Whether it’s the Bears, ready to move on from Justin Fields, or some other team that will pay a king’s ransom to move up, we know the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft is likely to be a quarterback.
But the Commanders are the odds-on favorite to pick No. 2, and if they do…should they also go QB?
Grant & Danny admitted they were for that plan on Tuesday’s show, but come Wednesday, well, they had The Athletic’s Mike Jones on as part of the Beltway Blitz, who agreed and remembered how RG3-Mania brought the best hope the Commanders have had in a decade.
“For me, it’s really simple; if they’re picking four, six, 10 or 13, the conversations vary, right? Wherever you are, the range that you're at, who's available, the caliber of prospect, like we could have a different conversation,” GP said. “Now that we're talking about them having the No. 2 overall pick, it's over Johnny. If you pick second, you stay in that slot and you take whichever quarterback didn't go one, assuming you like them both.”
Big assumption, because…
“That doesn't mean you just have to do it even if you don't like them,” Grant continued. “If you do your study with your new GM and head coach and you decide that you like one of the two and that one goes first, now you can trade back and get a king's ransom because some other team’s coming up to get the other.”
But if the new regime likes more than one QB, then, yes, “if you like both players, if you view them as franchise quarterbacks, you need to sit your butts in the No. 2 seat and not get up.”
And absolutely DO NOT trade up to make sure you get the one you want.
“I don't want you to trade up and lose picks, because you need those picks to build around this young player and to build the nest for this little birdie,” Grant said, “but you need to take the quarterback. It's not a coincidence that Washington has inexplicably not found the QB, and they've also very, very, very, very rarely drafted one early in the first round, which is oftentimes where the best quarterbacks are taken. Doesn’t mean it's gonna work out, but I need people who don't want them to go quarterback, or think that they should trade back, or want to stick with Howell, which is a real tough sell for me, I need to know how do you make that case? It’s been decades, man…shouldn’t you try?”
“No question,” Danny replied. “The argument against is the quarterbacks that get drafted high a lot of times will go to teams that are terrible organizations and then they turn out terrible - weird that that happens! Everyone says there’s no guarantee, but there’s no guarantee for anybody – but if you've actually got somebody smart that knows what the hell they're doing and is actually gonna build something, you have to take swings until you get it.”
That, Danny concludes, was the biggest issue of the Ron Rivera era.
“Rivera's biggest fault in a sea of faults was this complete lack of desperation and inactivity when it came to selecting a quarterback. It was bridge, and when you bridge, you bridge to another bridge to another bridge to another bridge to failure, that's what happens,” Danny said. “This is how you do it for two or three years and then bottom out; you have no plan, no long term vision, you're just flying by the seat of your pants going to the next leftover DVD bargain basement bin at a Walgreens at the beach when you're looking for entertainment that night because it's raining. That's the bin that they've shopped in, and we can't believe that it didn't work out with Ryan Fitzpatrick or Case Keenum or Carson Wentz or Kyle Allen or any of the other hot garbage that's come through here. Never do that. No bridge quarterbacks ever, unless your guy's hurt for a week, then you can play Billy the backup. Draft your quarterback and play him, and if it doesn't work out, draft again, figure it out.”
