We now have a date for Darrell Green’s number retirement: Oct. 20, the date of the Week 7 game against Caroline, will see Green become the fifth retired number in Commanders history.
Grant & Danny thought about why it’s happening in that game, and to be fair, your choices are three divisional games, two quarterback rivalries in Atlanta (Kirk!) and Chicago (No. 1 vs. No. 2 pick), three AFC games, or Carolina – which was maybe the most winnable seeing as they were the NFL’s worst team?
“There’s no bad answer to this – whatever you choose, the answer is yes,” Danny said about the date. ““From my age group and era, all the way up to my dad's age in era, he is an icon. He played for 20 years and cut across everybody from the eighties into the early 2000s. You could turn on the television and 28 would be out there running around faster than everybody else.”
Whatever the reason, come dinner time on Oct. 20, it’ll be Green, Sonny Jurgensen, Sean Taylor, Bobby Mitchell, and Sammy Baugh enshrined forever…but who should be next?
A handful of numbers haven’t been worn since the last notable player to wear them left Washington, and some have been scarce – Joe Theismann blessed Dwayne Haskins wearing No. 7 but he is it – and to Danny, a couple of those guys might be the most deserving to be next?
“He’s in that group with Riggins, Art Monk, Dave Butz and Joe Jacoby – just the icons from that era where they were more successful than anybody except for the 49ers,” Danny said. “Literally, if you go through that period from 1980 through 1992 or 1993, if Washington or San Francisco didn't do it, the team that did basically had to go through them to get there. You had the one of the great teams of all-time in the ‘85 Chicago Bears, and the ‘86 Giants were incredible, but other than that, it's pretty much the Redskins and Niners that bring up the rest of the decade, and guys from that era are now, and should be, getting their flowers.”
Alumni relations was not a strong suit of Dan Snyder’s regime, especially at the end, and Grant has some inside info that maybe, the Sean Taylor retirement really drove that wedge deeper?
“I don't want to speak out of school because I don't know that this was solely the issue: I don’t think any of the great legends were bothered by Sean Taylor being honored posthumously after the tragedy that unfolded, but it fractured relationships with some of the legends organizationally,” GP said. “What I was told was a lot of those guys who had bled and sweat and provided the tears over many years with this organization during times when they were winning championships, they kind of thought that he was unbelievably important to this newer era of fan, but the idea that you would retire his jersey after only a few seasons with the team before some of the legends, it was an issue and they made that known.”
Of course, the Taylor ceremony was a bit of a fire drill around some other Snyder transgressions, but it also ‘aggravated some of the most important people in the team's history.’
“There’s kind of like a line that you're in, especially for a team that's never retired jerseys and done just this ‘you can’t wear them thing,” GP said, and yeah, Danny gets it, especially considering how Joe Theismann blessed Dwayne Haskins wearing No. 7 and that didn’t go well.
But, recently, the team has been doing basically one retirement a season to fix that, and Green is this year’s representative – so who should be next in the pecking order?
“Easy answer is probably Riggins, just because the popularity, and fourth-and-1 in that first Super Bowl they won, where it all comes down and the whole world knows it’s coming, and the poor Dolphins defender got his finger broken trying to hold on to the diesel rumbling for a touchdown, changing everything,” Danny said. “That's probably the easiest one. here are other unbelievable players, whether it's Jacoby or Monk, that stands out from that era – one is a Hall of Famer and one should be, but to me, probably the easiest answer is Riggins.”