Grant and Danny

MNF Recap, Are You Drinking The Commanders Kool-Aid?

10.1.24 Hour 1

1:00- We recap Monday Night Football as the Lions beat the Seahawks in a huge offensive performance from the Lions and the Seahawks.

20:00- With the Commanders getting all the national hype at this point, are you starting to drink the kool-aid?

Broadcast on:: 01 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

When it comes to making plans, you are the best. What about those round trips, which are perfect on your way there and perfect on your way back? Or those meetings with friends, surprise parties, camps, birthdays. The same way you plan for the important moments, start planning to protect you and your loved ones from a natural disaster. Sign up for local weather and emergency alerts, prepare an emergency kit, and make a family communications plan. Get started at ready.gov/plan. Brought to you by FEMA and the Ad Council. Good Tuesday afternoon and welcome in to Grant and Danny. You are listening live to defend on October 1st, 2024. We'll take you all the way up to 6.30 tonight. We're giving away caps tickets at four. Tickets to see the death tones at six. Make sure you're listening. That's the cap's home opener, by the way, Danny. Oh, I'm sorry that we have tickets to 11 days from now on October 12th. Gotta be listening to the show at four for those Austin Echlers on the program at five today. We got a great show plan for you. How are you, man? I am good, my friend. This, I think this is the last day of this tail end of the stormy, rainy nonsense. It's dreary, it's miserable, but I think we're going to turn a corner here this week. And everybody, the whole league, the sporting world there, I say, is a buzz for the local 53. It's not because of a scandal, no investigation, no new lawsuit, no new development in the story. None of that crap. It's because the foosball team is putting up some points, shades of 2012. Yeah, everybody's talking about the commanders because of the young quarterback. Everybody's falling in love with the prospect under center. It is a good time to be a commander's fan. We get the football in just a moment, but we got to start because it's Tuesday with commanders, survivor. You can go to Facebook.com/grantandani to vote a player off the island to vote a player immune on commander survivor. Go vote facebook.com/grantandani will give you an update in just a few minutes as to who is left on the island. How do you go vote someone off this week? How do you do that? How do you vote somebody off this week after they put up 42 points? And beat the brakes off of Arizona. Every, you did played well, offense, defense, special teams, coaching staff. Like this is one of those hard ones. Usually the hard ones are where we're down towards the end and it's John Aller, Tera McClure, and or somebody that we all like. Everybody played well. This is a hard week to vote someone off, dude. So what's particularly stunning, I'd say, is that, as you said, you would normally just pick the one or two good players, put them on a short list, find out who's got immunity. But you got to fight over immunity if seven or eight ways this week. If you're competing in commander survivor, Jayden Daniels can't get immunity though, because he got it last week for the unbelievable performance against the bank. I bet you'll be fine. Someone else is going to get immunity, but I'm gonna just make a bet that he's still on the island next week. John Allen got sent home one week before he broke out with a sack this past week. So that's unfortunate for him. So we'll see who gets sent home on commander survivor. How'd you like the double dip on Monday night football last night? I love it so much in around on that. I'm so in. This is perfect. I love it so much. I love that there's an earlier game when there's lulls or downtime or halftime. You can flip over to the other game. You can watch both at once. However you feel like doing it, I love the double header. Love it. I'm a big fan. I don't understand why people don't like it, by the way. I see a lot of complaining about having two Monday night games. It doesn't make sense to me. Number one, I think most people have the opportunity when watching games to have multiple screens at this point, whether that's via the phone, the computer and your TV or just a setup where you've got multiple TVs in the man cave or something. I'd say there's a lot of people who have the propensity to watch two games at once. That's number one. Even if you don't, if you're kicking it old school, you got one TV and you can only watch one thing at a time. Just going back and forth between two games with the previous channel button doesn't have to be a lost art, friends. And the beauty of two games is if one stinks like Titan's dolphins did last night, a 31, 12 final Tennessee pulled away with 22 points in the second half. By the way, the dolphins are in big, big trouble. They are having props one and three right now. Then you just watch the other game, the NFC matchup, which was as advertised, a shootout, great offensive displays for both teams. Gino Smith was cooking. He threw for 395 yards last night. Jared Goff has not thrown an incompletion since the game started. 