Ron Rivera is the king of putting his foot in his mouth, or so it seems, and in the eyes of Grant & Danny, he did it again this week in an article published by John Keim of ESPN where he said this about his future:
“I don't worry about being on the hot seat. If we go 8-8-1 this year and he (meaning Josh Harris) fires me, and next year they win the division with 40 of the 53 players we drafted and the same quarterback? I'm vindicated, send me my Super Bowl ring. That's the way I look at it. I want us to be right and to see this community have that excitement again.”
Uh, yeah, about that, Ron…
“So Rivera is saying, if we go .500 in my fourth year and have four straight years where we didn't have a winning record while I was here, but next year with a new coach, they win a bunch with a lot of the players that we brought in and they end up winning a Super Bowl, send me a ring. I'll claim victory. That’s pretty amazing,” Grant Paulsen said Tuesday.
“Incredibly…and when you read this story, who do you think Ron views as the hero in all of this?” Danny Rouhier shot back. “Like, my incredible decision to say my offense wasn't working, so I brought in Eric Bieniemy, and made a gutsy paradigm shift and all these things that I'm doing…he deserves credit for making the right decision, but don't tell me that you're heroic for having a God awful offense for three years and being like, ‘I should try another thing.’ Not a genius move. You're especially not a genius, sir.”
Grant agrees Rivera deserves credit if this all works, because he did make the move, but Danny wasn’t done.
“The give me credit if they play well? No one denies there are good players on this team. And yes, you've acquired some of them, but the idea that you want credit for that when you had these glaring holes and weaknesses and poor planning, where if someone shores that up, if several of your holdovers are there and they win, you'd like a Super Bowl ring? I'd like you to clap at home, on your couch, like the rest of us will be,” Danny ranted.
Grant brought up that quite a few core Commanders were here before Rivera, so does that mean the previous administration gets credit too?
“That quote was amazing to me,” Grant said. “I appreciate the end of it where he says I want this community to feel the excitement of a winner again, like that's respectable and he's a good guy and you could tell it means something to him having gotten to know DC. If these fans get a winner and it happens after he leaves, he'll be happy for the fan base – that’s a nice sentiment. But the, the notion that, if we go .500 this year and you guys do it with my quarterback? There’s a lot of that with Sam, a lot of ‘my quarterback,’ but Wentz was ‘his quarterback’ before that, and Kyle Allen was before that. He’s been wrong.”
Listen to that discussion, as well as thoughts on his answer about Eric Bieniemy getting credit, in the clip above!