if uh he had this calf injury, any of these, would they play in a regular season game? That's the question. Because maybe they would, and they're being cautious, which is fine. But still, you're he's gonna take hits. Like, I mean, he's gonna take hits, but what you're kind of telling us by not putting him in is that your offensive line is so bad, your running backs can't pick up blocks, your tight ends can't pick up blocks, that you're afraid he's gonna get injured, so you're not gonna put him in there. It tells me that you have no confidence in the the entirety of the offense, which is a big problem because the season's starting in a couple weeks, and there's nobody really that you could pick up that's going to actually improve the team. And so I know there's a Larmie Tunsil injury, I know that changes the calculus, but Laramie Tunsel played left tackle. It's not like he was right tackle, it's not like he was left guard, right guard, or center. He was one position. And I understand, yes, you put Laramie Tunsil there, you don't have to worry about it, but you still have the other guys that aren't playing well, so it doesn't change the fact that everybody else is garbage, apparently. So this does bring me to my concerns with Adam Peters. I know during the offseason they went after a lot of players. I know they were trying to, you know, get some wide receivers and they swung and missed on they probably swung and missed on more players. We just didn't hear about Alec Pierce wanted to stay with Indianapolis, great. Romeo Dobbs didn't want to come here. And then there was Tyler Lindenbaum, the center from the Ravens, who at least on paper is the best center, and they didn't want to overpay for him. Oh my god, we have to do value. And I understand the value, I understand analytics, and I understand that if you actually look at the center position, it's not as important as maybe the left tackle, maybe the right tackle. I mean, I do understand that. But if they paid for Tyler Lindenbaum, and assuming he didn't get injured during training camp, we wouldn't be talking about the center position right now because Nick Allegretti is injured, and obviously if he wasn't injured, it would be a different conversation, but he's injured right now. It would be different. We would have covered up the left tackle, we would have covered up the center, and we could have kept Nick Allegretti on his. He says he can play center, he says that's his most comfortable, but he hasn't played much in the NFL and center. You know, they should have just signed him. I don't care. Oh my god, it would have reset the market. Who cares? Salary cap in the NFL is fungible. And it's not like they were bringing in all these other guys, like, oh my god, we can't afford anybody. They brought in nobody. All right, nobody really wants to come here. They overpaid for Adafi Owe, which was good. I'm glad they paid for him. So just overpay for a center, you know, just overpay for a center. That's what they really should have done. Um I just I'm so baffled by this. I don't know what Adam Peters is doing. Like everybody said that he was, at least when we hired him, he was the number one guy by he was the future GM. He's a future GM superstar. I haven't seen any of this. He hasn't drafted that well. I know it's early. I'm willing to give him some more time, but his moves have not been that good. His first draft, I'm not counting Jaden Daniels. Everybody says, oh, he drafted Jaden Daniels. Most people would have drafted one of those quarterbacks that have been playing well. I don't count the number one overall pick, the number two pick or the three pick as some sort of boon on your record that you know how to draft. Come on. But who else did he draft? Johnny Newton? Look, Johnny Newton was doing absolutely nothing before his injury. He's he's not a guy. He's just not for whatever reason. He's not a guy. And he's he's injury prone. He was injured when they drafted him. And I don't care what the prognosticators said. That, oh, he would have been dra You really think Adam Peters is following what ESPN thinks? So that was a miss. Um, Mikey Sandristel, it's weird that he went from being pretty good to being god-awful in a year swing. So maybe, but they could have gotten Cooper Gene. He's been playing pretty well. He's playing heads and tails better than Mikey Sandristil. Uh Ben Senett, he's not going to be on the team. If he was such a good prospect, why do they sign Chigaconquo? He can't get on the field as it is. They signed a replacement for Zach Ertz. That's a bust. Who else do we got? Um Luke McCaffrey. There's nothing there with Luke McCaffrey. He hadn't done anything. Great. He's good on kickoff returns. Wonderful. I'm sure you could coach up anybody to be good on kickoff returns. So these are like bad draft picks that he's done in the early rounds of it. Um he drafted Trey Amos. We don't know he's injured. He's still injured. That's a problem that he's still injured. I just, I'm starting to feel like either I've said this before that I think Adam Peters is still in over his head. Like he did this hard, stupid hardball negotiation with Terry McLaurin, which was absolutely dumb. Like, why couldn't someone talk to him? This is stupid. Doesn't matter that's what the 