Grant and Danny
The Commanders Hot Start Has Been A Pleasant Surprise For Most
90% of the people that do the betting or the picking at NFL network are saying that the burgundy and gold clad commanders will emerge victorious on Sunday and they will have a four in one start to their football season. Just not used to it, man. Just not used to it. I know this normally makes people nervous. Yeah. I want to see that. Sorry about your lot. Sorry about it. People are starting to like the old Washington football. There's a degree we like to call buy-in. That's happening. There is a in years past guys that I remember like a couple seasons ago, Mike Greenberg was like, you know, waxing Poetic is like, tell me why Washington can't be excellent. Tell me why they won't have this renaissance, the division's this and this. And they, I think they finished six and 11 probably or something like that. You know, to be in the NFC championship. Yeah. Where it's like every time someone has done that, it's a wrong, I don't know now. They are the cool kid on the block. They are the cool kid. For this people love Dan Quinn, just like they loved Ron Rivera, by the way, Dan Quinn's actually doing a pretty good job. That's the difference. They love Jaden Daniels. They have the quarterback and the coach that everybody wants to get on set and everybody wants to interview the talk of the league under center. I guess I should say in the gun is Jaden Daniels at this point. Everybody loves him. Everybody loves Quinn and they're playing good ball. They're three and one. I want to open up the phones and really start, start the show by talking about some of the surprises of the commander's first four games on the MGM national Harbor listener lines. What is surprised you most at the quarter poll here through four games about the commander's start? I'm guessing the answer will be something that's a positive surprise, although you could go negative if you want with the defense or something. But I jotted a handful of things down, just rapid fire here. Daniels being as excellent as he's been. Yep. The offensive line holding up as well as it has the wide receiver room, which was knocked by everybody all over the country. Not really having been an issue at any point. Austin Echler, who a lot of people panned as being cooked and having nothing left in the tank has been phenomenal. Now, he only played in the first three of their four games. And I would even say the kicking situation's been a pleasant surprise. I know that week one was a disaster and was costly against Tampa. But if I was to have asked you right before the season began, four games in, will they have won a game on the strength of their kicking and will would have helped them a lot in their other two wins? I'll bet you would have said no, I would have said no. So those are the things top of my head I came up with. I wanted to come up with something on the defensive side of the ball, but I really couldn't think of anything that's been overwhelmingly positive or surprising. I thought Echler, excuse me, Wagner and Louvoo were going to be good. They have been, I thought the pass rush, frankly, would be better than it has been. Like Doran's arm strung played an awesome game this past week, but he was mostly a non-factor for three weeks before that. So it's essentially all offense, Daniel's line, wide receivers, Echler, anything I'm forgetting, though, what else would you throw onto that pile? So just the way I'd con, I'd augment a couple of the things that you said, just to add in some flavor to it. The offense being prolific, I think we can't talk enough about it, but it's also the manner in which it's prolific. The ground and pound version of prolific usually, when you think of an offense that can't be stopped, we're going five wides, we're running the oop deop, they got to cover Twitter one on one. We're dropping back, throwing it 45 times a game, tempo this elite wide receiver that quarterback that if you blitz him, you're dead. Not the case. Brian Robinson thumping between the tackles, Jeremy, my Nichols running, Dave Daniels running too. The running game, the McNichols part this past weekend was insane. I did not see that coming, but you knew they were going to run the ball really well. We talked about that all off season. You can't have a quarterback like Jaden Daniels that demands teams defend him 11 on 11 and not run the ball. Well, there's really no precedent for that. We saw it in 12. Sure. I knew they'd run the ball pretty well. I thought they'd run the ball well, maybe not this well, but I thought they run the ball well. Arizona ran it great. It scored 14 points. You're going to mean like the fact that the offense doesn't punt that they're always in positive yet, even when they've got to throw their hyper-efficient doing it, there's no way you could have had dissipated that the offense generally, if we're just saying how good they've been mind blowing, absolutely breathtaking. I'm stunned. Hats off to Daniels, to Kingsbury, to everybody involved. It's been amazing. I was just saying specific to the running game. I don't know how surprised I am about that. I think my answer is the O line play probably, even though I didn't think they'd be bad. I did not think they'd be this good. I think they've been a strength. They've been really good. I think they have been somewhere between good and even in the run game dominant. Think about that. Talking about this O line with this group that way. Numbers to back up my claim. PFF grades them as the number four highest graded unit in pass blocking through four games. They have three lines that they have graded out looking at every play as better than Washington's in pass protection. If you want to use another metric, if you're not a PFF mark, that's fine. ESPN has their pass blocking win rate where they look at every play and basically it's binary. It's you want or you lost your block in win rate loss rate for pass blocking. They rank eight of 32 lines. The mean score between PFF and ESPN, who are two of the main graders in this regard, is that they're the sixth best pass blocking unit in the NFL. If you want to look at just pressures allowed this past week in week four in a win against Arizona, they were top five and pressures allowed again this past week. So from a pass blocking standpoint, where a lot of us, I think we're nervous coming into the year, certainly weren't confident. They've been outstanding. Do you know where they rank in a run blocking win rate so far this season? I do because you told me before the show, there are 32 teams in the NFL. They rank first about that. Number one, according to the ESPN RBWR, run block win rate metric. This line has been awesome. Left tackle. They don't even have a true one right now. Lucas has played most of the reps, but Coleman is coming on now playing half the reps. He'll be there starting left tackle in no time. He looks really good as a rookie at left guard. They bet on Nick Allegretti who'd been a backup with the Chiefs. He's been very good. He's banged up. Hopefully he'll play this weekend. At center, the 10 million dollars they spent per year on Tyler Beaudish looks like a win. He's been very, very solid in a position. Yep. That was just a revolving goal for them for a few years. Right guard. We knew Cosme. We'd already put him in sharp. He got an extension. He's good player. And right tackle Andrew Wiley is playing a lot better with this for whatever reason, coaching staff and group and the way that they're operating and getting the ball out. He has been better since he got here blocking in the run game in the past game. He actually ranks in the top 10 among tackles I saw today in run block win rate. Their offensive line to me is the biggest surprise that I have about this team that's I love that. Um, offensively, that's the, that's kind of one A from my pleasant surprises is there were a couple. I liked Cosme an awful lot. I was bullish on Beaudish didn't know about Allegretti to be honest with you. I was hopeful certainly, but last time, you know, the previous regime got a guy that was more of a career backup and said, you're our starter now didn't go particularly well. And then the tie, the tackle spots that were big risks and it shows that they knew what they were doing in terms of fit, design, uh, you know, not worrying about what these guys don't do, but emphasizing and accentuating what they do well, which, you know, it is coming through here at this point through this point of the season. The thing that surprised me, I guess looking at a negative, I just didn't think the defense would be this rough. Like I didn't think they'd be good. I never in a million years thought that this would be a top 10 group just because they got defensive coaches. I've played that game before. But being still, even after a good performance against Arizona, objectively good, good for any, any team of leagues sign up side on scene, 14 points, you allow 14 points in the game. Everybody takes that no matter what, right, doesn't matter what else is going on. They're still allowing the league worst quarterback rating. They're still allowing the second worst adjusted yards per attempt, meaning when you drop back to pass, what happens for Washington, it's the second worst in the league, even after a great performance, it just shows you how poor it's been through the first, uh, three weeks leading up to Sunday.