18 of 18 passing for 292 yards, two touchdowns. And Jared Goff caught a touchdown last night. Have a night. Have a night, Ryan. Clara, your boy was being celebrated around the NFL. Praying meant just wandering down that left side with a lineman chasing him. God, it was great. He made a catch. He caught it. I couldn't believe it. Best throw the night was when he threw it into the stands after catching a teddy. That's true. Deep shot. It was definitely his longest throw of the night. Oh, yeah. But he had Jameson Williams for a catch and run touchdown of 70 yards. I was asking Clara, because we were talking about the Lions a couple of days ago, what is wrong with them? Why are they not right? The first few weeks of this season, they just weren't the same team as last year. Last night was the breakout. That's who they are. They're that. I think now for every reason, when these two teams get together, nobody stops anybody and it's great theater. I don't know why Seattle has whatever Detroit's defensive kryptonite is, but they do. That's fun. Kenneth Walker had a million, everything's last night was the lowest scoring game between these two teams in the last three years. Think about that, which is great. 71 points combined. Sign me up. I hope they play every month, but for Detroit, that's what that offense looks like. When when they're right, when it's everything that you do, you have to cover something. You're going to get hit in the gut with the David Montgomery downhill. Jameer Gibbs comes in as the best changer pays back in the NFL, probably the way that he bursts through the line of scrimmage or goes around the edge. He's incredible. You want to cover on on Ross St. Brown? Fine. Jameson Williams is going to hit you through the scene. If you want to cover both of those guys and Sam LaPorte, you got to worry about that with probably the best offensive line in the sport. That offense, when they're right, is poetry. It's so pretty because they can just run the ball better than most teams and it sets everything else up. But Ben Johnson also is good for about one or two trick plays a week. Last week, they scored on a hook and ladder and then yesterday, Jared Goff catches a touchdown from a Monra St. Brown on seven yards from just outside the five, but the lines looked great. I think the Seahawks are for real too. Weirdly enough in a loss, I know their defense got mauled. I think I feel better about Seattle today than I did 24 hours ago because you and I were both saying they're three and oh, but they haven't played anybody. This is not an authentic three and oh team by any means. Their best opponent on their schedule so far was a dolphin steam with Skyler Thompson at quarterback, but they went toe to toe with Detroit for the most part. That was a 28, 20 game in the third quarter, a 35, 27 game in the fourth quarter. And then the lions pulled away, but I think Seattle's going to be a wild card type team. I don't know. Mike McDonald in his first year as a head coach. I think their ceiling is lower than Detroit ceiling. I think, you know, we got a little evidence of that last night, but Seattle ain't bad, right? I mean, usually you play three teams that are inferior to you. You stumble in one of those and you win two out of three or you kind of look shaky. They beat the, they were much better. I think they're both than all three of the teams that they played. I know it was a little bit closer with Denver, but week one of the season. I like their offensive diversity when Walker's healthy. He can do a little bit of everything. Jackson Smith and Jigba is a great kind of intermediate threat. We know DK Metcalf can do and if all else fails, Tyler Lockett is helpful as well. Kind of a, a sticks moving kind of guy to me defensively. I don't know about them, but they're plenty good enough to win nine games, especially with the start they're off to. Gino Smith is also sneaky better than he gets credit for. I think he's a victim of his early career. He was a second round pick out of West Virginia. He failed in New York with the Jets, but who hasn't? I mean, Aaron Rodgers is trying to reverse a commanders and bears like run for quarterbacks, basically in that city, but late career, Gino Smith in Seattle has been mostly really, really good and watching him last night. He was slicing and dicing the lions. Frankly, this is why I can't trust Detroit to get to a Super Bowl. I think they're good enough offensively to win a title. I think they could beat anybody in the NFC. I think they could beat Kansas City or the Bills or the Ravens or whoever comes out of the AFC. I don't trust that defense when Washington was interviewing Aaron Glenn. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm sure he's a leader of men type and he's very popular in a building, but his defenses are never that good. Like the one thing you could say about Dan Quinn, even if you were a detractor from the standpoint of him being similar to Rivera or having had a chance already or not wanting a defensive minded head coach or whatever, his defenses are always excellent. This year, clearly they're not yet, but it's early. They got to continue to work at it and we'll see where it goes. But the Lions defense, how do you win a Super Bowl with that group? They give up too many big plays. I don't know what they hang their hat on. They gave up 516 yards last night. Yeah, it's hard for me to advocate for them the morning after. I'll do my best here though, right? But I tend to agree with you just for the record, Devil's Advocate. They're built like those Colts teams back in the day with Peyton Manning and Company, where the resources rightly so were on the offense. What they want is to get a lead, duh, and make you one-dimensional. Drop back and pass to it. Aidan Hutchinson eat to maybe have guys like Carlton Davis or Brian Branch or otherwise, maybe break on a football and get your turnover. Maybe those New Orleans Saints teams that could never really stop anybody, but the one year they got turnover luck. They won the Super Bowl with Breeze and Company. I think that's the design, but I'm with you down in and down out. There are 15, 16, 20 defenses. I'd probably rather have than the Detroit Lions. They're vulnerable. Huntington's a badass. I mean, he's got six and a half sacks here through four weeks. Other than that, I'm not sure what it is that you do here. Enough talking about the three and one Lions who scored 42 points. Thank you. This weekend. Give me a three and one team that scored 42 points this week. Can you dig of another? Let's talk about the commanders. Here we go. How about this news item today from Brian Wacker of the Baltimore Sun? He reported today that the commander's Ravens game two weeks out, Sunday, a week from this weekend, Lamar, Jackson, Jaden Daniels. Everyone's been saying NBC's got to pick that up. They got to flex this game. Remember, this is the first year where you can actually start flexing games this early so that we get better prime time games. He's reporting. NBC was interested in flexing the commanders and the Ravens into Sunday night football, went to CBS to get it done. And CBS, according to his reporting, protected the game. They have the right, I guess, a couple of times a year or whatever, to basically say, uh-uh, we're keeping this one. And they did that with Washington and Baltimore. I say this to tell you, Danny, in 2024, the year of our Lord, October 1st, as we sit here today with the commanders, a first place, three and one team. Where are we at in this recalibration, this rebuild? Where are we in the commander's season when normally you're not looking at draft portfolios yet, but you're at least trying to figure out what teams are going to be picking where. You're beginning your prep, right? Usually I'm looking at quarterbacks in, in, uh, we tour the draft rankings early October. You're three weeks away on October 1st, generally, from your first deep dive into the NFL draft board. Okay. We are in networks are squabbling over the commander's territory. CBS and NBC are going, no, we want them. No, we want them. Yeah, but we have the right to them. We get to say no. They're fighting over the Jaden Daniels, Cliff Kingsbury led. Washington commander. We don't have unlimited no cards or black balls, whatever you want to call it. We're going to use one on Washington. I mean, Baltimore is there too, but we're using it on Washington. If Baltimore was playing, I don't know, Tennessee, Cleveland, a lot of teams, I don't think they'd use that card. They're using it because they want that Washington juice and I like it. What's funny is the game it would replace is a very similar AFC North NFC East. Super Bowl caliber AFC North projected to be not very good team in the NFC East game. The current week, six Sunday night football game is the Bengals and the Giants. Cincinnati is the Baltimore in this example, right? Where when you book that game, you go. Bengals are probably going to be front runners in the North. Joe Burroughs back. They got a chance to win a Super Bowl. They've gotten off to a slow start. Now, so have the Ravens at two and two, but the Ravens are a much better looking team right now than the one in three bangles, who's only when has come against Andy Dalton led Carolina. The Giants and the commanders were the two teams. You and I were trying to figure this out with every guest we had on all off season. We know the Eagles and the Cowboys are the top teams in the division on paper, who's third. Well, clearly NBC and a lot of the other networks thought the Giants had the better chance. To be the interesting team a month into the season. That they were the team that might be upsetting the Apple cart in the NFC East. They guessed wrong on the bangles. They guessed wrong on the Giants. And now, like everybody else seemingly, they want to get their little mitts on the Washington commander. Please form an orderly queue and line up. You want a piece of Washington. You can't have it. I love it. I'm just enjoying it. Yep. I don't need to fully invest yet. This is it precisely. Right. Like to me, whatever happens doesn't even really matter to me that much for the rest of this season. Now, that will change for me this off season when they've got money to spend and they need to go get some assets and add some really good players and they'll have a chance on a rookie quarterback contract to put some hay in the barn. Because the beauty of what they've got is if Jaden Daniels is the dude and you're not paying him a lot of money yet, then that is the biggest gift you can have in team building. There's no waiting anymore. Urgency, aggressiveness. Let's make it happen. You got three to