49ers do. It was it's dumb when the 49ers do it. There was no reason for this. Just sign him. It's and the reason that it was dumb, it's not like you had three other guys coming in to replace him. You had nobody replacing him. Your replacement was Noah Brown. Noah Brown is made out of balsa wood, and you still hardballed with it. It made absolutely no sense that you did that. And so that kind of ruined it last year with the wide receiver. And then Sonny Styles. Now it's way too early to even begin to say that he's good or he's bad or he's a bust. Way too early. But the thing about Sonny, the two things about Sonny Styles was is A, he's shifted positions. I believe he went from safety to linebacker in college, and he only really played one year or maybe a year and a half at linebacker, which is a problem because now he needs to learn how to play that position at a much higher level than he did at Ohio State. And clearly he's not getting it all. Clearly, he's still not able to pick up some of the defense's pick up, or at least his instincts aren't there yet. And regardless of whether you're talking about a regular season or we're talking about preseason, these are NFL players. They're much faster, stronger than what he sees or what he saw in college. So it's a lot easier to be great in college, not so much in the NFL. The second thing that always concerns me is a workout wonder. Like he was, I think he was probably teens to the end of the first round until he exploded in the combine. That's a workout wonder. Who cares about that? I do believe they didn't want Sonny Styles. I do believe they wanted one of three players. I do believe it was either Jeremiah Love or Colonel Tate, is who they really wanted. And then maybe Avril Reese. And of course, those players were gone. And so they went with Sonny Styles. Um, I would have Caleb Downs would have been my pick. And I know Calen Downs is not a sexy pick. I know safety is not a sexy position in terms of high draft picks because it's a lot easier to swap people in. It's a lot easier to convert other positions to safety. But I remember listening, this is way back when before the draft. I wish I knew who the person was. Um I was listening to a podcast. Um, whether it was Kevin Sheehan, whether it's Ben Stanley, I can't remember, but I'm not going to look it up. Sorry to that person who was talking about it. And they were they were talking about the draft, and the one thing they said about Caleb Downs, and I think this is when a lot of people were mocking Caleb Downs to Washington, they basically said it's not a sexy pick, but it's like a double. He's a very good player. It's a double. He's your you know, your safety safe pick. I don't know, I kind of want that. So I just I'm afraid he's gonna outperform Sonny Styles, at least initially. And I just think I just what is Adam Peters doing? I'm just really concerned about this. You know, they're they're not spending any of their money. Like, is this Adam Peters not spending the money because he thinks some superstar is gonna walk through the door, which they're not, and I'll talk about that in a second, or is this Josh Harris, the ownership? If this is the ownership, then there's nothing we can do about it. If the ownership doesn't want to spend X amount of money on players, then you can't spend X money on players. I assume it's not, but I don't know. I'm not sitting in the meetings, you know, with Josh Harris. So I have to assume it's easier for me to assume that it's not Josh Harris, that it's Adam Peterson. He's just, I just don't know what his direction is. I don't know. But I do think the bigger issue is I know we've heard stories, I know people talk about, oh, everybody wants to come to play for Washington. No, they do not want to come to play to Washington. If they wanted to play for Washington, Alec Pierce would have signed, Romeo Dobbs would have signed here, Tyler Lindenbaum would have signed for a little less money to come here, and some of the other free agents would have signed. They're not coming through this door and banging on Ashburn to sign a contract with us. We're still in the depths of where the Dan Snyder Redskins is where we are. We're still in the midst of still being a joke franchise. Nobody wants to come here. How do I know? We had to drastically overpay for a Daffy OA. He had like a season and a half of good ball. That's it. He wasn't that great in Baltimore. He was fine. He was good. He did a few things, and then he got traded, and he did a little bit more in his second half. But here's the other thing. If he was so great, why didn't the Chargers re-sign him? They didn't because they know his limitations, but we couldn't get anybody else. Chaseon, the reason we signed him, nobody really wanted him. Again, this is a prove it year for him. That's why it was a one-year contract. Rashad White, again, prove it contract one year. I think he realized he's also friends with Jaden Daniels, but he also realized that he could make some more money if he plays well with this offense. So I think we have players we have to overpay to get, or we sort of got these prove it players who can't get anything better. We're still stuck in that. And if you're stuck in that situation in which you cannot sign free agents, you