Grant and Danny
How Real Is The Commanders 3-1 Start?
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue, and guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the name of your price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup Dave. I know right. I was worried we'd be bringing back the same team. Oh no, I meant those blackout motorized shades, MVP of the room, and a minimal salary cap hit. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it was easy. Even you could do it. Nice. I installed these and then got some from my mom too. You fly across the country to do the install? Nope. Blinds.com can do it all. All she had to do was pick what she wanted. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Look at you, Hall of Fame Sun. Oh, I just picked the winning team. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Oh, Blinds.com is the goat. The goat. Go to Blinds.com for up to 50% off-site wide, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Go right now for up to 50% off-site wide at Blinds.com. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply. Now with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories and breaking news right on your home feed. Follow the action with Game Tip, where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus, notifications can keep you connected to every pitch, every hit, every game, the MLB app. Baseball, your way. Download it now for free from the App Store or Google Play. Blackout and other restrictions apply, Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission. Straight ahead, Brian Robinson and he's into the end zone for a commander's touchdown. Each team, scoring a touchdown at his first possession. Child's play. Give them the football, they get seven points. That's what happens with the Washington offense. Thanks for Luke McCaffery's time. He just stopped by on Grant and Danny. The commanders obviously have a bright future. It is time for you to plan yours as well. The exclusive sponsor of our show will help. The law firm, Condoria Murad, will help you update your last will and testament set up a trust for you and your family. Schedule a free consultation with their estate planning attorneys by visiting kmloyers.com. Tell them we sent you to get a discount. That's kmloyers.com. Danny, I think what's so amazing to me is that on a day where they didn't have, arguably their best offensive player outside of the quarterback position this season in Austin Echler. And we all said they're going to miss him a bunch. They plug in a guy who was on his 12th contract in the NFL with a team in Jeremy McNichols and he went ham. We've talked all off season about the wide receiver position. Do they have enough talent, do they have enough weapons? Alamadeza Kias went crazy yesterday. They had receivers open all day long. This is not a slight to Jaden Daniels who was efficient and effective and tremendous. Again, made all the right decisions was awesome. Every way that he could be, he was phenomenal. But having gone back and watched every throw, there were four throws he made where defenders within a couple of yards of a receiver. There were two throws that I would consider to be in coverage. All game. What they're doing with this group of talent with Cliff Kingsbury right now is astounding. Yeah, they were right now. It was wrong. I posted as much had funny to any humor standing on Instagram. All off season, I kind of looked at both the offensive line, really specifically the tackle spot. And wide receivers and I go, this is an unforced error. They needed to do more here to support Jaden Daniels most specifically. I thought what would happen is they might win some games, but it would have to be, you know, Daniel's scramble left, Daniel's scramble right, Daniel's hero ball, and you eke out a couple of wins in the first half of the season, as everybody gets their feet wet and you're running in a high risk there. I was wrong about all of that. They're averaging 40 points to game. The last two games over the span of a week, seven days, they put up 38 and 42 points. Arizona walked down the field on their open and drive. It was really impressive, actually opening script converted to fourth down, beautiful throwing catch in the corner of the end zone to Marvin Harrison. I go, okay, buckle up. Here we go. Let's just shoot out. Right? Let's go. Let's go play. Let's go see what happens. No, it wasn't. They outscored Arizona from there 42 to seven. When they got the ball back, it was 42 to seven over the next 55 minutes. What? What in the hell is this? What organization is this? What team is this? I have no idea where this goes and I don't care. They are so much better than I thought they would be. This is so much more fun than I could have ever imagined. I mean, I, I love Jane Daniels. I want to Jane Daniels. I'm glad they drafted him, right? But I'm going, you know, there'll be some, there'll be, and there still will be. It's on one, some hurdles, some setbacks, some adversity. You could punch in the nose, somebody figures out what you want to do, takes this away, whatever, right? We know some bad stuff is happening. It's sports. It's the leak, but it ain't happening right now. What an unbelievably fun, relaxing. I was not stressed for a single second watching the game on Sunday. There's no, here we go again. There's no other shoe dropping, sideline laughter and jocularity as they text that ass out there in Arizona. And their fans boot, not my fans, not the fans of this team that are booing for investigations and impropriety or because, uh, dance night as wife was on the jumbo trunk. No, no, no opposing fans getting wood shaded. They boot. What an unbelievably fun time. They're just doing so many really good football team things. Like not committing any penalties for three quarters again. They did not commit an offensive penalty that put them behind the sticks for three plus quarters. How is that possible for two straight games? But at some point you just become the thing that you keep doing, right? And they are running the ball well. Now that was the one thing I think we all kind of assumed would be a strength this year because when you have a quarterback like Jaden Daniels who can run and who scares defenses and keeps them up at night. We saw this in 2012. You've seen it with the Ravens for many, many years with Lamar Jackson. It doesn't matter if it's Gus Edwards or Justice Hill or named some reigning running back. They're going to go out and they're going to have a ton of success because you're defending an 11 and 11. You got to be honest to the quarterback. You got to play those read option looks. They were going to run the ball well, but this has been a renaissance of sorts for Brian Robinson. Got a buck yesterday. Echler looks like he shot out of a cannon every time he touches the ball. He's hurt, doesn't play yesterday. Jeremy McNichol's averaged eight and a half yards