News broke shortly before Grant & Danny came on the air that Mike Macdonald was headed to Seattle as their next head coach, so for the second day in a row, the guys had immediate Commanders HC search breaking news, and not good news, to dive into.
"I'm NOT GREAT BOB! I have three candidates that I wanted to be the head coach of the local Washington 53 – one they never talked to, and two that are taking jobs elsewhere or stating at their job, respectively," Danny said. "Cool. The air is out of the balloon, my friend."
Macdonald got a six-year deal from Seattle, which makes Grant wonder if the Commanders' job is actually as good as we all seem to think it is, with the picks and the cap space and the blank slate.
"By the sixth year being given, it makes me wonder if Washinton is not willing to go six years with Macdonald, or not willing to pay Ben Johnson what he wanted," GP said. "Jim Harbaugh got $16 million from the Chargers, which is second contract money, but he had NFL cred, and the Panthers gave Dave Canales a sixth year, which may be a loser tax – but it seems like coaches are winning negotiations with teams, and the only one a team won was Washington not paying Johnson."
And that makes Grant even madder.
"It's hard for me to believe that once Johnson stayed in Detroit, Macdonald wouldn't have become a front-runner as a 36-year-old hot-shot coordinator who was a favorite for both jobs," GP said. "The fact that he gets on the plane and goes to Seattle and it's a done deal while he's in the air, that makes me feel even more confident the Commanders thought they were going to get Johnson, he rebuffed them, and they scrambled, and now they were late to the game on Macdonald."
"That's how it feels," was Danny's meek response. "If you were prioritizing somebody, and had your radar locked in on one candidate, you would've tried to make more moves quickly. It's not a 'thanks for coming, bye, we'll talk to you later,' it's more of a 'here's your offer, let's get down to business.' It wouldn't have gotten to this point, so if they had their heart set elsewhere, it fits – and whether it is or isn't, that's how it appears. We may be laughing about it years from now, but right now this minute, we're left with three candidates that they've interviewed that don't generate much excitement."
So that begs the question: has the Washington brass dropped the ball here?
"The perception nationally, now, is that no one wants this job, and they will have to settle for their third or fourth option," Grant said. "That is now the perception, that maybe the No. 2 overall pick and $80 million in cap space wasn't as big a deal as we thought. It's not being perceived as them going through this process methodically and landing on the guy they wanted all along – how could you see it like that?"
Seven other teams have new head coaches, including teams that didn't immediately fire their guys on Black Monday, and to now be the last one left, and not have any connection to a coach that's in the Super Bowl…that's just a bad look.
"The perception is the search has gone badly. They wanted a guy they didn't get and scrambled, the next guy they wanted they're not getting, and now they're going to have to settle with whoever they ultimately have a press conference with," GP said. "Maybe that's not reality, and I think our perception is probably worse than reality, but how do you feel? Is more being made out of this than necessary because they'll still get a qualified head coach?"
"I think it's as bad as it looks," Danny replied. "It's not a death knell or a doomsday thing, you still go forward, but it did not go according to plan. There's no way that anyone with a rational brain can examine the info we have and say this is how they wanted it to go. You can rebound from it and do some good things, but there's no way to process that it has gone right."