better draft well and you better develop well. And I don't think we've done either of those things. I don't think we've developed anybody yet. Who have we developed? Johnny Newton would have been and nothing. Didn't do anything. He's he hasn't done anything. Daron Payne doesn't do anything. And we I don't know. Why did we go out of our way to say, oh, we're not paying Duran Why would you say that? I don't get that either. We haven't developed uh Luke McCaffrey. We haven't developed Jalen Lane, we haven't developed Mikey Sanders still as of yet. Like we haven't seen any progress of any of these players that we've drafted. And yes, I understand it's only two years. I get that. This is year three. I'm fully aware of that. But I have you need to see some progress of these players. I haven't seen any of these progress. Do not give me, well, he's a great punt returner, Jalen Lane. Wonderful. I mean, do you want to keep an entire roster spot for a punt returner? Do you want to keep an entire roster spot for a kickoff return guy? I don't. I don't. You gotta do more than just be a kickoff. We are not that talented of a roster in which we can hold a spot for a punter returner, or we can hold a spot for a kickoff returner. Our roster is bad. And you can't hoard spots. These are the precious spots that we need. And that's the problem. He's not doing a good job signing free agents as of yet. He's not doing a good job of drafting, and we're not doing a good job of developing. Now, when it comes to developing players, I'm fully aware that Dan Quinn was not the first, second, or even maybe third choice. I know they all I know Kevin Cheein and everybody else says, oh no, he blew them away in the interview. He most certainly did not blow them away in the interview. They wanted Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson didn't want to come here. I know why Ben Johnson didn't want to come here. The Seattle coach, McDonald, didn't want to come here either. He went to Seattle. I think that was a good choice on his end. And I believe there was another coach that they interviewed, but he decided to stay as a coordinator. So Dan Quinn wasn't the first choice, the second choice, or the third choice. You know, he was, all right, well, we're kind of screwed. We got to hire somebody. We have to hire Dan Quinn now, and we have to make it seem like, eh, we weren't really interested in these guys. Dan Quinn was our guy from the beginning. That's what they're trying to pull us in. And listening to Dan Quinn, I know people keep saying that he motivates players, he does not sound like a motivator to me. I just And then we can see the coordinators and the assistants he he he hired. Cliff Kingsbury is I look, I get the Cliff Kingsbury hire. That was an indication that Dan Quinn doesn't know what he's doing. But they should have let him go after year one. Year two is really bad with Cliff Kingsbury. I'm pretty sure they assumed he would get a head coaching job. And Cliff Kingsbury's offense is not good in the NFL. And so we ran into that. Joe Witt Jr. such a terrible he was bad from the jump. He was absolutely bad for the jump. And these are bad choices by Dan Quinn. Is David Blau going to be good? David Blau was a desperation hire in terms of if we don't hire David Blau, there's a chance we lose David Blau. He goes somewhere else, he explodes, and we're screwed, you know, we're problematic. Well, we should have hired him. So they hired him, which is fine. I don't have a problem with that. Durante Jones, I we were turned down by other people who wanted to come here. Durante Jones, I think he's been around too long, and so that's sort of like a negative on him. I just don't know. But Dan Quinn does not have a good track record of hiring assistants. He doesn't. That was his downfall in Atlanta. He once um once Kyle Shanahan left, once the and once they all left, he hired people who were bad. And so he got fired. And it seems like we're spiraling into that same situation in which this is going to be a bad year, and we're gonna have to replace Dan Quinn. And we better hope that David Blau is a good offensive coordinator and can slot in to being the head coach, or he's gonna be gone. It's just everything seems to be falling apart really quickly, really quickly this offseason. And I'm pinning it on obviously I'm pinning it on Adam Peters. He's the guy in charge. He's the guy who's picking these players, he's the guy who's supposedly signing these players, he's the guy who's keeping Dan Quinn and all these assists. He's approving it. If he is not sitting there with Dan Quinn asking questions on why we should hire Durante Jones and he's letting Dan Quinn just do whatever he wants, that's a bad idea. So I just I'm I'm I'm I never was super excited about this year. But now I'm I'm sort of teetering down. I think I said um eight to ten wins. I'm down to four to six wins. I just can't see it now. And hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully my doom and gloom is the they got me in the preseason type situation, which we've seen teams do before. But I just cannot fathom that this team is going to be able to, you know, pull the wool wool over my face that easily and do that to the entire league. I just can't see that right