Grant and Danny

Chris Trapasso On The Recent Daniels' Struggles, Latest On Hayfield HS's Football Saga

11.26.24 Hour 4 1:00- Chris Trapasso covers the NFL for CBS Sports and he joins G&D to discuss the recent struggles of Jayden Daniels, Kliff Kingsbury, and the entire offense. 18:30- Hayfield High School has pulled themselves out of the VHSL Playoffs, and a Fairfax County school board member joins G&D to discuss that.

Duration:: 51m
Broadcast on:: 26 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

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The sponsor of our show is the law firm, Condorian Murad, that will help you update your last will and testament, and they'll set up a revocable trust for you and your family. Schedule a free consultation with our estate planning attorneys today by visiting kmloyers.com. Be sure to tell them we sent you to get a discount. It's kmloyers.com. On the guest hotline, we find our friend Chris Trappaso, CBS Sports. We've had him on over the years. Many times, a preview of the NFL Draft does some good deep dives for CBS, and he recently wrote about what was happening to Jaden Daniels, analyzing the commander's quarterbacks. Sudden decline was the headline, and he dove into a bunch of numbers. Chris, you are on in the nation's Capitol, buddy. Thanks for a few minutes. How are you? Hey, I'm doing very well. Guy. Thanks for having me on to talk to him, Jaden Daniels. Yeah. I always appreciate it. Quantify what we saw to start the season, and now what we've seen here of late, because overall, the numbers are still pretty impressive, and, you know, we have all those great memories, but it hasn't felt the same lately. What did we see early? What did we see now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's good to keep that just in the proper framework, that this is not someone that's suddenly, you know, we're talking about as a boss. I mean, he's still operating at a pretty high level, especially relative to how most rookies operate. Early on, the scheme was getting guys open. I wrote in my article that whether you think it was just natural ability or that scheme from Cliff Kingsbury in the first six weeks or so, when really the Jaden Daniels train took off. The commanders had four wide receivers in average separation score. There's a new analytics website out there, fantasypoints.com, that they're watching all the film, assigning a grade based on how open a receiver is on a given play, summing them up and averaging them by how many routes they've run. We had Luke McCaffrey, Daimy Brown, Terry McCorran, and the third one is escape. Oh, and Noah Brown, we're all in the top 25, and that was the only quarterback that had that. Well, and credit to Jaden Daniels and his understanding, maybe it's some of the VR that he's utilized. Maybe it hits his vast experience at the college level. He was understanding where to go with the football and throwing very accurately. Now, lately, I think like it really is the case with any quarterback in any situation, defenses are starting to adjust, they're starting to take away that first read. There's not as many open receivers underneath and at the intermediate level. And like we saw late in that game against the Cowboys, the first three quarters were not that spectacular, but late was, Daniels is still able to make some of those impressive throws, but those layups aren't there to get him to the 70, 80 percent completion. The yards after the catch for his entire team have kind of diminished over the last couple of weeks, these three straight commanders losses. So I think more so than anything else, and I kind of summarized my article with this, but let's see down the stretch here with the commander certainly in the thick of the NSC playoff race, if Jaden Daniels can elevate those around him and if it's not a wide open Noah Brown on a dig route, or the seam shots down the middle to Zach Earts that were netting big gains that haven't been there, let's see if he can do more beyond the scheme and beyond those first looks in this offense. I think he has the natural ability to do that. I think he elevated those around him at LSU, but I think he's just not able to rely so heavily on the scheme like he did in the first two months of the season. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, Chris, and it was great to see him running the ball again as well and explosively as he did against Dallas, because I think that could open some things back up. You know, that had been basically a huge part of his game that completely went away over the couple of weeks before Dallas, and then he went seven for 75 on the ground, but you point out he's completed 61% of his throws for about 6.4 yards per attempt. Three touchdowns, three interceptions over these last three games, which just doesn't even look like numbers that would be assigned to him based on what we saw previous to that. I'm curious though, you know, how much of this is him versus like a Kingsbury thing with the offense where we talk all the time about the second half Kingsbury regression. You pointed out if you take out the last five minutes of the Cowboys game, and I think that's totally fair to do because the first 55 were different. And then all hell broke loose and it was just a wild card of whirling nervous of, you know, maniacal football play, but they're 27th in EPA. They've been number one all year over a three week span, you know, prior to those last five minutes against Dallas 27th out of 32. Yeah, and I think that is a very fair question to ask. I'm sure you guys have talked about it all week and there's, you know, the history there with Cliff Kingsbury as an offensive coordinator in Arizona that, down the stretch, you can even go back to his Texas Tech days that, you know, a lot of hot starts and then teams would catch on and