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Are you feeling better after the Commanders' 24-22 loss to the Eagles? Grant & Danny analyze what went right, and what went wrong in the Commanders' season opener.
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00:00Danny, that was a stinging two-point loss on the road.
00:04It just feels like when you get to the end of the year and you look back,
00:06those are the two or three that make the entire difference.
00:10If you can get that two-point conversion, push that game to overtime,
00:13steal that game, everything feels different this morning.
00:16100%.
00:17This one's complicated, and here's why.
00:20The baseline, the place that you shouldn't ever navigate too far away from,
00:24is that is a really costly loss.
00:27Sorry, it is.
00:27That's an NFC divisional loss.
00:30That is an opponent that is in your conference, in your division.
00:33Those count one and a half almost, right?
00:35You are now behind the eight ball in that regard.
00:37And again, there's plenty of season left, 16 weeks or 16 games,
00:40and a whole bunch of ups and downs and good feelings, bad feelings,
00:44everything in between.
00:44But those count, and they count a lot.
00:46And it sucks to lose to Philadelphia in general.
00:49I can't stand that.
00:50I'm furious.
00:51I'm irritated.
00:51I'm angry.
00:52That's kind of the baseline.
00:54That's the beginning.
00:55The second part is there's actually a lot to like.
00:57Yeah.
00:58Out of this, where they're better in a lot of areas than I think a lot of
01:00people, myself included, thought they would be.
01:02There are a couple of weaknesses that, you know,
01:04you're going to have to work around, and we'll see if they do.
01:06But that rally, that fourth quarter, you saw kind of,
01:09you're there, you are, Peter, kind of moment for Jaden Daniels a couple times
01:12after some huge struggles for him and the offense and a lot of things.
01:16So, there are positives there to take out of a loss.
01:19And I know how that sounds.
01:21It sounds very loser talk and a lot of reflexive, run the dang balls, scream at you
01:25anytime.
01:25It's like, bottom line, W's and L's.
01:27Fine.
01:28You can just Google somebody's record and figure out if they're good or not.
01:30But for those of us to deal in some nuance, this is a complicated one.
01:34And so, there's a lot to like and there's a lot to be furious about.
01:36I think it's all on the table.
01:38I'm not going to out who it was, but I got a text yesterday from somebody with the team.
01:43It was late night after they landed coming back from Philly.
01:46I thought it was odd, by the way, they flew to Philadelphia, but they did.
01:48That's the bit.
01:49Tressway told us that they were going to fly to Philadelphia when he joined us on site
01:52on Friday out at Spanky Shenanigans for our Friday field trip.
01:56But I got a text last night and they said, as a fan, were you encouraged by that performance?
02:02Like, does that make you feel better about the team?
02:04Or is that just one where you kind of look at it and you have a bunch of concerns?
02:08And my response at the time was, I've been trying to debate that internally for four hours.
02:15I didn't really know how to feel last night.
02:17I was texting some smart football people and kind of saying, there's so many things that I liked.
02:22There's a lot of things I take away going, all right, this is encouraging.
02:26But there are also some real deficiencies.
02:29Some of the areas where I was worried coming in, like corner play, by the way.
02:33I thought Mikey Sanders still really struggled in the game.
02:36Burn that tape.
02:37There's not a fix on the roster necessarily for that.
02:39When Amos gets off the injured reserve, you'll be better off.
02:42But this was not a game where they didn't get a lot of pressure.
02:44Like, their plan is, we're going to generate pressure.
02:46We're going to get the ball out of the quarterback's hands.
02:47They did that pretty well.
02:49There's still times where you're not going to, though.
02:52And then what happens?
02:53But overall, I would say, this team is going to compete.
02:59And the idea, remember when people were saying they were the 31st best team in the league last week?
03:03Yeah, wrong.
03:04Stupid.
03:05You're stupid.
03:05Stupid, if you think that.
03:07This is a team with a quarterback that will give them a chance, as Jaden Daniels did.
03:10He was terrific in the fourth quarter after a really slow start.
03:14I do think that not playing in the preseason cost them.