four seasons to really do this before he gets all of the money. You do the Houston blueprint, for example, right? It hasn't clicked yet, just down there. But on paper, that's the idea, right? You add, you supplement instead of just saying, "Hey, that was nice. Let's keep growing." No, no, no. Let's go spend. But for right now, it's just enjoyable to see the coverage. To turn on NFL Network on Good Morning Football and see the next new daily Jaden Daniels segment. To build, I've got a folder now in my bookmarks, just for good offensive stats on the commanders that I'm seeing all over social media. Number one in this, number two in that. First team since this year to do this, Jaden Daniels is number one in EPA. Jaden Daniels has been the most efficient. Just got a whole folder for all those things just so I can click on them and look at them. We don't really get this around here. I'm soaking it up. I'm enjoying it. And while this is kind of coach speak, I'm kind of going day to day with it. There's a game on Sunday. I think they're going to beat the Browns. I'm going to pick them to beat the Browns. Thought they'd beat the Cardinals. Think they'll beat the Browns. I'm starting to buy in pretty heavily on this offense and this group. But in the meantime, not overly concerned. I have not seen this team at three and one since 2011. And I have not seen a three and one commander's team that actually had a chance to do something in many, many, many years. So the path is there for them. The division's not very good. You've got a great offense. It seems like you've got a quarterback that is scaring everybody and gives you a chance to move the ball every time you're on the field. This is what it looks like when teams come together and go on the magical carpet ride regular season run. Don't need it to happen. But they're putting the pieces together in order to start making moves. Yeah, you go six and seven the rest of the way you're probably a playoff team. You know what I mean? Like they've done enough to put themselves in a good spot to play meaningful football. Isn't it funny? By the way, this is all it took. Not don't mean having Jaden Daniels. This is when two games in a week and you did it. One time in 13 years there's three and one. That's all it took for the town to be excited and for us to start having these stupid conversations. And it's far more routine in so many other places, right? They're not doing they're not singing every song in Buffalo. They're not tap dancing in Pick Your City. Maybe Minnesota, they're excited because the expectations are so low. But in places where this is normal, these kinds of conversations, they would laugh at us. It's not normal here. And that's my only point. I had the same conversation with a couple of different people via text over the last 48 hours or so. And what does this mean or how good are they at the division? I go, I have no idea, honestly. I will tell you this, this first month, we're now in October month too. But the first month, way better than I ever thought, it's so enjoyable. I'm going to continue to do that because if this is a now we're all in. We spent every salary cap dollar. We moved all the chips into the middle because that's not what this off season was. Had they done that, I'd have different expectations and sort of different ways of judging them. This to me is a, can Jane Gainell's playing the league? I don't think the answer is yes. But like, that's the whole point here of this season to me is his development is how good is he? Okay, now let's figure out what we need after that. We're still doing that, but we haven't been kicking people's ass at the same time. That's cool. It's been a blast. Yeah. Are you ready though to really drink the commander's school aid? And to define what that means to start thinking about this team as a playoff team. Are you already ready to do that for games in? Are you ready to write in Sharpie? Not only that Daniels is the long term answer that he is actually this good, that this is not some desert mirage coming back from Arizona, right? But that this is authentic and that this team is going to be this good this season for the rest of the year. That's what drinking the Kool-Aid means as opposed to passing the cup for now and playing the waiting game. Pick one of those two sides. Are you taking a sip? Are you going to pass the cup on commander's Kool-Aid? Let's open up the MGM National Harbor listener lines on that right now. 800-636-1067. That's 800-636-1067. We'll get to those calls next three o'clock today. Fast to 16 minutes in football, recapping every game from the weekend. Five o'clock, Austin Echlers on the show. We're giving away tickets to the cap's home opener at four right here on the fan. When it comes to making plans, you are the best. What about those round trips which are perfect on your way there and perfect on your way back? Or those meetings with friends, surprise parties, camps, birthdays. The same way you plan for the important moments, start planning to protect you and your loved ones from a natural disaster. Sign up for local weather and emergency alerts. Prepare an emergency kit and make a family communications plan. Get started at ready.gov/plan. Brought to you by FEMA and the Ad Council. We've got a cup of Commander's Kool-Aid in