- 9 hours ago
"What are we doing?" Grant Paulsen pulls no punches as he blasts Washington's baffling end-of-game sequence and questionable postgame accountability.
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00:00Joining us now is our pal Grant Paulson from the Grant Danny Show.
00:03Listen to them at 2 o'clock on 106.7 The Fan.
00:05Hey, Grant.
00:07What's going on? Good morning, guys.
00:09What was your reaction watching that debacle at the end of the game?
00:13I couldn't believe it.
00:14I thought it was one of the most outrageous and frustrating endings to a game I've ever seen in my
00:21life.
00:21Frankly, I still can't believe it.
00:23I watched it a thousand times yesterday.
00:26It's so amateur and so unacceptable.
00:30It's befuddling.
00:32I'm stunned.
00:33I mean, I understand Josh Harris.
00:35This is not as far as rodeo owning a sports team, but it was so bad that I could have
00:41understood if a few hours after the game,
00:43the news had come out that Dan Quinn had been fired.
00:46It was that bad.
00:47It was that bad.
00:49100%.
00:50Yeah.
00:51Who do you blame the most, Grant?
00:52We were asking that question to callers.
00:54A lot of them weren't able to answer.
00:56We understand blame can be spread around to everyone,
00:59but who do you blame the most on that last play?
01:02Well, Dan Quinn is definitely the guy at the top of the list for me,
01:05and the reason is, very simply, that's his whole job.
01:10Right.
01:10That is what he does.
01:12I'm not a fan of head coaches that don't call plays, that just kind of lead a building and are
01:19cultured developers,
01:20but there are plenty of successful versions of that model in this league where you are the leader of men
01:27and the players really like you.
01:29And what I don't like about it is that it's hard to kind of decipher, okay, well, what is it
01:35that you're doing?
01:36And is the team, other than just wins and losses, like how are you performing?
01:40But I will say this, if you are the CEO, if you are the non-play calling head coach,
01:46then you've got to be so buttoned up in game management that it's obvious that you know what you're doing.
01:53So if you can't handle timeouts, if you can't handle situations where at the end of the game you're running
02:02the clock
02:03and you're putting on a clinic, then what do you do?
02:06If you can't figure that out, what do you do?
02:10What happened to that mythical, like, other person in the booth that's also tracking timeouts and doing all the math
02:17and all that?
02:17They have them.
02:18Right. Where's that voice in all of this?
02:21I mean, honestly.
02:22One of the many voices that were probably screaming into the headset in the last 50 seconds.
02:27I mean, I'm sure it was chaotic.
02:28There are a lot of people in the booth.
02:29There's David Blau calling a play.
02:31There's Dan Quinn on the sideline.
02:33So I would imagine that that person is saying something.
02:37But just an absolute...
02:39I can't...
02:40Go ahead, yeah.
02:40I just...
02:41I find it impossible.
02:42I believe at some point in that drive, Jaden was aware they had no timeouts left.
02:46I'm sure it was told.
02:47Yeah.
02:48But I refuse to believe when he's under center, right before he snaps it, that he's aware, that he remembers
02:54that they have no timeouts.
02:55The way he handled that, I just think he forgot.
02:59And I'm not sure, but I think he needed to be reminded.
03:02That's my guess.
03:03Yes.
03:03What I was told is that it was said several times on the final drive, on the way down the
03:10field, that they are out of timeouts.
03:12That that was relayed several times.
03:14But in the moments leading up to the final disaster, right in those 50 seconds, it was not mentioned at
03:23all.
03:23Right.
03:24I think they forgot.
03:25That's a problem.
03:25Throughout the entire drive, it was mentioned over and over, and I believe even relayed in the huddle.
03:31You wouldn't have known it, though, watching...
03:34And this is the craziest thing when you watch the replay to me, guys.
03:37There is so little urgency after Daniels does the befuddling, terrible, fall on the ground, I have no idea what
03:43that was thing.
03:44Uh-huh.
03:45That even the other players are not going, oh, we've got to get to the line of scrimmage.
03:50Only 72.
03:50I thought when I watched it in real time, I actually thought that some of the guys may have thought
03:55there was another overtime period.
03:56That they didn't know that the game would end in a tie.
03:58That's how bad it looked.
04:00Uh-huh.
04:00The only one that was pointing to spike it was 72.
04:03Connerly was...
04:04That was the only one.
04:05Yes.
04:05He was the first one.
04:06Yeah.
04:06And Finnett, if you notice, coming over from the left to the right, like he had just run a little
04:10out route, he's jogging back to the line,
04:12which he typically wouldn't do unless there's some urgency.