03:17Sorry.
03:18I'll confirm my prior there.
03:19I thought offensively they were not in rhythm.
03:22In fact, Daniels, after the game, was asked if part of the reason for how he played in the first
03:27three quarters was just rust or not playing a lot of football.
03:30And he said yes, by the way.
03:33He said, yeah, I haven't played in a long time.
03:34Like, you got to get game reps.
03:36God forbid they would have given him some in August.
03:38So I do think that was part of what happened.
03:41But you gave the Eagles all they could handle.
03:44I don't know how good Philly is either.
03:46That's the other big question I have.
03:47I think I texted you this, the group chat.
03:49Like, if the Eagles are really good, if this is an 11-12 win team at the end of the
03:54year, yesterday's not as big a deal as people are going to want to make it.
03:57If the Eagles are 10-7 or a couple of injuries away from 9-8, let's say, then yesterday's probably
04:04more discouraging.
04:05So what is Philly?
04:06I think that line is aging in a big way.
04:09I think that line is the worst that it's been in a while.
04:11And Washington dominated them up front.
04:15If I was going to give you the thing I feel best about coming out of yesterday, Durante Jones' blitz
04:21rate was over 50%.
04:22Second best in the NFL yesterday behind Brian Flores at 82%.
04:29His mentor and the mentee both blitzing over half the time.
04:33The only two teams in the NFL that did that.
04:35They didn't have Durant Armstrong, who's coming back next week.
04:37And they still lived in the backfield defensively.
04:40They had 10 tackles for loss.
04:42They had three sacks against a less mobile quarterback.
04:45That's probably five or six because Hurts is so slippery.
04:47So that was the thing.
04:48The aggressiveness, the competence.
04:50They gave up too many big plays.
04:51We'll talk about that.
04:52But how fast does that defense look?
04:55How aggressive is that defense?
04:57Night and day from last year.
04:58And I think you touched on it.
04:59So the truly elite defenses, the ones that come around once every handful of years.
05:04And last year, I actually seen there were a few of these that were that good.
05:06Think Houston at the end of the year.
05:08Denver, the way the Patriots were playing at times.
05:10Legion of Boom.
05:11Seattle's defense was incredible.
05:12Go back to the 2000 Ravens, 85 Bears.
05:15I could go on.
05:15But you know those elite defenses.
05:17You've seen them before, right?
05:18They're so good they can take everything away and turn you over.
05:21However, most good defenses, regular good now, mortal good, like, you know, hey, you got
05:26to make a choice.
05:27Are we going to give up stuff occasionally at the expense of stuffing you at the line
05:30of scrimmage, creating chaos behind the line?
05:33Look at the TFLs.
05:34Look at the pressures, right?
05:36This group is going to pressure more.
05:38I think this is inevitable.
05:39I think they're going to give up big plays.
05:41So when I said, hey, you can't ask much more of this defense.
05:44You're forced more punts than Philadelphia did.
05:46You know, number of possessions when it was just a three and out battle going back and
05:49forth.
05:49The Tressway got all of his reps in.
05:51They're going, what are you talking about?
05:52They gave up 24 points.
05:54How they got there matters a lot to me.
05:56Yeah, I don't want big plays either.
05:57I don't want Dallas Goddard running roughshod through the secondary or Don Tavian Wicks turning
06:01Mikey Sanders still around like a confused toddler to them all.
06:04I don't want that, but my point is when you are, your whole point is we're getting home.
06:10Yeah.
06:11Sometimes you won't.
06:11Sometimes they block it up.
06:12The other team gets paid to play too, and that's inevitable.
06:15You take away the big plays, dot, dot, dot.
06:17You win that game, but you can't take away the big plays.
06:20So you count on some of those TFLs being forced fumbles or passes for interceptions or
06:25jumping around or a sack fumble.
06:27You didn't get that.
06:28So the point total ends up in a familiar place to a lot of Washington fans, but that defense
06:33was pretty damn impressive as far as I'm concerned.
06:35Yeah.
06:35The way I look at the defensive performance in the big plays was they ran 53 plays on
06:41defense.