then the adjustments maybe weren't there. So for as much as, and this is interesting, for as much as Cliff Kingsbury has the NFL experience, he has the play calling experience at the collegiate level with Patrick Holmes, you know, you know, cross paths with Baker Mayfield, Kyle Murray, of course, he has that experience and Jane Daniels insane amount of experience at the collegiate level, but is only a rookie. I'm not necessarily much of a believer that all of a sudden Cliff Kingsbury is going to just totally drastically alter his scheme and make an insane amount of adjustments. We have the track record that we know he has not done that. I actually have more faith like you're mentioning in Jane Daniels starting to utilize his legs more when that first and maybe second rate isn't open that he understands he's usually like the fastest player on the field, maybe the rib injury is a little bit in the rear view mirror and we know that, you know, Dan Quinn has mentioned it hasn't really held him back, but he hasn't been able to practice as much. And I think, you know, all the practice reps you can get as a rookie are really important. So I actually have more faith that Daniels himself can make something out of nothing more frequently than hoping that Cliff Kingsbury is suddenly just going to be this great November and December play collar because he just never has been that type of play collar in the NFL or in college. Chris Trappaso CBS sports with the serum GND. So Chris, all off season I was screaming until I was blue in the face. Grant was sick of it. Everybody listening to the show was probably sick of it. I'm going, they're missing an opportunity. They are not doing enough giving Jane Daniels enough weapons. And for the first, you know, nine games, I look like a horse's ass as this offense was corn 36 a game pretty much every week and they're running up and down the field. And now all of a sudden it looks like maybe I was right as people have kind of caught up. Give me a win. Just your thoughts on that. And then, and then use the, the separation scores part of this is maybe a window into what's actually going on here with the offensive leg. Yeah. No, that's a really good point. And I actually wrote near the end of my article that, and this is kind of paraphrasing my own writing here, but that Washington is realizing that its scheme might not be brilliant and its past catching options might be good, but maybe not great. And to your point, that's kind of the general consensus, not just what I thought. I mean, Kerry McLaurin, we've all thought has been like a budding superstar. And we've seen him be that de facto number one in most games, he's the go-to guy, whether it's '86 there touched on last week, the catch against the Cincinnati Bengals early in the season on that early Monday night game. He's been that guy. Besides that, we all did go into the season thinking, okay, like what else do they have? Like Zach Urz, I think it's been a pleasant surprise at his age. Look, McCaffrey's athletic. I liked him coming out of rice, but I wasn't expecting him to be a big part of an offense. Dimey Brown, splash plays here and there, but never really consistent enough. I actually haven't checked what their average separation scores are lately, but I would assume they would have to be lower because in watching the film those first six weeks, again, I don't think it was all four of those guys were just running these amazing routes, getting opened by themselves. This scheme was getting them open underneath at the intermediate level and Daniels was doing a great job understanding again where to go with the football. So I would assume that those numbers are down a little bit and when you're a quarterback, you're not going to always have those wide open receivers. So again, it goes back to Daniels. Can he and collaboratively, Cliff Kingsbury come together and get the most out of what is probably a average at best skill position group in this entire NFL. I'm going to read an excerpt and I just want you to expound upon it and it goes into what you were just talking about in terms of the talent wide receiver through the first six weeks of the season. Washington was 10th in football and yak per reception at 5.6 yards Daniels was the only quarterback in football with four receivers in the top 25, which you've talked about in separation score. But this idea of yards after the catch that have gone away. Is that a ball placement thing or does a yak typically come from openness? Is that why you reference it and link it to separation score that theoretically, you know, the yak came from guys being wide open and that part has gone away. So I've watched all of Daniels drop X this season as part of this every Tuesday. I come out with a grading article for first and second year quarterbacks. I've been doing it for like five or six years now. I haven't noticed Jaden Daniels like, oh man, his ball placement. Like he had a, oh, say wide receiver open on a deep over, but he threw it behind him so he gets tackled. I think it's more scheme related and just player skill related. And again, when you look at this skill position group, McClellan, because of his pure speed that he's that low four, three guy, he's not going to make a ton of guys mess, but he's, if he gets any type of runway, he can really go Luke McCaffrey is also very fast. Noah Brown, Daimi Brown, not really yards after the catch guy, Zach Hertz was never really that type. So I think it's, it's more again, the scheme is not getting these receivers, not just open for Jaden Daniels, but open with space to pick up, you know, to change a five yard slant into a 15 yard game. You just haven't seen those, not even just a splash place down the field, but those intermediate that 10 to 20 yard games that I think were so prevalent in the first two months of this