per carry. No, it wasn't like three carries either. He had eight carries for 70 yards, Danny. He had a 27 yard touchdown, ripped off a couple, 15 plusers. Jeremy McNichol's. You mean Lydanian Thomas? Right. I mean, I just, it's amazing what they are doing right now. And Cliff Kingsbury, think about it. I mean, they're the, I'll leave you, if you caught this on the telecast. But you remember the play where there's a little bit of misdirection, a lot of window dressing. And they just, and Danos flips it out in the flat to Zacchaeus. Who's just jogging in the pool? So, okay. So this was a, he lined up in the backfield by the way. There was a lot of these kinds of things. Zacchaeus is in the backfield. They make everything look like it's going to the top of the screen left. And then they come back to him on a swing pass to the right bottom of the screen if you're watching at home. And he had nothing but real estate in front of him. He's like, I guess I'll just keep going really far down the field. And it's one of those things where he caught it. You don't see anyone in the frame. And then the camera pans and there's still no one. Still no, but it pans again and there's still no one. You're like, where is this team? Someone should defend this. Yeah. And it cut to Kingsbury on the sideline. And he's got that, that sort of, I'm on the runway walk with a smirk on his face. You know what I mean? Where it's just like, I'm on such a different level than you guys trying to catch me right now. Maybe somebody does. Maybe somebody figures it out. In the years past, people have, right? The second half Arizona offenses, way worse than the first half. And I'm not sitting here to bring in the parade. I'm telling you, nobody's figured it out yet. No. He's, he's calling steps ahead at this point, right? Where we know what look you're looking for. We're not only we're going to give it to you, but then we're going to change direction. And you know what? You have no idea where the next shot's coming from. I think what would scare me is if I'm the other teams on their schedule. This is pretty sustainable, not like all of the things going their way. Where, you know, Zacchaeus basically falls down, maybe a foot shy of the sticks. They call it a first down. The Cardinals don't throw a challenge flag or, you know, that did you think that should have been a pass interference on the deep shot to Noah Brown? So context made. I wouldn't have said pass interference. I would have said illegal contact. You can't have the balls in the air. Well, to me, like something, you can't touch the person. Like when the balls in the air, you can't do that. I agree. What I think what happens 90% of the time there is the refs get together and they say uncatchable, essentially. Like that, that ball was not being caught. He threw it to the back of the letters in the end zone. And the contact was like the, I think they marked the ball at almost the 10. You know what I'm saying? Like having said that, whatever, it was a 55 yard play. It was beautiful. Like so many of these things just don't normally happen for them. They don't get that call. They don't, they aren't first in goal from the 10. Then on the ensuing drive after that touchdown to take now a 17 point lead, two of the first three plays the Cardinals ran were for 10 plus yards. And they got penalties on holding calls that came back. It's just happening in a way that never does for Washington, it feels like. But it's almost like when you're a good team and you're playing from in front, good things happen. And we're just not used to being that team either. No, it always usually comes down to if this call goes against us, it's over. Totally. Right. And that's not the case. I still have questions. I don't know if Austin cyber does any good yet or not. I know he's made all of his kicks. He has not kicked the field go longer than 45. Every time they would kick a 52 or 53 or 54 yarder, they're just busy getting the first down. They just get another first down. Yeah. So at some point, I'd like to figure out if they have a good kicker or not that they can count on when they need a big kick later in the season beyond 50 yards. I'll wait until we figure that one out. There are some other questions like, I don't know if this is a team that can play from behind the way that they do it, where everything's predicated on running the football, where Daniel's keeping, you know, a lot of it's off play action and it reminds me of like the Ravens at one point in time, where we talked about, if you're down 10, 12, 13, nobody really comes back from that in a high rate. But if you were able to jump out 21, seven, let's say somehow, some way, I don't know how you would ever do that against this commander's team is what I mean. You stop them at least twice and no one's doing that. But if you were up by two touchdowns, like, what does that look like? There's still things they've got to answer. But the way they run the ball, the way they protect the football, the way they scheme guys open, as accurate as Daniel's is, as composed as he seems to be, a lot of that probably isn't going away. Will defenses make adjustments to them? Of course. That's how it works. They're figuring this thing out or not, as the case is, on the fly. And when they do, Daniel's and Cliffy are going to have to make an adjustment. But right now, they're one step ahead of everything that the defensive coordinators are doing. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the name of your price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I know, right? I was worried we'd be bringing back the same team. Oh no, I meant those blackout motorized shades, MVP of the room. And a minimal salary cap hit. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old lines. Hard to install? No, it was easy. Even you could do it. Nice. I installed these and then got some from my mom too. You fly across the country to do the install? Nope. Blinds.com can do it all. All she had to do was pick what she wanted. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Look at you, Hall of Fame Sun. Oh, I just picked the winning team. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Oh, Blinds.com is the goat. The goat. Go to Blinds.com for up to 50% off-site wide. And a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Go right now for up to 50% off-site wide at Blinds.com. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply. It's time for Pitch Hit and Run, the official youth skills competition of Major League Baseball. Give the kids in your community a chance to flex their superpowers and they could earn a trip to the national finals of the 2025 World Series presented by Capital One. So go ahead, be the one who powers their dreams and sign up to host the local Pitch Hit and Run event. It's a free and fun way to promote baseball, softball, and your organization. To learn more, go to pitchhitrun.com.