06:4247 of them were satisfactory, right?
06:4547 of the 53 plays were somewhere between fantastic and you can live with it.
06:51Right.
06:51And of the 47, I would say just roughly probably like 35 of them were awesome.
06:56We're really good.
06:57You know, there were like 12.
06:58You could do something a little better, but not a big deal.
07:00There were six that cost them dearly.
07:03And that's where the Eagles points came from.
07:05This is an explosives league.
07:06This is a chunk yardage league.
07:08And you can't be on the wrong end of nearly as many big plays as they allow.
07:1264 yards, 43 yards, 42 yards, 31 yards, four plays over 30.
07:18I'd be willing to bet this is the only time all year they'll do that.
07:21Not even because they're going to be great on defense, which I do think they're going
07:23to be much better on defense, as I've been saying, but because it's really hard.
07:26There's going to be like five times all game, hopefully, all year around the league where
07:30a team gives up 30 yards four times.
07:32That's a huge, that's a third of a football field.
07:36So there were six bad plays.
07:38Otherwise, I feel pretty good about the defense.
07:42But when you go on the road against a division favorite, the Eagles are, a team that a lot
07:47of people feel like is going to make a deep run in the conference.
07:49People feel that way about Philly.
07:51There's just not that much margin for error for a team like Washington.
07:55And so while the first kick of the career of Drew Stevens was a awesome 55-yard boot
08:01that looked like it would have been good from 60-plus, he misses the 54-yarder.
08:05Now, those are going to be about a 500-percentage kick anyway, so he was one for two.
08:09You'll take that.
08:10But if you make that kick, there's your three points.
08:12There's your win.
08:13They had an extra point block.
08:14I did a little digging and asked around on that.
08:16It doesn't sound like the trajectory was lower than it was supposed to be.
08:19I think the snap was not ideal.
08:21If you look at it, it was a high snap, throws off the rhythm just a tad.
08:24And there might have been a protection issue where Jalen Carter, who has blocked four kicks
08:28in his career, just gets into the backfield and is probably, the line of scrimmage moved
08:32too much.
08:32Yeah, I thought the rule was you couldn't engage the center, and that was the first person
08:35he touched was the center.
08:37So, again, what do I know there?
08:38But that, to me, is the difference in the game.
08:40That changes everything, is that extra point.
08:42You said it.
08:43A deep field goal, you're tossing a coin.
08:45You'd like to make it.
08:46That'd be great.
08:46It's a luxury if it goes in.
08:47If it doesn't, that's reasonable.
08:49The block extra point sets everything bad up.
08:51And we're going to talk about Diggs' decision to hump the goalpost or whatever.
08:55Good for that, I suppose.
08:57But people say, oh, that's the play.
08:59That's the one.
08:59Now you can't run a two-point conversion.
09:01You only needed to do that because you had an extra point blocked.
09:03That's the unusual circumstance to me.
09:05Yes.
09:06Except that, dude.
09:09Oh, of course.
09:10Veteran.
09:10Right.
09:11Captain type.
09:11Can't have that.
09:12All the money getting paid to you.
09:14You killed me there.
09:15Very easy not to do that.
09:16So many players all throughout the league were not doing that.
09:20Inexcusable.
09:20Yeah.
09:21In fact, the Cowboys had a play where their running back, Javante Williams, yesterday against
09:25the Giants got into the end zone and for some reason extended the ball and was joning on the
09:31defense.
09:31Did like a, yeah, Deshaun Jackson taunt thing.
09:33So he pushes Aubrey back to a 48-yard extra point and he missed.
09:36That hasn't been talked about much.
09:38But Stevens had to kick a 48-yard extra point and he drilled it.
09:40And he made it.
09:41But that would have been, you know, another area where you put this rookie kicker in a
09:44debuting situation on the road in a tough environment almost to a 50-yard extra point
09:49at that point.
09:50But you said it.
09:51You're on the road against a good opponent.
09:52How good the Eagles are, time will tell, you know, as the season goes.
09:56But they're good as a baseline.
