On Thursday’s weekly remote football broadcast from Rudy’s in Alexandria, Grant & Danny played a clip from Ron Rivera this week talking about how the Commanders and Giants play a lot of close games – heck, they tied last year, and the 2021 season finale is the only game in the last three years decided by more than one score.
Within his answer, Ron basically said teams should play division rivals harder, and knowing them better than other teams leads to even matchups – but this year, the Commanders look better than they have in the past and the Giants look much worse, and Washington goes into New York as a heavy favorite to face a 1-5 G-Men squad that is down to signing guys off the street to play offensive line, and some of them are sure to start.
So, like the Bears should’ve been…is this a must-win game the Commanders can’t afford to lose, especially the coaching staff?
“If you’re losing very winnable games like this? In your fourth year as a regime, you, you gotta be winning these games,” Grant said. “If I’m Josh Harris evaluating and taking notes and I get blown out at home by the Bears, that is a big X that is tough to overcome in the grand scheme of my evaluation – and I kind of view this game the same way. With all these injuries to the Giants, do you feel like it’s overstating it to say that with a new ownership group watching everything you do, if you lose this game a couple weeks after losing to the Bears, it does really big damage to your chances to come back?”
“Big picture: what should be happening now? Is this different than the previous three years? Were the last three years good enough to you? If the answer is yes, then we have a different conversation,” Danny replied. “If what they’ve been is good enough for you, we’re still doing it. But these are the kind of milestone games where you can prove now is different, and we march forward; this team we couldn’t beat twice last year, limping into this game with the vultures swirling, put them out of their misery.”
The Chicago game “literally could not have gone worse” to Danny, but the calendar has gifted the Commanders another chance…and they better not blow it.
“At 3-3, a road favorite over anyone is astounding,” Grant said. “A couple weeks ago, they lost 40-20 to an 0-4 team, and people are still saying you’re better than this garbage.”
Whether it’s a returning Daniel Jones – who, ‘as mediocre as he is, becomes a Hall of Famer against Washington’ in Grant’s eyes – or Tyrod Taylor matters not, because the D-line is the Commanders’ strength, and they better eat up the patchwork O-line of Big Blue.
“When your entire strength is your defensive front, you've sunk all that money into Allen and Payne and now Chase Young and Montez Sweat playing for contracts, and you are gifted this horrendous offensive line – the worst front you will rush against all year long, full stop, no arguments, no conversations – I don’t know why or how it would be excusable, or anything other than unacceptable and revealing, if they lost this game,” Grant said.
Then again…
“If they handled the business they should have, they’d be 4-2, and there is a tangible difference between what they’ve been – you’d have lost to the two good teams you played,” Grant said. “But you’re 3-3 with a terrible loss to the Bears and two of the three wins against bad teams…so if you are coach trying to prove to a new owner you should stay, these shouldn’t be losses. They can’t be.”
“If you’re a Rivera advocate, saying to let his plan come to fruition, he’s had four years to build this thing in his image – and if everything is properly built, you win these games,” Danny replied. “If you're doing what's supposed to happen, you beat teams that are limping in and disastrous, and then you start getting talked about as a team who can make some noise. But, we are not at that phase yet. Instead we get that Chicago turd.”
Take a listen to G&D’s entire conversation about it above!
