Grant and Danny
Are You Drinking The Commanders Kool-Aid?
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. "But you are found in first and gold, and then you will come and follow us, God damn it! Come and ask us now!" We've got a cup of Commander's Kool-Aid in the studio. Or are we prepared to drink it with the boys 3-in-1, 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 4, Washington was top 5 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's 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-thirties 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 in the next best offenses, punted three times as much as them at this point. So I asked you, Danny, who, hey, commanders, Kool-Aid, is in that cup in front of you? Mm-hmm. 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 stuff happens, the fall struck, 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-in-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-in-one, let's find some of the numbers on that, Dad, if you can, uh, Darris, I don't want my Dad, if he's listening at home to start looking for the numbers. Like, Dad, it's just poking around. Like, what numbers, Grant? Wait, what do you have to get, Grant? I met Dad, Darris. Oh, let me, Dad. Yeah, but I'm curious. If you're four-in-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-in-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. Like now we're talking about the possibility of the first 11-win season, potentially. It's 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 dress way 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 that word as they could be. A 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, 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. Uh, Derek, 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 at 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 playoffs. 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. 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.