09:57You can't afford it.
09:59The extra layer of mistakes, pre-snap penalties, controllable stuff, squandering a
10:04timeout, can't have it.
10:05The block extra points.
10:07Two delay of games out of stoppages in play.
10:08Can't have it.
10:08One of them out of a TV timeout where you have minutes to get everything together.
10:12The play theoretically is called on the sideline.
10:15You run in, you say some words, and then everyone goes to the line of scrimmage.
10:19Now, it looked like when I rewatched it, they changed the play when they got on the
10:22field.
10:22I don't know if that's based on the Eagles personnel or if they were trying to deke Philly
10:26by sending a group out and then sending them off.
10:28But a Conquo runs off.
10:30They get a different personnel group out there.
10:32There were a couple times where it felt to me, I don't know about you, like Daniels
10:34just had no feel for the play clock, too.
10:36It was like changing something at two seconds or all of a sudden that, you know, he looks
10:40up and he's like, well, what's going on?
10:41Why are you whistling?
10:41And they're like, it's been zeros for two seconds.
10:43Yeah, it's been so many times at zero.
10:44So those, they need to clean up.
10:46You got a first-time offensive coordinator in Blau calling plays.
10:49You wonder, is that part of it?
10:51Did they not get things in in time?
10:53Not sure.
10:53But I will say, I thought they were the more physical team.
10:55The big Douglas hit.
10:57Nick Cross, just violent monster hits throughout the game.
11:01They won the line of scrimmage.
11:03You lose the football game because of the big plays allowed.
11:07And then the offense basically redshirting the first three quarters.
11:10I mean, Bill was good.
11:12Bill was really good.
11:13He fumbled.
11:14See, that can't happen.
11:15But Josh Connerly, to his credit, who I thought was very solid in the game at right tackle,
11:20jumping on that football, give him a game ball for that.
11:22But you can't be that ineffective throwing the football for three quarters in this league
11:29and win a football game.
11:31You're in it because your quarterback doesn't turn the ball over, doesn't put the ball in
11:35harm's way.
11:35And that's great.
11:37But Daniels was 9 of 23 and had 64 passing yards going into the fourth quarter.
11:43Then he puts on the cape and he's 9 of 11 for 100 yards and two touchdowns.
11:47And he gives you a chance.
11:48But they couldn't do anything.
11:50There was zero rhythm at all in the passing game.
11:53And a couple times you saw like Diggs would stop and he'd throw it as if he was going to
11:56keep going.
11:56It was almost like, man, if there was a chance to play some game action, that would have
12:00been nice.
12:01But here we are.
12:03I mean, the first three quarters were their game action to get ready for the season.
12:06So a lot of things on Daniels, and we'll go deep dive into this as we go.
12:10But my, this just, to me, this is a case study of the incredible difficulty of the quarterback
12:16position.
12:17And no matter what you do, you're going to face criticism unless it's, you know, perfect
12:21quarterback rating, 500 yards, you're playing the Dolphins and everybody thinks you're
12:24amazing.
12:25The thing that I care about the most right now is hit avoidance, contact point avoidance.
12:31There's still going to be a couple of times you scramble, we put two dudes in the spin
12:34cycle and got 15 yards when nothing was happening.
12:36You just go, my God, he's ours.
12:38It's so incredible.
12:38I love him so much.
12:39But there are a lot of throwaways.
12:41There's a lot of, I'm not going to force this, or I'm not going to take an unnecessary
12:43shot at the sideline.
12:45So all of a sudden you look up and, you know, I think it was four for 12 or four
12:48for 13
12:48for 12 yards at one point.
12:50And you go, my God, this is gruesome.
12:52Well, he's done a lot of the things that people like me are hoping that he does, right?
12:57Where you're, you're avoiding some of these things.
12:59You're living to fight another day.
13:00You're not trying to put the cape on in the first quarter of a game and get your helmet
13:03turned sideways by a bunch of hunters.
13:05Then the flip side happens, right?
13:07Where now you've got to force some things, or now you've got to do one thing or the other.
