You can occasionally hear Jason Fitz on The Team 980 as part of the FOX Sports Radio lineup, but on Thursday, he had a weekday afternoon visit as he joined Chris Russell to weigh in on the Commanders’ search for a new regime.
Fitz thinks Jim Harbaugh is going to end up staying at Michigan, simply because he’s ‘become a God and a martyr through all the scandal’ and they’ll be the only one who will pony up the money – and with Nick Saban leaving Alabama, ‘college football needs him.’
But after discussing Harbaugh and Saban and the NCAA landscape, it was time to get down to DC brass tacks…and Fitz thinks Bill Belichick’s next stop is the District?
“I think the place that would absolutely make the most sense is the Commanders,” Fitz said. “He's gonna go somewhere that has money to spend, he would go somewhere that has the No. 2 pick in the draft but still let him get a quarterback, and he knows in today's world if he has a quarterback, he has a chance to win. And, he goes to an ownership group that is gonna spend the money, because frankly, they know right now what they need to do is cement to their fan base that they are here to make a legitimate chance at winning, and they're here to make a statement that they are not the same Washington team of old.”
So, if Fitz were part of the Harris group, he’d go for it.
“If I was the new ownership group and I needed to go in and just pay somebody life-changing lottery money to move my franchise around, am I gonna roll the dice on somebody that may or may not be a great coach, or am I gonna go out and get the greatest of all-time and then sell that to my fan base that this is how you know we’re legit and serious?” Fitz said. “We brought in one of the most respected NBA people in the world to look at leadership, and now we're bringing in the most respected NFL coach in history. We are not Dan Snyder's team, we are a respected franchise. That would buy them immediate legitimacy, even if it doesn't buy them wins, and it's a good situation for him because he has money and a talented roster on the offensive side of the ball. He can get the quarterback and there's some wiggle room in the roster, so I think Washington is a perfect fit.”
Just, you know, don’t let him be another Ron Rivera.
“Look, he's a terrible GM, but all indications were, over the last week, the conversations in New England were that he was willing to give up roster control, they just couldn't agree on what the roster looked like,” Fitz said. “So if you're telling me he's already willing to give up roster control, which, by the way, I think he would have to give up anywhere he goes, I think he would have to have somebody that comes in that is sort of his 1A, that is gonna execute a plan, but somebody that has roster control. If he's doing that anywhere, I’m getting an even better coach, because he's not worried about the roster.”
Fitz does think that wherever Bill ends up, it will be ‘a big old new England reunion with Josh McDaniels as his offensive coordinator,’ and ‘he'll find one of those big guys that he likes to be a defensive coordinator and do the work.’
And for those on the ‘hire the hot OC’ train?
“The years the Eagles went to the Super Bowl with Doug Pederson, I looked back at the rankings of the head coaches, and the year Pederson was hired by the Eagles, he was ranked by ESPN as the worst hire of the entire cycle,” Fitz said. “But, when he went to the Super Bowl, he was the only coach left that still had a job from that hiring cycle. So, for everybody that thinks, we're gonna go out and we're gonna get the guy…everybody thought Robert Saleh was the guy. Everybody thinks these coordinators turn around and make great coaches and sometimes they do, but I think we forget what a wild crap shoot it is just trying to figure out if an offensive coordinator who has no head coaching experience can be a great head coach. It’s a totally different job and it fails more often than it works.”
So…
“If I can get the greatest of all, even if his fastball isn't what his fastball used to be, at least I know that he can coach,” Fitz said. “None of us know if any of these offensive coordinators we’re coveting can actually be the guy. Experience matters, and that's why you're seeing guys like Raheem Morris get second interviews, and Dan Quinn is gonna be a hot candidate.”