04:15But those are the only two guys, until there's about three or four seconds on the clock, who are reacting
04:20in any way.
04:22It was like nobody knew.
04:24But I did hear multiple times yesterday from various folks that the idea that there are no timeouts was relayed
04:33throughout that drive as they're making their way down the field.
04:36And I will say this, I thought Daniels was unbelievable in this game.
04:40You know, the first half against the Cowboys, he runs for 70 yards.
04:43In this game, 100 rushing yards, two touchdowns, was in control, throwing the football in the rain as well.
04:48This is the kind of game you can dream on for what he could be, he's protecting himself.
04:52All of those things need to be said.
04:55This is also a Jaden Daniels story yesterday.
04:58I mean, it reminded me a little bit of when Kirk Cousins took a knee in the Philly game inexplicably.
05:02At the end, this is a massive quarterbacking blunder.
05:05This is a, from a game management standpoint, like this was, he needs to, next time he speaks, say, hey,
05:13like, that's on me too.
05:14I mean, David Blouse is at halftime.
05:17I will say this, Shady McCoy, who, you know, I don't always agree with him.
05:23The one thing that he did say that it resonated with me is he needed to take more ownership instead
05:28of top-down, we, we, we.
05:30He should have just 100% owned it, me, that's on me, that's on me, nothing else that's on me.
05:35Yeah.
05:35That's, he, he did shirk that responsibility there.
05:39Unless he just didn't agree with the decision to run the last play and not just spike it.
05:44Yeah, but if he was aware, if he was aware and locked in, he would have thrown it, he would
05:48have, like, last time.
05:49So maybe that's why he's saying from the top-down.
05:51Because the top-down should have said, get in, spike, whatever the formation, spike it.
05:55I think he's blaming them for not reminding him.
05:59But it's on him.
06:00I mean, if they told him 30 times when there was a minute left, I mean, okay, he's got the
06:05worst memory ever then, Grant.
06:07I'm sorry.
06:08I think both are true, guys, right?
06:10I think he probably is annoyed and frustrated by the spot he's put in.
06:14The last play ends at 55 seconds.
06:16Right.
06:16They sat around for 40, almost down to the end of the play clock, 35 seconds before they snapped.
06:23So I'm sure he is annoyed, bothered, what have you.
06:25But at the same time, as you mentioned, J.D. McCoy, I saw Richard Sherman today.
06:31Pretty much every former player that's on national TV has said this.
06:35You're the quarterback.
06:36You're in control out there.
06:37So the idea that he couldn't have done something different, and even, by the way, at the snap, when you
06:43snap the ball when he did, there has to be an awareness that this ball's got to be thrown out
06:47of bounds.
06:48You see that all the time where you clock a ball like that or maybe even you throw a ball
06:52to a guy on the sideline.
06:54The only thing he can't do, there was still a lot of time when they snapped the ball.
06:57It was about 14 seconds.
06:59He takes the ball and just kind of falls down in the middle of the field.
07:02I mean, that's a bigger problem than running a play at 15 because teams often run plays like you don't
07:09need to because the time was irrelevant, mind you.
07:11But they run plays with seven or eight seconds, and they'll drop back.
07:15They'll throw a ball toward the out-of-bounds on a go ball or whatever just to run out four
07:18or five seconds.
07:19There's a lot of things he could have done after the snap that he didn't do.
07:23He had a brain fart, Grant.
07:23Because I did think he played great.
07:25He had a brain fart.
07:26He dropped back to pass.
07:28You see him put the hands in position like he's going to pass.
07:30He looks over at Sinnott, so they got greedy.
07:32You can make an argument should they have run a play or not, but they were running a play to
07:38Sinnott.
07:38He looks over there, and then he decides to bring it down.
07:42That's on him.
07:43By the way, they have a game management coordinator, coaching analyst called Connor Nickel.
07:48Now, I don't know exactly what he's doing during the game, but if you go to Commanders.com,
07:53they have somebody with the title game management coordinator.
07:58Well, yesterday he was Connor Penny.
07:59That was rough.
08:02Now, I'll say this.
08:04Dan Quinn, David Blau, Jaden Daniels all have immense blame in what happened, irrefutably.
08:11But David Blau and Jaden Daniels both have a million other things going on right there.
08:17The only thing Dan Quinn is doing is making sure that that fiasco does not happen.
08:23Yeah.
08:23Right.
08:24And it happened.
08:24But he was flummoxed after.
08:26See, I put more blame, and you can disagree with me.
08:29You clearly do.
08:29I put more blame on Jaden Daniels himself.