13:11Now you've got to go take the shot, take the contact.
13:13So it's a complicated picture where people are going, man, this was really bad.
13:19And I'm not saying it was, or I'm not saying it was good, but I think it's probably a mixture
13:23of, he probably missed some guys, right?
13:25Like thinking of one play, I think you even tweeted it, McCorn's on a crossing route.
13:28If he just hits it, McCorn, it's a first down.
13:30And we're not talking about Terry McCorn with no catches heading into the fourth quarter.
13:34But maybe the read was taking him somewhere else.
13:35I mean, you never know.
13:36There's so much nuance to it.
13:37Then I think there's probably of those, however many passes, call it 20, probably 13 times
13:42where I think no one's open.
13:43And the Eagles are awesome.
13:44And they had their, had your number.
13:46So I went back today and watched the all 22 before the show.
13:49Cause I thought it would be important to any kind of Jaden Daniels discussion.
13:52And what I would say is the lead in would be, I actually feel way better about how he
13:56played after watching the all 22.
13:59I didn't feel badly in real time, but I was super anxious and excited to see, is he missing
14:06things?
14:06Because there's just, you're right.
14:08Five throwaways is a pretty good stat actually, because it's sack avoidance.
14:12It's contact avoidance.
14:13It's keeping the play alive for the most part.
14:16There's a couple of those on third down that are killers, but if it's not there, you can't
14:19force it.
14:20But you wonder, like on some of those throwaways, you had a lot of time in the pocket.
14:24Then you leave, then you throw the ball away.
14:26Is somebody open you're not seeing?
14:28That happens on a couple of plays in this game when you watch the all 22, for sure.
14:32I guess if there's a gripe I would have had in the first three quarters, he was a little
14:37bit less decisive and anticipatory.
14:39Kind of wanted to see it, if that makes sense.
14:43And also from a pocket feel standpoint, occasionally, he would...
14:49Feel the pocket getting a little bit messy and hit the gotta go button, where he would
14:57start drifting to his right and either into pressure to throw it away or toward the sideline
15:02that would lead to the throwaway, where you'd like him to hang in the pocket a little bit
15:06more.
15:06And I think very naturally, Danny, that's just a lack of having played in a lot of games
15:11lately.
15:12But that's kind of the end of any of the things that bothered me.
15:14When I watched back, there weren't that many guys running free.
15:18I just don't think the guys were open.
15:19And they're playing, Vic Fangio, as good a D coordinator as you're going to play other
15:22than Mike McDonald in two weeks.
15:24His Eagles defense, I've said for two weeks, I think could end up being top five in the
15:28league.
15:28They're awesome.
15:28They have three players in their secondary that have made Pro Bowls in recent seasons.
15:33I think they covered things up really, really well.
15:35They made life very difficult on Daniels.
15:37I actually think they held up in pass pro very solidly.
15:40Better than I thought.
15:41Everyone keeps pointing to the number of times he was pressured.
15:43I think it's completely misleading, as Tom Brady kept mentioning on the telecast.
15:47There were a lot of late down pressures where he held the football.
15:50But a lot of times, holding the football at quarterback feels like this very negative
15:54analysis.
15:55Sometimes it's just, if there's nothing there, they're forcing you to hold the football.
16:00I think that's what was happening more often than not, for sure.
16:03But did they miss some things?
16:06Yes.
16:06Did he miss a couple throws?
16:07Like the three-yard throw to McLaurin, the drop on the first play of the game.
16:10That hit the ground?
16:11Yep.
16:11That's not a good ball.
16:12Even the touchdown to Antonio Williams at the end, his footwork is not good there.
16:16That ball's almost on the ground when Williams is wide open with nobody around him.
16:19You think about, like, Diggs had a drop coming out of the end zone that was completely on
16:23him.
16:24There's another play later where he and Daniels aren't quite on the same page, where he kind
16:28of throttles it down.
16:29Maybe Daniels thinks he's going to keep going.
16:30Hits him in the hand.
16:32But it's probably more, you know, ball placement than a drop.
16:36You had some of that.