the studio. Or are we prepared to drink it with the boys three and one? Elite offensively, and atop the NFC East. Welcome back, Grant and Danny on the fan. In fact, if you look at among other categories, even how they're doing upfront with their offensive line, Danny, they are passing every test with flying colors. They are way better than anyone could have anticipated in almost every regard. Lowest pressure rates allowed in week four. Washington was top five in the NFL. With that weak link, I'm using air quotes here of an offensive line that everybody was worried about. Just 19% of the time. Kingsbury has been better than advertised. Daniels has surpassed all expectations as having a historic first month as a rookie. Through four games, their offense ranks third and past yards per attempt. First and third down percentage. By the way, they've been in the mid 30s and third down percentage for like four straight years, almost identically. They're at 54% conversion rate on third down right now. Best in the NFL. They're number one points per drive at 3.56. They've punted three times all year. In fact, they have the fewest punts in the NFL by like six, I mean, the next best offense is punted three times as much as them at this point. So I asked you, Danny, who? Commander's Kool-Aid is in that cup in front of you. Will you be taking a sip or are you passing the cup? I'm going to pass the cup. It's not time yet. Nobody has to do anything at this stage. It is fun. You can let your imagination run wild. There are a million things that are not sustainable. We talked about it already going into this past week. It's not sustainable to have zero turnovers. It's not sustainable to win games where you've only turned your opponents over twice. It's not sustainable to have no penalties. It's not sustainable to have the kind of success they've had on third downs. It can stop happens. The the false start, the illegal motion, the drop pass. Nothing bad has happened. Something bad will happen. And again, that's okay. You can hear my voice. I don't sound very upset about it. They're not this good. Nobody's this good. Quite frankly, to score a 40 game over the past couple of weeks and just destroy teams. And then all of a sudden, a defense that has been terrible shows up and plays great. I haven't seen enough sample to make me believe that that's real. So I'm going to withhold judgment. I'm going to keep that cup of Kool-Aid in the fridge. I'll come right back to it. If we're here in two or three weeks having a similar conversation, even if they drop one of these games coming up, they lose the Baltimore on the road or something. As long as they're kind of continuing on this track, we can talk about some Kool-Aid for me. There's a line in the departed. No ticky. No laundry. Okay. Daddy don't do two week referendums. Grandpa didn't do it. Dennis Paulson didn't do it. I'm not going to do it. Week one, I didn't love what I saw offensively. I thought it was fine. And with Daniels, I didn't like it either because he just ran all the time. Week two in the first half, I didn't really like what I saw. In the second half, I thought he was marvelous. Week three was the best young quarterback performance I've ever seen in my life blown away. Week four was really, really good. I thought it was schemed up and kind of came easily to him, but he was outstanding and he made all the right decisions. The four week sample here with the player, with the offense, with the entire group, really other than the defense, is to say that they've been excellent mostly. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid just yet. But if you bring that Kool-Aid back next week, and they are four and one after a win against the Browns, bring me a straw because I'm going to have some. If they beat Cleveland at home and they get to four and one, let's find some of the numbers on that, Dad, if you can. Dares. I don't want my dad, if he's listening at home, to start looking for the numbers. The debt is just poking around. My dad's like, what number is Grant, what do you have to get Grant? I met Dad, Dares. Oh, let me down. Yeah, but I'm curious, if you're four and one, what is the chance that you make the playoffs? It's a massively high number. And that's before they changed the playoff settings, right? We now have an extra team. They expanded the field. So you get the four and one. Just do the math. You've got to go 500 the rest of the way with a pretty easy schedule. Oh, by the way. Just to win 10 games. But now we're talking about the possibility of the first 11 win season, potentially. Since 1991, I'm not ready to have that conversation yet. I want four more quarters of Intel. I want one more game. I want another weekend of this season. And then we'll reassess next week. But I think I'll sip that Kool-Aid. If the Kool-Aid is like double digit wins, playoff football, team that's good enough that it can win every single week, the shoe's not going to drop. There's not some major regression coming. As I sit right now, and I guess I could change my mind on Sunday, but I think I'd be prepared to take that sip next week if they handle the Browns. Now, if they beat the Browns 17-13 and they turn the ball over four times or whatever, I'll feel differently. But if they go out and score 30 again and they