season. You mentioned the grading that you do on the young quarterbacks, which is a piece I always love. So what's been the high watermark for Daniels and where is he at now? Presumably, I mean, Nix has kind of caught him in the rookie of the year race. It seems like Daniels is the favorite and Nix is right behind him going into week 13. Now, but I'd be hard pressed to imagine just body of work full season. Daniels wouldn't still be the number one of this class, but I defer to you here. How do you kind of see that with your rankings now? Okay. This, this works out because I'm on a Washington radio station, but I really mean it. I'm given my objective analysis here. Jayden Daniels should still be late years ahead of Bo Nix in the offensive rookie of the year race. Like watching them and I'm talking about scheme and Jayden Daniels has been really relying on it. Bo Nix has been probably three times as reliant on the scheme that Sean Payton has given him in Denver. I mean, it is swing pass screen wide receiver screen, tunnel screen to the tight end, RPL like he has not been asked to do very much as a quarterback. The defense has played well in Denver. They've won a couple of games against the lesser opponents and the touchdown numbers are starting to get relatively close because a lot of yards after the catch there in Denver. In terms of Daniels, high water marks, I mean, I'm looking at the grades now week 3, I gave them an A plus, week 4, a minus. And then really it hasn't kelv off considerably during this three game losing streak. I gave them a C minus and week 10, a D plus and week 11. But then this past week, even though the numbers weren't good and the offense was stagnant, I still gave him a B. I thought individually as a thrower, he didn't really put the ball into harm's way beside that screen pass that was just a great play by the defensive lineman. And then like we mentioned, even though it was ugly the first three quarters, what he did in those final five minutes was, you know, nothing short of spectacular. So I don't think the sky is falling or the league has completely figured out Jayden Daniels in terms of what he can do on the football field. I think a lot of times when he is taking off, he's still surprising defenders with how fast he is. The arm strength is still there. And like I said earlier, I don't think that he suddenly has this accuracy issue. It was not a problem at LSU. And in the first two months of the season, it's just that he's not getting more out of those throws that were the five yard passes that were going for 15 yards like he did in the first two months of the season. So what are you seeing from what's being taken away? I guess in other words, you know, tape, tape gets out. Defense coordinators get paid too, obviously really smart football players are there looking like they understand what Kingsbury and company want to do. So what's what's available that he's missing? I mean, you see where I'm kind of getting at, right? Where it's I'm going to watch in the ship sink and I'm going, is there anything we can do? We're just going to sort of go down like Terminator two style with the thumbs up heading into the lava. Like what are we doing? Yeah, I know. Good point. That's a good visual too. So I think middle of the field at that 10 to 19 yard range that kind of the analytics department or the analytics industry would call the intermediate level. So many of those dig routes where you would get a vertical from the slot and then a dig right in behind it, whether that was Noah Brown, whether that was Terry McClellan, teams are taking that away. They're sinking that, you know, one of those two off ball linebackers to kind of take that throw away down the field. We haven't seen it. I mean, certainly we saw the 86 yarder kind of in in desperation mode against the Cowboys, but early on there was three or four early in the game deep strikes down the field where you're still getting like what I think Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen and Justin Herbert get a lot of that too high safety shell where they're saying, yeah, we're going to let you complete it underneath. And like I mentioned earlier, when they were 10th in the league and yak, they were taking those over the middle slants, RPOs, comebacks, shallow crosses and they were turning into positive gains. They were moving the football. They were moving the sticks. You know, they had what was it? So many drives in a row that were that were not punting the football or they were scoring points on like every drive for a couple of games. Teams down the field and at the intermediate level, those chunk plays haven't really been there as frequently. We've seen Zekker still produce a lot of those touched on the late in games over the last three weeks. And C two has kind of been taken away from being that rhythmic guy early in games over the middle for Jane Daniels, Chris Trappaso of CBS sports. I guess we'll go a full circle here in the final 30 seconds or so. But if you were the GM of the bears and there was a redraft today, Daniels goes one or is would you not say that? Oh, that's tough because again, I'm very fortunate that I have this unique perspective of watching all these quarterbacks. The last few weeks, Caleb Williams has played some really, really good football too. And the arm talent is there, the ability to escape defenders also there. I would still probably say that Daniels goes one because what I think is kind of a sneaky point that we've been mentioning here, the scrambling ability of Daniels is ahead of Caleb Williams. He is just a faster, more explosive athlete. We knew that coming out. And I think anything that Caleb Williams can do as a passer, Daniels can do as well. But when it comes to, hey, turning the corner, Caleb Williams pretty athletic to maybe run seven, eight