Pardon the pun, but could the Commanders Take Command of the NFC in 2023?
Hard to think about given just the competition in the NFC East itself, but they did go 8-8-1 last season and just miss out on a playoff berth, and if that tie against the Giants was a win…well, things could’ve been different.
Grant & Danny played a clip of Packers GM Brian Gutekunst speaking Tuesday after trading Aaron Rodgers to New York, discussing whether or not Green Bay is now in a rebuild – and that’s when Grant laid out his gripe with what the Commanders did in the 2022 offseason.
“My annoyance last year with their last of aggressiveness in the offseason was based on my perception that the NFC was down,” Grant said. “The 8-9 Bucs won the NFC South, there was one team with 10 or more wins in the NFC West, and there was one team with nine or more wins in the NFC North.”
Of course, Washington plays in what was the NFC’s toughest division last year, as even at a minus-22 point differential, 8-8-1 was in the top half of NFC records. But, to Grant’s dismay, they did next to nothing to improve the team so far this offseason, and the NFC may actually be worse in 2023?
“This is now exacerbated by the fact that Aaron Rodgers has been traded,” Grant said. “You have another high-end quarterback leaving the NFC, and you look at this conference – let’s say the division is comparable, it’s not like that’s easy, but who else in the conference is really good?”
Grant isn’t sold on Seattle and Detroit, the teams that finished 9-8 and seventh and eighth ahead of the Commanders in the Wild Card, and the rest?
“Who is good? San Fran, Philly, and who else?” Grant asked. “Please be aggressive and take advantage of one most down periods in the NFC in years, but it seems like Washington doesn’t have the urgency that I want them to have to take advantage of this.”
“Not only that, this is the fourth year of this regime being in charge of everything,” Danny added, intimating that there’s now no one to blame for the past. “I didn’t understand this last year, and I don’t understand it now, especially when the selling point for a couple of seasons was that we can’t draft a young quarterback because we’re building a nest. The whole point of having Sam Howell, and going cheap at quarterback is that you can build a juggernaut; maybe there’s a shocking Draft Day trade coming, but I don’t get the sense that’s happening, or that they’re that aggressive.”
Danny thinks it’s “get a veteran QB, hand it off a bunch, and hope we can go 8-8 again,” which would basically be status quo, and Grant knows that the looming sale will be an excuse for many to fall back on – perhaps even the front office – for doing next to nothing…but he’s not buying it.
“Everyone who has talked all offseason has said nothing they wanted to do was prohibited by the sale, other than, oddly, Chase Young’s fifth-year option is complicated by it,” Grant said. “But, because that’s the only thing they’ve mentioned, I think it’s a convenient excuse to use when they don’t do it. There was no sale in the offing last year, but they didn’t do anything last offseason either.”
The additions of Eric Bieniemy (and subsequently Andrew Wylie) and the contract for Daron Payne seem to prove Grant’s point, but as he said, “I want more of it, and I think they are really missing out, because this is a strike while the iron is hot league, and it’s so hot right now, they’re missing out not taking a whack at it.”
Danny agrees that “you could have done more than a $150 million headliner, and Nick Gates and Andrew Wylie in a gotta-have-it year for a staff fighting for their professional livelihood.”
How do you feel about the NFC scene, and what the Commanders did (and didn’t) do this offseason?
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