Grant and Danny
What Will The Conversation Be If We Win Or Lose?
What's going on here? Yeah, I think a win steadies the ship, right? It doesn't say playoffs. Nobody's going to come on the radio tomorrow. I mean, somebody will come on the radio. Marlon, nobody's saying it's going to come on the radio. Play off Super Bowl NFC title game, right? If steadies the ship sets the floor and the floor will be, you know, probably five, six wins after this, right? It shows you can win a football game. You can develop and grow. If they lose, I think we're potentially going to need to have an honest discussion about whether this is a tank season or not, because if you can't beat the New York Giants and Daniel Jones, I just can't overemphasize how terrible he's been at football recently. If he can't win that game, I think we need to look hard in the mirror and say, is it time to trade anything that's tradable and reload for next year and grab a high draft pick and admit this is a two-year project? I'm not excited to have that conversation, but I think it's where we'd be. In one hour, right here on Grant and Danny at 5.30, 60 minutes out, Dan Orlovsky, ESPN NFL analyst, former longtime NFL quarterback, joins the show. I want to talk to him about Jaden Daniels, the other rookies in week one, some of the struggles at the quarterback position and the passing being down in the NFL. Among the things will hit with him coming up in one hour at 5.30 on GND, taking you up to 6.15 tonight. You're locked into the fan. Before we get to what we were planning on talking about here, which is what will you be saying if the commanders win? What will you be saying if they lose? That Michael Phillips cut just opened up to me, what does a whole nother come to say? That's percolating a little bit. It's got me thinking. Grabbed the back end of that answer for me, Daris. He basically suggests that if they lose, and I'm going to editorialize in an ugly way, if they lose a game where they look bad and the giants look decidedly better. His point is we might need to have a conversation we don't want to have about how bad this team is, how long this season is going to be and maybe how we need to view this season, meaning should they potentially trade John Allen and do the thing they did a year earlier with Chase Young and Montez sweat where they go get draft picks. Should you kick the tires on some of these veterans on one year deals as trade chips closer to the Halloween deadline? The NFL is becoming more and more a league where you see that type of planning. They're not using the word rebuild. They're saying recalibrate Dan Quinn's talking about finding north, but the bottom line is if they lose to the giants in week two, there's going to be a conversation you could have where you could say it ain't time to find north. They don't know where north is. They got to stand up before they can start running north. And maybe they're further away from that. Then we think the flip side of that though is obviously it's super early. You're overreacting. It's been two games in eight quarters in an era where nobody takes the preseason seriously. And certainly this group didn't seem to care to use the preseason. All that extensively. Allen and Payne as an example didn't even play a snap. A lick in the preseason. Jayden Daniels only played in two of the games and barely played in those. So I think there are plenty of avenues to drive down in either direction. But again, listen to Phillips here. This was just a few minutes ago on the show. We're potentially going to need to have an honest discussion about whether this is a tank season or not. Because if you can't beat the New York Giants and Daniel Jones, I just can't overemphasize how terrible he's been at football recently. If you can't win that game, I think we need to look hard in the mirror and say, is it time to trade anything that's tradable and reload for next year and grab a hydropic and admit this is a two year project? I'm not excited to have that conversation. But I think it's where we'd be. So this is a very simple question. Is that an overreaction? Is it unreasonable to say if they lose to the Giants and their own two, we need to start having different discussions about this year? Not for me. But it doesn't mean that they should trade all the players before week that's that I think will be well, but I just want off that distinction. I think when people hear that, they're going to go, no, there's 15 games left. You talk about a rookie quarterback and this is a new everything. The regime should be, you know, working for it. You should be better in November than you are here in September. The point is for the rest of us recalibrate your expectations. We're talking about on the outside looking in. We need to go. This is not a take teams by surprise. And there are 10 11 win team like some, you know, crazy, crazy, Homer's thought. This is not a well, the divisions down and the Eagles swoon last year wasn't a mirage and Dallas takes a step back. Maybe they could surprise some people. No, no, no, no. This is a bad roster that wasn't even constructed to compete. So take the parts that aren't going to be here and sell them off and try to build something, you know, for later. That is a reasonable conversation. Now the only caveat would be we can evolve, but if the Giants win on Sunday and go on to actually be okay. Now, I don't see that. I think they're awful. I think they're picking top five. I think they're one of the two or three worst teams in the sport. But if they win and then go on to play well, we can recalibrate our feeling about how bad this week to loss is, right? But right now the Giants coming in. A lot of people thought myself included. This is one of the worst teams in football in week one. They played like it. If in week two, they beat you and then go back to being terrible. You're going, we stink. We're the get right game for the stinkiest team outside of Carolina in the NFL. What are we doing? What's the point of any of this? What's the point of any conversation about can they go back and find a way to beat Cincinnati? Who gives a bleep if they do? They're, they're in the pig pen with, with some of the worst teams in the NFL. This should be about the future. That conversation means very much on the table if you lose this weekend. So maybe I'm not as in the same like dire bucket as you would be in that sense. Or it sounds like Phillips would be ready to hop into. I think the teams that played badly in week one are being way undervalued right now. Or just, and there are going to be a couple that are terrible, obviously. And