yards, Jane Daniels can turn the corner and turn it into a 30 or a 40 yard gain. So I think that's the difference between the two going from college and then what we've seen so far in the NFL. Chris, great with us, man. Awesome. Peace is always and appreciate the time. Thanks guys. Yeah. Go read it. It's fantastic. CBS sports is where you can find Chris Trappaso's work. And Danny on the fan next, we're going to be joined by a member of the Fairfax County school board. There is a ongoing and seemingly ever developing so much, what's in terms out of Hayfield High School, which is over in the Alexandria area in Virginia, where a coach and allegedly two dozen players followed him to Hayfield so that they could go try to win a state championship. He'd won the last two state titles at another school of freedom Woodbridge. Well, A.D. based on some leak text messages we now know knew about the plan. Sounds like maybe the principal did as well. He's the one that just pulled them out of the playoffs after they were banned, then put back in the playoffs, they won in the first round. Now we're into the second round of the playoffs and the playoffs have to be sorted out again. It's just been a mess. We'll talk to the school board member at a Fairfax who's got some intel for us next on G and D. Dores, take us to Summers Away, or Winter Adventures, and Afternoon Getaways. 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Classics like The Office, Martin, and Friends that I never get sick of, and all of the incredible originals on AMC+ from Mad Men to Orphan Black. Don't forget their library of more than 75,000 movies and shows, all of which I can save and re-watch any time for a whole year. Never miss a minute of shows like Gypsy Rose, Life After Lock Up on Lifetime, Yellow Stone, or Fatal Attraction. Best of all, with Philo, you get all this for just $28 a month. No contracts, no hassles. Just one subscription, and a world of entertainment. So go to Philo.tv and check it out for a free seven-day trial. That's P-H-I-L-O dot TV to start watching. Welcome back to GND, thanks to Earl Forcy for the update. It's not very often we talk about prep sports on this show, but there was a story that caught our attention a couple of weeks back that we've actually logged a lot of time on. And that is the controversy in high school football, out of Hayfield High School, where a state championship level coach who has a ton of success on the field, one of the most decorated and accomplished coaches in high school football in the last few decades, based on the programs he's put together, came to Hayfield, was followed by and/or recruited, right? Allegedly. Maybe upwards of two dozen players, that was the big debate where they recruited, weren't they? We're rules broken. We talked about this quite a bit, but it's been a fiasco where initially nothing happened. The superintendent in Fairfax suggested that she had done an investigation, but didn't show any of her work and said everything was fine. Well, since we last spoke about this a few days ago, text messages have been leaked via the media and a journalist where we now know that the athletic director, new to some extent that everything wasn't on the up and up, he's taken a leave of absence and I believe it's been terminated, it sounds like the principal at this point has removed Hayfield from the playoffs. So even though the VHSL tried to Fairfax County stood with Hayfield, got them back into the playoffs on this judge ruling, they're back out of the playoffs and everything is thrown up in the air again for the remaining teams. And so to get more on what's going on now and how we got here, we've got a member of the Fairfax County School Board, Mateo Dunne on the show. Mateo, thanks for the time. We appreciate it. How are you? I'm doing well trying to, you know, escape from the never ending scandal. I mean, it is unbelievable. It's incredible. So let's just go back to when you first heard about it and how is it possible that with all of this happening and the investigation being done by the superintendent in Fairfax County, it wasn't really until the final week of the season that a punishment was handed down that ended up getting reversed anyway. But the reason that everything got so screwed up was that nobody acted until the very end and now we've gone back and forth on the punishment. What took so long? You know, there are more questions and answers here and I have to say while, you know, there are many great things that have been accomplished under this superintendent, this scandal has been handled fairly and competently from the get go. And you know, there were rumblings as early as February when this coach was hired that there was something amiss, right? I mean, the football community is a small community and people tend to talk and we see from these text messages that the athletics director was indeed talking to people freely disclosing his plans, right? So this wasn't exactly a well planned conspiracy by all reports and then we had no action taken really until the summer. So why did STPS wait so long to start a serious investigation? We don't know. And then when it finally did, you know, as a matter of course, routinely, STPS hires outside law firms all the time for matters of much smaller scope and magnitude, but here you have what might be the biggest local sports scandal and Fairfax County history, maybe the history of the Commonwealth and you have 31 kids coming from other schools to Hayfield and we don't hire an outside law firm. We try to do it in-house, but here's the thing, we don't have an in-house detective agency. We don't have any capacity or expertise or experience to do an investigation of this magnitude. And so what was done was floppy, slapdash, really thrown together at the last minute. And was that the superintendents doing? Michelle