08:31And I think the body language of Dan Quinn was he was flabbergasted because he couldn't believe what he just
08:37saw.
08:38Now, you can, again, disagree with the play call, but there was a play call, which they practice,
08:44that Jaden is either supposed to throw it to Senate or throw it out of bounds or throw it to
08:48his feet.
08:48And he keeps it.
08:49And he knows that there's no timeouts.
08:51As you said, he was told a bunch of times.
08:52And when he goes down, he didn't make a timeout signal.
08:56Right?
08:56Nobody did.
08:58So, he kind of knew.
08:58No, but he spaced it.
09:00At some point, he forgot.
09:01Yeah, he had a brain fart for a couple seconds.
09:02I don't know where he forgot, but at some point he forgot.
09:04You know what I likened it to, Grant?
09:05I don't even forgot before he snapped it.
09:06And, Grant, I don't know if this happens to you, but what I likened it to is, on this show,
09:10Val Diesel tell us 10 seconds before, hey, you got a commercial coming up.
09:14And then 10 seconds later, I forget.
09:16Mm-hmm.
09:16Yeah.
09:17Yeah.
09:17No, I think that's what happened.
09:19I think it's similar, but I just don't know where that was communicated to him last.
09:22Here is the only way, in my opinion, that, like, Dan Quinn doesn't deserve immense amounts
09:28of grief or even David Blower or whatever.
09:31If the play was called, and all along with 15 seconds, the play is basically a clock-running
09:38play, then you could convince me, like, to throw it out of bounds and burn a few seconds
09:42play or what have you.
09:43You can convince me they called that, and then Daniel's just freelanced and does this weird
09:48fall-forward thing, and they're just beside themselves.
09:51But two things after the game made me think that wasn't the case.
09:54The first was that Dan Quinn said they were trying to get more yards, which, again, you're
09:59at the 25 and doesn't make any sense because it's already a 43-yard field goal.
10:02So he essentially said they'd call the play to try to get more yards.
10:06So it wasn't like a throw-the-ball-out-of-bounds play.
10:09And then the other thing was what Daniels said.
10:11Now, if Daniels just didn't take the blame he should have, if, in fact, everything came
10:16in correctly, you've got 15 seconds, you're going to throw it out of bounds, and then he
10:20just does this get-down-on-the-knee brain fart thing, then he should have gone up to the
10:25podium and said, that was completely on me.
10:28I screwed up.
10:29He didn't do that.
10:30He essentially did the opposite, I thought, which was to make it seem like, whether this
10:35is what he meant or not, sounds like you had the same takeaway, Eric, I did.
10:38He made it seem like he was left out there to drive by the people above him.
10:42Right.
10:44Right.
10:45Beyond the last play, there are a couple things I think we should discuss real quick, and you're
10:50going to have four hours on your show, and we don't have enough time on our show to get
10:53to everything.
10:55The offense didn't seem to have answers, at least consistently.
10:58They did at least once in overtime for the zero blitz that the Giants were running.
11:05That, I've got to believe, you put on Blau.
11:07That's on Blau.
11:07Yeah, I would agree.
11:08What's your take on that?
11:09I mean, the Giants did it over and over again, just brought the house.
11:13Completely agree.
11:14And until overtime, when they backed off a little bit anyway, they did not have an outlet.
11:18They didn't have hot options for them.
11:20Yeah, the fourth quarter is kind of textbook three drives in a row, three and out, four
11:26and out, four and out.
11:28What adjustments are you making?
11:30How do you not have a better plan here?
11:31I'll also say this.
11:33Daniels is tied with Cam Ward, and you don't want to be tied with Cam Ward in any category.
11:37No, you don't.
11:38I think 3.2 yards per attempt or play or something, but against the blitz this year, this is a
11:44now, this is a thing.
11:46So with the Giants heating them up the way that they did with his struggles going into
11:50this issue, or this game rather, I would expect to see a lot more of this.
11:55So some of it might just be that, you know, he kind of drops his eyes and starts to kind
11:59of try to get out of the pocket.
12:01But in terms of the options available to him, yeah, I thought that was a real bad fourth
12:06quarter for Blau.
12:06There's no doubt about it.
12:08And the other thing is, let's talk about the other coordinator, Durante Jones' defense
12:12didn't force one punt in the second half.
12:15Well, I don't know why, and this is the second time they've done this.
12:19They get into this cover two zone, move the ball underneath the bus at will defense in
12:26the second half of these games where they've got a lead.
12:28So the first of the two touchdown drives, if you go back and watch it, it is the most
12:34vanilla, like preseason level, do whatever you'd like and just take time doing it scheme
12:40that you'll find.
