Mitch Tischler joked during his visit with BMitch and Finlay Tuesday that he wants to see Jake Fromm start Week 18 for Washington, because ‘I don’t want this team to come out and compete’ against Dallas and sacrifice the draft position.
That led JP Finlay to ask what Brian Mitchell thinks the Commanders should do at QB, a question BMitch answered quickly with “Sam’s the guy,” but if that’s the case, why would you bench him (or at least try to) in Week 17 and then go back to him if the guy that should’ve replaced him is healthy?
Well, that brings up another point: JP wouldn’t be surprised if a handful of guys who have been banged up this year land on IR, just like Charles Leno, Percy Butler, and Tyler Larsen did last Sunday, and some of the practice squad gets added for one game, especially in the secondary and O-line groups.
Fromm WAS added to the active roster Sunday so he wouldn’t even need an elevation, and…well, BMitch isn’t certain that Jacoby Brissett’s hamstring was the reason he was inactive Sunday.
“If Jacoby couldn’t play last week, is he going to be automatically well this week? If he got hurt Thursday, supposedly, and it was so bad he couldn’t play Sunday, Sam is my quarterback this week unless something happens to him – and I don’t believe totally Jacoby really got hurt.”
A phantom injury planned as a wake-up call for Howell, or perhaps from above to re-embrace the tank?
“I believe that, and it is what it is – whenever you hear about people trying to tank, it doesn’t come from the players, it comes from upstairs,” Brian said. “If that’s what they wanted to do, cool, but don’t just think everyone is going to take what you say and run with it and say it’s good. I’ve been around football long enough to know when something seems a little fishy.”
Tischler agreed with BMitch’s first take that Sam should be the guy to finish it out, and there’s no reason to go to Brissett even if not, and that’s when JP wondered if the same scenario could play out again.
“If you do that again, now you’ve got people questioning what’s going on here,” BMitch said, with Tischler adding that “you’d be putting Jacoby in a bad position once again.”
Seems like the Rivera era can’t end soon enough, and the last 60 minutes on the field are almost secondary.
“Not that the Rivera era needs an exclamation point on the end of it, but how many other teams around the league do you see having players, multiple years in a row, refusing to play or basically opting out of games at the end of the season?” Tischler said. “There’s losing the locker room and your players, and then there’s whatever the heck is happening here. It’s beyond embarrassing.”