Reed, or why did it happen that way? That was a decision for the superintendent. You know, I called in August for an outside investigation because when she finished her investigation, it was so sloppy that I said, you know, there's no credibility here. I heard from my constituents and I said, "We need to bring in an outside law firm to really get to the bottom of this and make recommendations how to fix this before we get too far into the football season." But my motion lost nine to three, and there was just too much deference to the superintendent. And now here we are with new allegations, new revelations like hour by hour, day by day, and we seem to be in a tailspin. And so that's why I and two of my colleagues yesterday called for an independent investigation that's also been called for by the city of Fairfax School Board and it's been called for almost universally bar constituents. We need to know what the facts are and chart a new course forward because I've even called for the superintendent and her legal counsel to be recused from the investigation because I just have a complete loss of confidence and her ability to navigate our way out of this scandal. So there's a lot that's crazy to me about this, so I almost said the craziest part. I don't know that you can rank those. As you said, new twists and turn every day, the initial report, it seems like there wasn't much interest in finding anything out. I don't know if you're a movie fan, but it reminds me of the Naked Gun where Frank Dredbin is in front of the burning building with all the explosions saying there's nothing to see here and everyone was supposed to buy that when everybody with half a brain could see that something was at best the most unusual thing you'd ever seen in local high school football going all the way back to the springtime to your point. What's the motivation? That's the part I don't quite understand as to why the information or whatever was coming forward or coming out, people didn't seem to be interested in that at the superintendent and school board level. Your thoughts there? You know, I have said since the beginning that there are two facts that are irreconcilable. One is we have 31 players transfer from other schools to Hayfield and while it's true that for decades there have been one or two players transferring at a time, there have been rule violations in the past, there's a difference between one or two and then 31. That's driving a truck through the loophole, not just, you know, starting around the edges. So that's one fact. And the second thing is the conclusion that the superintendent reached that there's nothing wrong with that, right? As you said, common sense should have guided us from the beginning that when an interim investigation that sloppy slapdash finds there's nothing wrong with that. Well, the only conclusion is there's something wrong with the internal investigation or if, you know, people say it looks like a cover up and at this point, you know, if it cracks like a duck, walks like a duck, maybe it is a duck. I mean, I'm always hesitant to call conspiracy or cover up, but what else can we call it at this point when we're unwilling to open the door, let in some sunshine and have an impartial third party come in and tell us what's what to interview relevant witnesses, look at relevant documents and make recommendations how we can restore the integrity of our athletics program and rebuild public traffic in our FCPF leadership. Mateo Don is a school board member in Fairfax County joining us on Grant and Danny. We found out yesterday a field was pulling itself from the playoffs and I have that correct, right? This was not that the superintendent actually after the text messages came out said, oh, well, now there is a bit of a smoking gun here. We're going to do something about this. The principal actually made the decision, correct? I don't think the principal would have made the decision without the approval of the superintendent. That's not how our school system works. So you think that the approval of is different though than her saying you should do this. How do you think it happened that they're out of the playoffs? I think the superintendent made that decision. There's no way that principal made that decision after everything that happened previously. I don't have any reason to think that he's only going to try to back his way out of a scandal that really started under his leadership and by his decisions. So as far as the future goes, like there are people listening right now and for the record, I don't agree that this happens everywhere because I can't find and don't think there's ever been one case of a coach bringing 30 players or whatever the number was in one off season to a program to kind of build a champion, right? You see players transfer in to be quarterbacks at power programs all over the Commonwealth. You're I know very specific to Fairfax County where the laws and the rules are you either live near the school or you don't go there. But with sports, there are transfers. There are people that come and go from different programs one at a time. And there's even this idea that, you know, if I want to go to a theater school and I'm a theater kid, I can transfer and do that, but I'm not supposed to athletically. What do you say to those people that argue that and also how do we clean this up going forward? Obviously there's not going to be another school probably brazen enough to try to have an entire new starting lineup, but there are kids that do this year in and year out going from one school to another. And I'm in full agreement. Let me be clear, you know, there have definitely been rule violations in terms of onesies and twosies, right? But I'm not aware of any other scandal in our history where 31 have, you know, an almost, you know, half or more of