Only two more weeks of Jay Gruden’s knowledge getting dropped on Grant & Danny for this season, and hopefully, the Jan. 8 post-mortem will be coming off a win at least as the Ron Rivera era likely comes to an end.
Or at least something, because what Gruden saw this past Sunday was the same old, same old.
“They have trouble putting it together for multiple drives; they had a nice touchdown drive with the back shoulder fade to Terry for the touchdown, but other than that, they're pretty stagnant on offense,” Gruden said. “Guys aren't really getting open, and the running game is really not a force or a threat, so it’s just very hard for the Commanders to manufacture drives because they don't do really anything good – they do everything okay. They run the ball okay, they throw the ball okay, they get separation decently but not consistently - I don't know what you hang your hat on as a play caller. That's why it's so difficult for them to put points up on the board.”
At least what Gruden saw from Sam Howell for most of the game was good, considering he was supposed to be benched until Jacoby Brissett picked up a late-week injury.
“I think he handled himself well. Sam’s a competitor, and I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind that Sam's gonna go out and give you everything he’s got, no matter what the circumstances,” Gruden said. “Sam can turn it on quickly, because he’s a competitor. He’s gonna try to do the best he can to get his team to win, and I think t teammates really respect that, but unfortunately, the production doesn't match his mental and physical toughness. They’re not producing, and that’s not all on Sam, but it’s just a combination of a lot of things that they're not doing very well right now.”
If you fast forward five years, Gruden thinks that with some better pieces, Sam can be a starting quarterback somewhere in the NFL, but we don’t even know if he’s starting Sunday just yet…even if Gruden only sort of agrees with Brian Mitchell that Jacoby Brissett’s injury may be exaggerated, if not phantom.
“I could see something happening behind the scenes where they wanted Sam to play, but the reality is Jacoby hasn't had a whole lot of reps, so there's a good chance he did pull a hamstring a little bit in practice,” Gruden said. “Who knows? I think they really did try to play Jacoby and he probably did get hurt, but I wouldn't be surprised if something happened behind the scenes. We can speculate all we want to, but the only people that know are the owners and the head coach and the quarterback and the coordinator.
It’s been a tough year for everybody in that building, a tough situation for everybody with all the speculation going on, so it's good that they're still coming out and trying to compete.”
Take a listen to Gruden’s entire segment above, which also touches on the College Football Playoff, individual thoughts on some of Washington’s less-heralded players, what happened with Washington’s defense, and more!