12:41I don't get it.
12:42They were being aggressive.
12:44They were winning the line of scrimmage.
12:46Jameis Winston was hopping around with happy feet patting the football.
12:49And this is the second time they've done this.
12:52They just run this deep cover two, don't give up any home runs, but let, you know, middle
12:56of the field, 10 to 15 yards, have whatever you'd like.
12:59It's a walk in the park getting down the field.
13:02And there's no idea why they made that adjustment.
13:03And the touchdown pass to Neighbors with Mikey behind him is going to frustrate the fans.
13:08I'm not, I mean, look, Neighbors is a great player, whatever, but fans, I know, and you're
13:13going to feel this in the show are going to be frustrated.
13:15Why is that guy still on the field?
13:16Well, who's going to be on him?
13:17I mean, who's going to be on him is going to get dominated.
13:20I don't know.
13:21Nobody can cover him.
13:22It's super frustrating.
13:23And then beyond it all, Grant, we were close, very close.
13:28And you know, as a radio show, you'd rather have this close to the commanders winning a game
13:32on a gift because Scadaboo gave it to him and Giants could have easily won that game.
13:35I give credit for paying.
13:36But we were very close to the commanders being two and three in a division with every other
13:42team losing.
13:43And the Eagles seeming to fall apart.
13:47It would have been a different story.
13:48You know, the, the, nobody would believe in the Giants.
13:51I don't know if anybody still believes in Giants and the Cowboys have a terrible defense.
13:55Like the, the division is right there for the taking.
13:58And then this happens.
13:59Well, let's be clear.
13:59The Giants stink.
14:01Okay.
14:02The Giants are not good.
14:03That's another thing.
14:04You played the Colts last week who are utterly unimpressive.
14:08They lose to the Steelers yesterday, even in London, watching them.
14:11I'm like, this team is really not that good.
14:14And then the Giants yesterday, I felt the same way about, and you're 0-1-1 in those two
14:18games.
14:19I was texting with somebody last night and they, you know, it was in the league and they're
14:23like, you know, looking at the division with the day everyone had, they're like Washington.
14:27And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
14:30You don't get to do that today.
14:31Hey.
14:32You want to wait, you want to beat San Francisco and then do that in the bye week.
14:35We could possibly have that conversation.
14:37And last question.
14:37When you can't get a timeout in to end the game, what are we doing?
14:41Last question for you.
14:42I want you to go from 0 to 100.
14:44What's the chance that Dan Quinn and his staff are here next year?
14:50Right now?
14:51Yes.
14:52Zero.
14:53I would say 7%.
14:55I mean, it's not looking good.
14:57I think yesterday.
14:59Yeah.
15:00Yesterday was a, it feels to me like the end.
15:05It's not the end of the end.
15:07That's what I said.
15:07I don't think it's recoverable unless they won seven games in a row, which we know is
15:11not going to happen.
15:12And my point with the division is the likely division winner is going to either be nine
15:17wins or eight wins.
15:18This could be a season where the division winner has a losing record.
15:22Hey, real quick.
15:23I want to ask you guys this because I don't know why no one was talking about this.
15:27Am I the only one that was furious in terms of game management from a coach at the end
15:32of regulation?
15:33Has anyone talked about how Trest pins them at the two-yard line?
15:36There's 13 seconds or whatever left.
15:39It's rainy.
15:40It's wet.
15:40It's gross.
15:41On the first snap to kneel the ball down at the one.
15:44Yeah, there's a couple seconds left.
15:45The defensive line is not trying to engage.
15:49They're doing like the game's over.
15:50We're going to overtime thing.
15:52How many times?
15:52I remember the Buffalo Bills and the Minnesota Vikings a couple years ago in that same spot.
15:56The Vikings crash and sweep at the ball.
15:58There's a fumble in the end zone.
15:59They score a touchdown.
16:00Why is that not happening?
16:02And then after the first snap where they take a knee, they just go to overtime.
16:05It's raining and wet.
16:07They're at the half-yard line.
16:08Make them snap the ball again.
16:10I thought that was coaching.
16:11That's a good point.
16:11I brought up the end of the first half.
16:12Why not throw a Hail Mary versus just kneeling on the ball?
16:16But the answer is, JP, they don't do it from a coaching standpoint.
16:21Those little things.
16:22They don't think about it.
16:23Belichick in his prime things.
16:25The, you know, what way is the wind blowing?
16:27Let's, you know, have someone sit with a red shirt here.
16:30Let's put this screen behind the goalpost.
16:32They're just trying to survive.
16:35There's only 12 more.
16:37Left to withstand, Grant.
16:38That's it.