Eric Nathan, better known as Barstool Nate, joins BMitch & Finlay every week, as you surely know, and the trio often commiserates about the rough state of just about every franchise in the DMV.
That shouldn’t include the Commanders, or at least that was the thought three weeks ago when they were 2-0, but now, after a third straight loss (and this one a debacle at home), everyone’s wondering what the heck is going on – and Nate was straight to the point.
“We don't have to sugar coat anything or dance around it: the head coaching and the defensive coaching are amongst the worst, if not the worst, in the entire NFL,” he said. “This is not a team that lacks talent, this is a team that lacks focus and preparation. The Bears, the laughingstock of the league, openly said that our defense did not look prepared, and people did not know where they were supposed to be, so the offense had absolutely no trouble.
It is a defense that Jack Del Rio is bringing from 2011 and it does not work in the current day NFL.”
He even went one step further: not only are Del Rio (and Ron Rivera) running outdated schemes, but they themselves are anachronisms in today’s NFL?
“It is an absolute joke that Ron Rivera and Jack Del Rio are still coaching this football team; they are holdovers from the Snyder era that nobody would mind if they were no longer a part of this team,” Nate said. “Ron has no place on the sideline being a head coach of an NFL team in 2023 – it’s a disgrace he’s still there – and the players can only do so much when the scheme does not work. And, we have seen time after time, season after season, that Jack Del Rio cannot properly adjust to today's NFL, and when you’re a defensive coordinator who just does not understand how to make in-game adjustments and you have a dynamic quarterback on the other side, we just see the way these guys can just eat up Jack Del Rio's defense.”
Part of that, he says, is Ron Rivera himself seems to be deficient in talent evaluation.
“If you want to just go back and pin more on Ron Rivera, he has done an absolutely horrid job building the entire team through the draft. The only guys who are really performing are not Ron Rivera draft picks,” Nate said.
“The fact that we are coming into this season with one player from this last draft class playing, and he's being toasted up and down the field and then being sent to the bench because he's being forced to cover the best wide receiver on every team one-on-one with no safety help, it’s absolutely insane. We should not stand for it as fans.”
JP even referenced how there was optimism thanks to the bounce-back from the Bills loss to take the Eagles to OT, but now, “the sky is falling” as he said – and in wondering how much of this is the weekly ebb and flow, Nate shut down any thoughts that we should’ve expected more.
“I think we see there's a fundamental problem with the team and I think it starts with Ron Rivera,” Nate said. “He did not beef up the offensive line and he has Sam Howell playing quarterback - and I think Howell is doing such a tremendous job, it’s just that when he has to get the ball out in two seconds or his head’s gonna be in the turf, that’s not good. The fact that he has not built an offensive line at all, and the fact the secondary is basically non-existent, those are a disgrace. I think we see the holes, and they are glaring.”
JP then posited that Rivera brought in four new starters and thinks he fixed the offensive line, at least, but that’s when BMitch stepped in closer to Team Nate than Team Finlay.
“You got four new starters, but did you really fix it?” Brian asked. “Because I don't think right now you're getting what you expected.”
And then Nate with the dagger:
“Ron cannot evaluate talent. He does not know how to do that,” Nate said. “We know that as a fact that he is not a good talent evaluator, and I think we as fans, we have to rip the band-aid off and say, ‘we've enjoyed your time here, Ron, thank you for everything you did, you were a great segue between Snyder and Harris, but your duties are no longer necessary. We appreciate you, enjoy your comfy front office gig, but this season, enough is enough. He does not deserve the job.”
Take a listen above as the guys discuss it all, including Nate’s thoughts when JP posited two more possible spots to make a change with Rivera this season, and how a move with Jack Del Rio would take that possibility out of play!