move up and down the field and dressway puns two times and they beat Cleveland by 17 or something, it's go time. This team at that point is just really, really good. This is something different than we've seen since your boy was a toddler. I think that's fair. I mean, remember, this group was six and three before Alex Smith got hurt. In that game, they moved to six and four. And we knew at the time it wasn't sustainable, right? We knew this was flooky. We knew this was a low ceiling offense that was, you know, they were tough and they were playing hard. But come on, we all kind of knew where the truth lied. And that's not the same feeling I've got now, right? Like there's, that was as close to the top of their ceiling to use the overuse of that word as they could be. That group that was six and three moving to six and four when Houston injured Smith. I don't know that that's true with this group. The arrow is trending up, right? As guys like Luke McCaffrey are still rookies getting their feet wet. Jane Daniels is continuing to grow and play better. There's an ascension that's even still possible here. Luke McCaffrey, who was on our show yesterday, if you missed the interview, make sure you podcast it at the fan DC.com. When we're done today, I also tweeted out a link to the interview. If you want to check it out, he was fantastic. Daris, what'd you find on four and one starts? So I haven't found any numbers, particularly on four and one starts. As it stands right now, the commanders at three and one, they have a 67, excuse me, a 68% chance to make the playoffs. If you look ahead to a couple of the other teams who are four, no, those teams have a 89% chance of making round one of the players. So we'll split the difference and say it's in the 70s. That'll be, that it sounds good. Yeah. 70 some percent chance of making the postseason at that point. And it's not like their schedule is overly arduous either. But yeah, let's chat again next week. So you and I are both kicking the can down the road a little bit here. Yes. Question for you guys, 800-636-1067. We got a couple commanders, Kool-Aid. Are you taking a swig or not? Sean's in false church. What's up, Sean? I appreciate you guys taking my call. Appreciate that. Yeah, man. Yeah, I think that in terms of sitting in the Hool-Aid of a playoff team, I'm still sitting on the bench. But at the same time, in terms of a three, four plus win from what we had, yes, I'm totally about that. I think that Cleveland is a team to beat. The Giants are a team that beat them. And that should tell you a lot. One question for you, Danny, specifically. I understand you're not a huge fan of the name. Correct. But once this team starts winning and winning and winning, what are you going to do? I mean, are you on the same team? Are you believing? Are you going to stick with that? Are you just going to say that's cute and change the name? I love that question. I appreciate you asking it. I hate the name. It reminds you of Dan Slider. Nothing could ever change that. But I do think the plan, by the way, and I said this months ago, and I think so, is they're taking the year out of the football, talking about the Hall of Ownership Group. And if they have success, for example, Jayden Daniels was the number one selling jersey for Fanatics this past month. So that's commander's jerseys. In fact, I saw somewhere that the top two selling jerseys were two different variations of Jayden Daniel. There you go. Right. And I hate, I am mad at myself that I just said the stupid name just now. I can't stand saying it. I hated everything reminds me of Snider. It's like being smacked in the face. That will never change for me because I'm weird. But this is the plan, I think, is to have some success and then not have to make a change. Yeah, if it becomes cool to be a commander's fan, if they become cool, the name will absolutely catch on nationally because nobody nationally hates it. The people that hate the name commanders are local people who like to name Redskins. And even if they were okay with something new, don't like the new arcade version of this name. But as it becomes more and more the norm, the commanders are on Monday night football, the commanders are on Thursday night football, it will get harder and harder to change. So I think it is irrefutable and unequivocal. If they are good and they go in 10, 11 games, it becomes a lot harder to change the name. Yep. No, that's necessary. Yeah. I mean, like there's no point in doing it for them. Possibly true. I mean, I think the name popularity won't change a lot in terms of it being liked. I just think to your point, maybe less of a priority because they're going to be selling tickets. Like people that don't like the name are still going to be going to see them play the browns because they're excited, right? People that don't like the name might start tuning back in and watching them doesn't mean they're endorsing the name. But if you're selling the tickets and you're moving the merch, I'll give you a good example. And this was before the last two weeks for the record. So don't tell me I'm some Johnny come lately. My wife took my kid to Target. This was back about a month ago. I think they had just won their first game against the Giants or whatever. And he wanted a Jaden Daniels