Thought Danny's rant on Josh Harris being in the Commanders' QB meetings at the Combine was passionate? You ain't seen nothing yet, because later on, he doubled down on Harris' involvement in the process…and says leave the football decisions to the football men.
"Again, I just don't think this is the right thing to do. If Harris has a bad track record, and you found out he were sitting in on quarterback interviews, you would lose your mind," Danny reiterated. "Bad owners have got a track record of messing up, so you go, 'I don't want a meddling owner,' and we accuse someone of meddling when their moves don't work."
We don't know if Harris' moves will be good or bad just yet, but we didn't want Dan Snyder involved in football stuff, and we should stick with that.
"What was the mantra, hire football people and let them do football stuff? You got a football guy!" Danny said. "He's handsome as all hell, and you got Lance Newmark from the Detroit Lions. I don't want my owner asking quarterbacks questions, pretty simple."
Danny took some calls on the subject, and opinions went from comparing Harris to current owners and not having issue with him being part of it, to being okay as long as we don't find out he kiboshed something and it backfired, but none really agreed with Danny.
"I know I'm weird, I see things differently than everybody else does in a lot of cases. But I work back not from, 'well, let's see how this goes,' I think of these as equations," Danny said. "In the USA, you have a Constitutional right against illegal searches and seizures - imagine the worst person in the world, a terrible dude we know has committed all sorts of crimes, and the the time you search this person's home, nothing to be found. You wouldn't want a police officer to drop evidence there, would you? Of course not, right?"
Danny's point in that analogy? Process.
"Just because we get the result, we want, the process has to be good. Josh Harris is Mr Process!" Danny said. "If he leads us to the better quarterback option somehow, we'll go, 'see, that was great' right? No, because now we have a precedent. I don't want that, I want the correct process at all times. That doesn't include the owner sitting in these meetings, interviewing players. Nobody does that for a reason: the empowered football guy should be doing that. Josh Harris has a much larger role later on down the line; when the football guys are debating, he needs to be there leading that discussion. It's normal to value opinions, and when you're hiring Adam Peters, when you're hiring Dan Quinn, yep, he's involved. I get it. Be the sounding board! Not here. There's a reason nobody else is doing that."
So, yeah, Danny says, leave the football decisions to football operations.
"When you get the football man, you allow the football man to do all the football man things. If you want to be a sounding board, by all means, use your incredible acumen across multiple sports, ask appropriate questions, make people defend their positions. That's ownership, that's leadership," Danny said. "Most owners don't attend the Combine but Harris is not only in Indianapolis, but a part of the quarterback interview process. I think that's wrong."
