BMitch & Finlay had a little debate during Tuesday’s show, wondering if Jacoby Brissett does indeed start a game over the final three weeks. So, when Commanders beat writer Nicki Jhabvala joined the guys later in the day, they gave her an over/under of 0.5 starts for Brissett.
“I’m gonna take the over, holding out for Week 18?” Nicki said with a tinge of question in her voice. “This last game changed everything. The whole narrative throughout the year was we’re going to leave him in tough situations so he can learn and develop, and it’s not like he was getting pummeled back there, so to say you pulled ghm to protect him…I didn’t believe that at first, and even less so after Ron’s presser Monday. It was about performance, and that changes everything, even if they’re out of playoff contention.”
To JP, if the benching was performance-related, there were several other times that Howell could have been benched for Brissett, so the narrative changing minutes before the team was eliminated from playoff contention (and thus no longer needing to be “trying to win games”) was suspect.
Yup, just another example of Ron Rivera changing horses in mid-stream.
“This team changes what they want to be annually,” Jhabvala said. “First they were trying to be like Ron’s team was in Carolina, then it became trying to be the Bills, and then the Chiefs – and going from praising th offensive line to getting rid of them all. There’s no consistency, and that’s why when we talk about Sam Howell, it has to be in context, because he’s had zero consistency, and two coordinators in less than a full season. It’s very hard to develop players when you do that.”
BMitch agrees, saying ‘this team has looked different four years straight,’ and that’s not a coincidence.
“They’ve even changed the types of players they draft every year,” Jhabvala said. “Do they want speed, or athletes, or polished players – what is the type of guy you’re looking for? It’s at the point where I have to wonder if the mixed messaging from the top is filtering down to the players’ level.”
JP thinks drafting Emmanuel Forbes was the biggest indicator of that, as the team took a small cornerback on a team supposedly built on beasts up front, which is like ‘chasing your tail.’
“This last game is another example – they had two takeaways, and it didn’t help them much,” Jhabvala said. “To me the offensive line is more confounding. The first couple years, Ron preached how well they were playing despite all the injuries, but then they decimated them. I get you had injuries at center and couldn’t play Brandon Scherff, but there were better options to fill out that line, and I don’t know how they went into the offseason thinking that was going to work well consistently.”
Take a listen to Nicki’s entire call-in above!
