Our EB said Monday morning that if the Commanders kept their EB and elevated him to head coach, he ‘would puke’ – and while Grant & Danny aren’t quite in that bucket, it was a little questionable to them that they heard Eric Bieniemy had interviewed for the head coaching job.
“I was surprised, I guess, and then I thought about it and I guess I shouldn't be surprised,” Danny said. “He’s still got an office there, so you don't have to go far, the easy access.”
“Here's what I want to know: how much of that conversation was the same as when they talked to Bobby Slowik about the job, and how much of that was the same conversations they're gonna be having with Marty Hurney and Martin Mayhew types?” Grant asked. “Like, we could call it a head coaching interview, we're sitting down and addressing the open head coach role with him, and it’s not a bad thing if you're Bieniemy to say, hey, I just interviewed for a head coaching job. There's no lose there.”
GP’s not a Chris Russell-type extremist, but in a world where he was…yeah, no shot that was actually a legitimate candidacy interview.
“I don't think it was a real interview. I think they're gathering information from Eric Bieniemy and talking to him about how last year went, and what it would look like if he ran the program, because that's due diligence,” Grant said. “That's what you should do, frankly, by not giving him the interim label. I think you owe that to him; you could have fired Rivera and promoted your assistant head coach, but you didn’t, so I think you kind of owe it to him to just have a quick conversation and say, ‘hey, if you ran this thing, what would that look like?’”
“Even beyond that again, this is such an easy thing to do,” Danny said, recalling a job long ago that we’re pretty sure wasn’t ours. “I remember in a job, everybody in our office knew they were bringing in an external candidate, but there were a couple of folks that had been there for a while; senior leadership had no interest in promoting somebody from within, and it was obvious everyone could tell, but you still have to go through that exercise of giving somebody the platform.”
That said, is there anything you could realistically look at from the 2023 Commanders offense and say it’s worthy of giving EB a legit shot?
“I think that's a hard case to make for him,” GP said. “It wasn't in Week 6 or Week 8 or maybe even Week 10, but as the year ended the way that it did, with the regression and eventual benching of Howell, and the offense crumbling when they actually started to play good defenses…what about his season was promotable? It'd be the equivalent of us wanting more if we were just getting our teeth kicked in and the show was terrible. I don't have any problem with interviewing him, but the hire would make no sense.”
“The best case I can make is less propping up what he did and more pointing out what happened to him,” Danny replied. “In other words: ‘my resume before here was pretty good, I came to this cesspool with a guy that you guys blew out who already fired his defensive coordinator, everything’s a mess, personnel weren't very good, I was kind of saddled with this and the results are kind of expected.’ That's not a great case for, for promotion.”
Great, but even in interviewing in that place, leaving out your last gig is not an ideal strategy.
“I think anything you're saying in a coaching interview if you’re Bieniemy is going to start with your Chiefs time – and after a season where you left Kansas City to prove you didn't need the Chiefs, that’s not a great sign,” Grant said. “You're doing your own thing, you're running your own shop…so if you’re just skipping over your one year out on your own to talk about the Chiefs time after this past season, that’s not great.”