16:37It's week one.
16:37They haven't been on the field a ton in game situations, for sure.
16:41And I remember another play where, if you remember earlier, I think it was like the
16:45opening half, opening drive of the second half, where Diggs is near the sideline, and
16:51Daniels throws a low ball that he, like, dives and tries to catch.
16:53It was incomplete on the bottom of the screen.
16:55Kind of like a comeback, yeah.
16:56Exactly.
16:57Just bad footwork.
16:58So, like, there's a lot of pieces to the pie.
17:00But I think more often than not, through three quarters, this was not a Jaden Daniels-struggled
17:04story.
17:05I think this was more of an Eagles story.
17:07And I'm really, A, happy with how he looked in the fourth quarter.
17:11I think that maybe that's them getting it together.
17:14It took a little bit of time.
17:15You opt out of August.
17:17You're preseason.
17:18Ask the Rams.
17:19Ask a lot of teams.
17:19Like, your preseason becomes regular season a little bit.
17:22And maybe now they found some things they can carry into Dallas.
17:25We'll see.
17:26Yeah.
17:26Of course it will.
17:27Proof will be in the pudding.
17:27Again, week one stuff happens.
17:29We warned everybody.
17:30It happened yesterday.
17:32Arizona, who did this last year, by the way, started off great.
17:34They won three games all of last season.
17:35They won their opener last year.
17:37They were the better team yesterday against the Chargers, for example.
17:39Chargers knocked me out of two survivor pools yesterday.
17:42That's why I don't do them.
17:43Bastards.
17:43Yeah.
17:44The Vikings?
17:45Yeah.
17:45I didn't even know that until late last night.
17:47Because the Packers had control of that game.
17:50And I was just scoreboard watching.
17:51That was a 4 o'clock game during Commanders.
17:53And they were in control.
17:54And Carson Wentz was in.
17:55And Murray had gotten hurt.
17:56And I just thought, oh, they're 1-0.
17:57And I look back, not only did they lose, they lost by 17 and they gave up 40.
18:01Yeah.
18:03Gawling calls went against them.
18:04Like, on a number of occasions.
18:06Green Bay folks think there's some sort of conspiracy, which is adorable for one of the league's golden children.
18:10But, to my take on kind of what you were talking about a second ago, Eagles defense deserves credit.
18:16I said this going in.
18:17I don't know that anybody's really going to run roughshod over them.
18:20To me, this was a, all the thing I could think about is maybe this super secret Blau mystery offense
18:27isn't, you know, the same thing as 2012.
18:31Right?
18:31Where that 50 series, they were introducing revolutionary concepts.
18:34Maybe we're just going to run the offense that a lot of people run.
18:37Some variation.
18:38And, you know, it might take a little time and some rhythm.
18:40There wasn't some magical concept that, oh, my God, what are the Eagles going to do?
18:44They had it pretty handled, it seemed to me.
18:46Yeah.
18:46I don't think anyone really anticipated they were going to have an offense that had never been seen before.
18:50Was that the expectation?
18:51Well, when Peters gives the comments, but we got a lot of stuff you haven't seen.
18:55Oh, it's actually just a few starters.
18:57Like, there's no revolutionary, crazy thing that I think a lot of folks were anticipating.
19:01I think he meant that they ran 3% of their playbook or whatever it was.
19:04Right.
19:04So, I don't think, my point is, I don't think that playbook is filled with magic and there's no fairy
19:08dust in there.
19:08I think it's a regular run-of-the-mill NFL offense.
19:12It's going to take some time.
19:12That's all.
19:13Well, it took three quarters to do anything pretty much yesterday.
19:17Phones can be opened up at 800-636-1067 for you guys next.
19:21800-636-1067 for your observations on the Commanders in their week one loss to the Eagles, 24-22.
19:30What did you like?
19:31What didn't you like about the ballgame?
19:33We'll do game balls and gassers coming up at 3 o'clock in about 40 minutes.
19:37Who stood out?
19:39What did we love?
19:40And then gassers as well to who struggled in this game.
19:42You're listening to the fans.
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