jersey. I always talk about Jaden Daniels at home. He hears me and he watches the games with me a little bit, whatever he's three. They got a Jaden Daniels commander's jersey. That was the first true commander's gear that we have purchased. It was kind of funny because my wife brings it home. My kid runs downstairs to show it to me. He's so excited and I go up and I'm like, I'm shocked you bought that. Like she's had this stance. We're not doing anything commanders. She's like, oh, he wanted it. He asked. So what do you mean? He's cute. What do you mean to say? Yeah, what do you mean to do? Your son wants a football jersey. You're going to tell him this. But he little by little as time passes. Mitch rails Josh Harris might have a plan here. My kid just wants the Jaden Daniels thing where if it was a Nubby quarterback in a bad football team and they were one in three. Commanders just isn't resonating still. I definitely think that is part of the whole equation. Without a doubt. Are you sipping the Kool-Aid as the question? Lance and Annapolis, you're on G&D. I'm drinking it, and I tell you why. I think the fact that we lost all those games that we did last year to get lucky to get the number two pick to get the Jaden Daniels. And I also think the coaching staff that they put into place is I think it's everything just seems to mesh very well. And I keep hearing this team talking about brotherhood. And you can obviously tell they want to play for one another. You don't get the offensive line beginning of the year. They weren't supposed to be any good. And now they're playing great. I think if you look at the defense, they just haven't figured out their identity yet. And that's going to come. You've got obviously Quinn who's a great coordinator and Bobby Wagner. And I think the quarterbacks will figure it out. So he got some talent on defense. Say once they get their identity, I think we'll be all for wrong. They were better. They gave a defense in this game. I think GameScript had something to do with that though. The Cardinals weren't able to run the ball when they fell behind by a bunch, which was just after halftime after the long pass interference. And so you were able to kind of dictate terms on the back end, knowing they were going to throw it a ton. They still didn't stop the run. I'm still worried about that. And they really, when teams have had everything at their disposal, have not played at a high level. But hopefully they're coming on. I thought Jeremy Chin played his best game. Yeah, he's brand new four games in. I thought Frankie Louvoo at his best game and his fourth game. Doran Armstrong had his best game and his fourth game. Allen and Payne had their most disruptive pass rushing game. So that's not all nothing. I mean, clearly something was working defensively that hadn't been previously. 800, 636, 10067 is the number that commanders are three and one for the first time since 2011. They are in first place. They've got a winnable home game where they are favored against the Browns by three and a half points coming up on Sunday. Do you already feel like this is a team that you are ready to say is going to be playoff caliber? Because what has happened over the last calendar week is for real. It's authentic and it's not going away. That's the question you drinking the cool later not. We're granting Danny. [BLANK_AUDIO] The pro football talk power rankings dropped this morning. They've got the commanders ninth in the NFL. It has been a long time. Ninth? Not just in the NFC. The whole damn league. They've got the Chiefs one, the Lions two and the Vikings three from the NFC north. The Bucks who beat Washington four bills coming off a loss to the Ravens round out the top five. And then they've got six through ten, the Texans Steelers, 49ers, commanders and Packers. So Washington above Baltimore, Philly, Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, the commanders ninth. As I tweeted, I'm at Grand H. Paulson, Danny is at Funny Danny. The last week is changing the world as far as football goes in this city. Eight days ago, right now, prior to the kickoff last Monday, you and I were in Cincinnati. They were a one in one team that had lost an embarrassing fashion to Tampa. They got ran out the building and they had won unimpressively against the Giants team basically because the Giants didn't have a kicker for the whole game. Like you're not even exaggerating, by the way, they, yeah, they moved the football. There were a lot of good things out of that game. No one's saying it was a total loss. But if Graham Ganno doesn't, whatever it was, it's growing or quad. I can't remember going in. He pulled a hamstring while he was chasing down Eckler on a touchdown return. They got called back. Yeah, I would even argue if, if Debo and his administration were competent and they actually had a plan instead of just saying, let's see what happens with the kicker with the pulled leg muscle, then they might have had it. They probably would have lost that game. So again, you're not, you're not feeling rosy after you barely beat the Giants at home. One in one, and we think they're going to Cincinnati to be cannon fodder for the Bengals as they get their season back on track. And in the eight days since they have put on a couple of throwing against