BMitch & Finlay react to Dan Quinn saying Commanders 'in the middle of' WR2 search: 'May the best man win'
During a press conference Thursday, Commanders head coach Dan Quinn said the team is ‘right in the middle of’ a WR2 search – something that may have been evident based on how much Jahan Dotson played last Saturday, and the signing of Martavis Bryant this week.
And yeah, to BMitch & Finlay, camp has certainly shown that.
“If you got dropped off a spaceship and landed in Ashburn in late July, you would think the second-best receiver on this team is either Olamide Zaccheaus or Dyami Brown, based off of what they've been doing in training camp this year,” JP Finlay said. “A lot of folks want to know what's up with Jahan Dotson, and it's possible Jahan balls out Saturday night – so the question is not what's wrong with Dotson? He still has a chance to show he's a baller, like when he caught two touchdowns in the opener his rookie year, so things could change?”
“Could Dyami have finally gotten it?” BMitch asked back. “They were excited when they drafted him, and this new staff seems to be better at coaching people up – and if it's a competition now where we don't know, and Dyami begins to ball, who cares? You want to get the best out of your players, point blank.”
There’s been some seen speculation that the call-out BMitch made for bad body language was about Jahan Dotson (although he says it was about multiple, even if people ‘zeroed in on one guy’), and regardless of who it was about, the point still stands.
“If one guy is getting it and the other guy kind of is in a funk right now, that's a problem for him,” Brian said. “Overall, you have to be on a level of competition and competing every damn day of your career; you never get a chance to coast.”
“It reminds me of Jayden’s answer before he had been officially named starter, when he said, ‘You think I care if they call me starter? I'm still gonna compete,’” JP replied.
The guys played the clip from Quinn’s presser where he said ‘a lot of guys are battling’ for the second spot behind Terry McLaurin, and special teams will factor into the overall roster decision – a quote that the boys in the aquarium sort of agreed with Brian and JP on.
“We all assumed that Dotson would take this role and it's clearly not his right now, so it’s not great,” Tobi Altizer, helping out as a producer for the remote show, said. “Considering Zacchaeus has been kind of a journeyman and seeing some of these other guys, you would hope that someone would emerge. Maybe it is Zacchaeus and that's fine, but it doesn't feel good that you're at this point with a rookie quarterback and the No. 2 receiver isn't kind of set.”
“I heard that it's a true competition, and it don’t seem like Quinn is on a side,” Jeff Walker added. “He's letting the best man win, and his name is Olamide at this point.”
All that said, is this maybe an undercover way the coaches are publicly trying to push Dotson?
“I don't think that this staff really goes into that; I think everything that they say publicly, they've said privately,” Brian said. “Players are going to face this at one point in their career, no matter if it's early or late, where you're gonna get to a point where you’re gonna notice that they might like somebody more than you. So what do you do at that point – do you dig deep or do you just let it go? I wouldn’t just let it go, I’d show you what I'm about. There are some people who fold and some people continue to push, and I think right now we are in a great point to find out exactly what we have – and when they make their decision, you would know that they chose the best person.”
JP likes Dotson as a receiver and always has, and is surprised by this competition so far, but for the proper future of the franchise, Brian says this is just how it has to be right now.
“I understand that some people fall in love with certain people, but you know what I fall in love with? I fall in love with winning, and I ain't been in love in a long damn time when I start thinking about this franchise,” B said. “So ultimately, I am looking for the guys who are going to go out here and bust their ass on an everyday basis. I want this team to go out there and become better than what they were, and be focused on this year for once. So if this is competition right now, may the best man win. Dan Quinn has been talking about competition in all positions throughout this whole time, but everyone seems to just focus on Jahan; why, because he’s a first-rounder? It’s everywhere, but we focus on the one thing that we assume. I don’t care who knew what I was talking about, but I guarantee the people who I was talking about, they know, because one thing about competitors, they know when they're not doing their best. My ultimate thing is for this football team that wears burgundy and gold to become a better football team, and if that's not what everybody's hoping for, then you hoping for the wrong damn stuff.”