now. I just don't see any. I see a top 10 pick, I see a top five pick coming here, and again, I don't trust Adam Peters to make the right choice. And what are you gonna do with Jaden? Like this is a I think this is really the frustrating part. They have they had a lot of cap room, and I still think they have some cap room. And you want to protect your number one asset. Let's just assume that he was right about Jaden Daniels and that Jaden Daniels is going to be a franchise quarterback, a Hall of Fame, you know, all of that stuff. You got to protect him, and there's three ways you can protect him. You can get some good offensive weapons like wide receivers, didn't do that. Yes, Stefan Diggs is good, but we're gonna find out why he's been on four teams in four years pretty soon. All right, so they didn't really do much on the offense. They tried to, I'll give him credit. He tried to, but he couldn't close the deal. So we have what we have, fine. We also could work on tight ends, which he did. We still don't know about Chigaconqua. We don't know if he's good or bad. Two reasons. One, he played for Maryland, and Maryland's a bad college football team, and he played for the Titans, and the Titans had garbage. Cam Ward can't throw a pass to save his life, so we really don't know. And also he's a yak person. He's not somebody who can really get open in space, which is fine, you can work with that, but we don't know. But it's also an indication they swung and miss on Ben Sinett. Okay. The other thing is the running back room. Bill, sure, he's fine. But if he's so good, why did we sign Rashad White? That's a good catch, pass catching. And why did we draft two guys basically? I think one's on uh uh undrafted free agent. But why did we draft uh Keatron Allen? So it's an indication they couldn't get any good running backs. Kenneth Walker was available. I understand. Kenneth Walker would run into the same problem that we do here about what I said about Sonny Styles, what I said about Adafi Owe, one good year. He's been solid, but really one good year, and that was last year. Didn't do it. That's fine. You like the guys you have. I'm not too negative on the running back room, but they didn't add any flashy big names. And then the last thing they can do, and of course you can order this in any ways. It's this is not, you know, wide receiver one, tight ends, running backs, and offensive line in that order. All of those are equally important. They didn't do anything in the offensive line. They didn't. Like you had an opportunity. Oh, we can't overpay. Let me tell you, you drastically overpaid for Lammy Tunsil. You overpaid him in terms of giving up draft picks for him, and you overpaid by signing him to an extension. Why couldn't you do that for the center? I who cares if this would make him the most paid center. That's just fodder for the sports press to talk about. You had a need of a center because you randomly got rid of Biadish, which is whatever your prerogative. Sign Lindenbach. Unless it was clear he didn't want to come here, but you should have just paid him the extra $3 million and who cares. And we wouldn't be having this discussion. I wouldn't be having this discussion. You didn't do it. So what are you doing to make the team better offensively? You're not. You're hoping Jaden Daniels is this, you know, he's gonna lift everybody up, but you know, if he's on his back the entire game, he's not gonna be able to lift up anybody. And then you're you don't want him to run around too much, but yet you're not giving him the weapons and you're not giving him the protection not to run around. So I just like I want to sit in the room, I want to be a fly on the wall and listen to this discussion on players. I have this feeling if I if we went and we were watching the discussions with Adam Peters and the discussion with Dan Quinn, the coaching staff, it's gonna look like that hard knocks with Joe Shane and Brian Dayball, how they just look like morons talking to each other like they've never seen football before. That's what I'm afraid of. It's a cavalcade of idiots in there and they don't know what they're doing. And that's really concerning for me. So I know it's I'm doom and gloom over a preseason game. I know preseason doesn't matter, but everything just looks like it's going really, it's everything's falling apart right before our eyes. I just need Nikki Javala to tweet out the vibes are starting to look bad and we're back to where we were last year. That's what we need. Uh but yeah. Sorry about the delay in the uploads on more uh podcasts. It's been a busy couple weeks for me. Um I'm gonna try to maybe try to do it once Welcome to the Overreacting Since Kickoff Podcast, your place for DMV sports conversations and discussions about all things DMV sports. Once a week, it might not be emergency podcast after the games, so just be my takes uh after the games, you know, later in the week. But anyways, that's sort of my take on where I sort of now see the commanders very doom and gloom. I hope I'm wrong, but I just cannot see this going anywhere good at this moment. I hope I'm wrong. But anyways, that's all I have for you today, folks. Have a great rest of your day, have a great rest of your week. Until next time, take care all.