their seven on seven offensive clinics in the spring. They are three in one and they are the talk of the NFL. Are you sipping the cool? It is the question and we're defining that as, are you ready to say this is a double digit win team, a playoff type team that their offense is this good, that this is not a fleeting run, but really what they are. Let's go to Dan and Leesburg on the fan. Hey, Dan. Hey guys, I just want to tell you, I love listening to your show. It really makes my evening and driving home. We're here to do it. Thank you, sir. Yeah, you guys are awesome. Um, but yeah, he's the real deal. I think it, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. Why not? Stars are born every day. We deserve one. That, by the way, is 100% correct. It's absolutely our time. It's been our time for decades, but you know, we had to wait even longer and longer and longer and longer than almost everybody else. It's basically like us, the Bears, Cleveland to a degree. Everyone else has had a turn to have a superstar. It's now ours and all the hope is that he stays healthy and keeps his progression going. There was that slogan growing up, I remember that every team used, like, why not us? And it was just teams accidentally get good all the time. You know, teams always say, why can't it be us this year? But put that on the superstar quarterback category. Why can't Washington have one? Everyone else seems to get theirs. But one time it seemed like the stars were aligning. It was ripped away in the most emotionally awful and terrible fracturing fashion ever. It's the commander's time. This was Jay Gruden yesterday. We asked him on GND on his weekly appointment. Is he ready to write with Sharpie that Jaden Daniels is the guy? None of you write it Sharpie, man. This guy had four games. It's been pretty impressive. He sees the field well, he escapes, he can run, he can throw. Yeah, I mean, he does it all right. He's got great poise, too, is what I like the best about him. He doesn't get rattled. You know, I can tell you can sometimes you can see quarterbacks eyeballs to their face mask. They're so big and scared. But this guy is either surgeon back there. He's got confidence and plays a lot of poise and he's accurate and fun to watch, man. He's fun to watch. Let's go to Charles, who's in a Waldorf on Grant and Danny Charles. Are you buying that the commanders will play at this level for the rest of the season? Y'all late. I'm the kid that sneaks in and refrigerator late at night and take a sip. You don't want anyone to know? That's funny. That's funny. The reason that's my optimism with my Kool-Aid drinking and I'm going to bring up this one thing nobody's paying attention to. We got coaches and a general manager now. Well, it's not just coaches and a general manager. Thank you for the call. Thank you, dude. A new owner, a new GM, a new head coach and a new quarterback. The four most important pillars of any football organization that hold the whole thing up, owner, GM, head coach and quarterback, the owner here for 25 years gave you no chance. They have never had a GM, so they really had three pillars where you need four. There was just a hole where the fourth pillar was supposed to be. The head coach, they swung and missed on with Ron Rivera. I thought they had a chance just because of his offensive acumen with Jay, but he had his own issues from the leadership standpoint at times and just players buying in because he was just a very normal guy who was pretty unassuming, maybe a better coordinator than a coach, but they were closer under Gruden than they've been. Yeah, two best seasons they've had back to back. Because he's so good at drawing up offense and they had a quarterback at that time. And the QB, as we've been talking about, has been the ultimate Eleanor, that is the Shelby GT that you can't steal. You can't find it. Maybe you've got all four. But when you have all four, you're a Super Bowl contender. If you have three, you're going to be in the playoffs every year. If you have two, you have a chance to occasionally sneak in. If you only have one, you got no chance. If you have zero, you're a laughing stock. And they've been in that zero to one bucket for a long, long time. That's the best way to put it. I mean, that's perfect. The every action we talked about it, because that's the job, but we could have come in and gone, they got no chance. Bruce Allen's in charge and Dan Snyder still owns the thing. So see you guys tomorrow too. That's not a great show to be honest with you. Daris, fire up our favorite music for the next four plus hours. That that's how the show would have gone, essentially. Luckily, we came up with some other things to talk about and hopefully it worked out for everybody. Let's push fast to 16 minutes to 330. That is our normal three o'clock staple each and every week. But we don't normally get to talk to people about the commanders being three in one. There's a couple lines open, MGM National Harbor listener lines. Let's redirect this way. Here will be the question for you going ahead. How will the Browns game impact how you feel about this team and its legitimacy? Sunday, how big a deal is it for you and your buy-in, your opt-in, or have you already seen enough? 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