maybe this is one of them. We don't know. But just generally, if you stink in week one, the sky is falling all week. The Giants are not as bad as we think. The commanders are not as bad as we think probably. This is just generally how I view it. The teams look really good in week one and surprise you in week one. New England as an example, maybe Minnesota with Donald getting off to a fast start. Generally, if you're stunned positively in week one, all of a sudden you're talking yourself into some things that a week ago with a lot of data and information and off season's worth of content, you didn't think. And generally, if you wait a few weeks, everything kind of comes toward the middle of it. The only way I would feel like after just two games that I need to completely change my eye line on this season, and now I feel like this team stinks and is going to be one of the worst in the league, is if they have a clunker. Like if they play a really bad game against the Giants, and I don't know what that turns into from a score standpoint, Danny, but let's say like 23 to 10 Giants or similarly to the bucks game, the fourth quarter is kind of a play out the clock quarter. I don't see this as a possibility. It's hard for me to envision this. I'm betting against this. But if that were to happen, now I'll join you guys, because I think to be able to start a year with too straight like that. And now that's all of the data and it's not like it's nothing. I know it's only two games, but it's 11% of your season and we're talking about 11% of the football season where you will have stunk at that point, but the fact is I had them best case one and one through two. I thought there was a decent chance they could be 0 and two and that you're going to split with the Giants anyway. So now you win the one there. You said if they beat the Bengals who cares, not who cares to me that that would be a really, really good road win in prime time. So I guess I'm I'm going to be more dismissive of a loss in week two being some tell all. If they play a pretty good game and lose, but it's about the process, not the result for me. If they stink again and Daniel Jones looks like Mayfield did and neighbors goes for a buck 47 or something and Devin Singletary who averaged three yards a carry last week runs for a buck 20. I'll come in here Monday and I'll be ready to say let's buckle up. This is this is four. This is what four wins looks like. So they're going to be picking in the top five. Let me let me phrase it slightly differently to get to the same place. To me, I don't think you can lose to the Giants without looking like crap. Like I think you could lose to a good team and you go, Hey, they were competitive. They played hard. This was this was close. This could have gone either way. If you'll go by Seabird goes in or doesn't, whatever, right? If you are losing to a team that we all think is terrible and that may and maybe you don't maybe don't think the Giants are terrible, but I think they're bad. I don't think they're as bad as everybody's making it out to be after one game. Fair enough. Like they I think they just played one of their let's say two worst games of the year. Remember last year as an example, I'll point to they opened with the Cowboys and they lost I think 40 to nothing and Daniel Jones got sacked like 11 times with something ridiculous like that. The next week they went out and had like a 28 point performance against Arizona or something. Remember that where it was just kind of like a I didn't I don't specifically, but I'm hoping of the switch. I believe it. I kind of view it more like that like they just had a game that is going to be when they look back and they go, what were our three worst games this year? One of them is the one they just played. So the way I'm thinking of it is they're one of the few worst teams in football. And if you I think that's a good conversation, if you don't think they are, they won that game in Arizona. Then I think lost four or five straight and finished, you know, with a one of the worst records in the game and two of their six wins were against Washington. So if that's the case, if that's what we're doing, to me, all other discussions are relevant. That's what I don't mean Cincinnati beating them specifically matters or doesn't matter. I'm saying if you can't beat the Giants at home, when you should have the element of surprise, you should have, they're not sure what you're going to do. And you've kind of got a good feel for them over the last several seasons. There's plenty of tape from Daniel Jones, shove it on you. And you know what Brian Dable likes to do and this defense, et cetera. This is a game that if you can't beat them, what's the point of any of this? I think it's where a lot of fans are going to feel. Okay. Yeah. It's a team that's basically what you are and I don't view it as this early. It just too early for me to have that energy, which I get, which I think is fair, by the way, because again, there's so much we don't know. And that's why I'm saying I offer the only window out, the only outlet for that is if the Giants go on to have a decent season and there are seven and 10 team instead of what I expect, which is one of the bottom feeders, then you go, Oh, that's not terrible anymore. Yeah. I don't think they're going to be seven and 10 or have a decent season. I guess for me, the difference is I think Washington with a brand new group and a new staff and a new quarterback will just keep getting better. Hopefully as the year goes on, it's like the team that plays the Giants this week, ideally is not as good as the team that plays them, you know, in several weeks. So remember what last year, for example, the Thursday night game. Now it was terrible at the time and it was, it was brutal, but when Washington got their, you know, what's kicked by Chicago, that was a Chicago team that couldn't get right. They weren't very good. Well, they actually went on to demonstrate they weren't bad at all. So that loss looked a lot better in retrospect, again, it doesn't look good because of how dominated they were, but it, at one point you go, Oh my God, so embarrassing us to the lions. Well, actually, we now know the lions are pretty decent. You know what I mean? Like that kind of a phenomenon could happen. I'll leave the door open for that. But I think a lot of people are going to be really upset about their expectations and calibrations for this year. So I guess my long, it's a long way of saying, I think a lot of, a lot more conversations will be on the table. Like Phillip said, then, uh, if they do lose that game.