an entire football team have tried to transfer not just in one season but in one month. It all happened within a few weeks and April of 2024. It's just, you know, the brazenness of it, as you say, is shocking. And where we are right now, we, you know, people say, "Oh, well, VHSL acted on the eve of the playoffs." Well, they were giving ample opportunity to FCPS to clean house, FCPS hasn't cleaned house. And so VHSL had to act. And meanwhile, you still have these rules that some people criticize as vague, but no one else had trouble complying with previously, right? So maybe we do need to clarify the rules just to say, "Hey, you can't do something that's blatantly illegal," and also strengthen the enforcement regime so we get VHSL to actually impose penalties, hold schools accountable on a more expeditious basis. But frankly, this is something that FCPS should have cleaned up last spring, far in advance of football season. There's no reason that we should have delayed until now trying to hold that director of student athletics accountable. And we'll see what other heads roll in the coming days. So Mateo, I'm a Fairfax County resident and my children go to Fairfax County schools. And here's a part of it that I care about, I think, a lot more than most folks do, okay? Just for example, the school where my kids are, there are too many classes and trailers. They could probably use a little bit more floor space or, you know, another roof or an expansion of some kind. But I don't think that's unique to us. What I don't like seeing is what looks to me, whatever word I have to use to excuse it or to all get sued is made up jobs for parent boosters or people that are in very cozy with this coach who gets an extra security guard salary that, again, doesn't seem to be like that may not be requiring all that many hours in the day, always setting up a million football camps. And then these cash app donations to be part of the football program, where's the accounting on that? That sort of stuff to me reeks of shadiness at best to be the most kind. And I know everyone's concerned about the recruiting element of things and that's fine. But to me, I'm kind of going, we should be talking more about this part. Your thoughts there? Well, you know, one of the most disturbing things that were in those text messages that were published in the newspaper the other day to me was when that athletic director said, you know, I want to win and I want to make money. And that caught my eye because I said, he's an FCPF employee. He doesn't get a cut of the gate. How does he make money? And you know, we can all speculate, is it like a gambling situation? Is it like a boxer taking a dive in the third round or is it a situation where he's going to get a cut of some corporate sponsorship? I don't know the answer to that, but it raises a lot of questions. And you know, there are no good answers to this point, which is really why we need an independent investigation because as you said, there are just more questions and answers and we need to get to the bottom of this. We can restore, you know, the integrity of our athletics program, which really is an important part of our schools, but we need to focus on providing a world-class education, not in trailers, as you said, but in permanent school buildings so that every kid can realize their potential. And right now we're failing in that mission because all we can talk about day in day out is this scandal, which is of ever growing proportions, growing from what was a very local news story to now national, right? Mateo, we've been trying to get people to talk on the record about this for a couple of weeks. So we appreciate your turning our call and coming on the show that the people willing to speak about it on all ends of the parties here are few and far between. So thank you. It's my pleasure. Have a great day. You got it. It's Mateo Don who's a school board member in Fairfax County, joining us on Grant and Danny to his credit, he called back at the beginning of the school year for a full investigation independently into this that just documented. You wouldn't sign this blind letter support. And he got voted down like nine to two. Absolutely. He's like, wait a second. This investigation, there's no one showing their work. We have no idea what she did. She's not an investigator like, why is this good enough for everyone? That was the NFL, the equivalent of the NFL or a report that, yep, everything's fine with Dan Snyder Company. And if they were to listen to him, maybe that the outcome would have been better for everyone. And I mean everyone, because now you've got kids that did things the right way at Hayfield that are getting screwed. You've got, I mean, the two plays the three tonight, Lake Braddock plays West Springfield and the four Fairfax, meaning seeds, is now getting a buy until the final to come out of this little region here. So the two versus the three, the better teams beating each other up then short week play the four who gets a buy because Hayfield's booted. I mean, everybody has lost every which way the entire time. The kids have been really on the wrong end of this. 100, 636, 10067, I believe we've actually got a parent of a Hayfield player who wants to join us in just a couple of moments. But what do you guys make of what you just heard from the school board member and, you know, where we're headed in high school sports, what was Hayfield not getting to compete in the postseason. A step toward maybe a future where there's less of a transfer portal at the high school level. And is that necessary? You're listening to the fan. Welcome back to GND on the fan at the top of the hour at six o'clock, Dan or Lobsky on Jaden Daniels yesterday went through the tape had some observations. We'll let you know what he had to say about Daniels will play some of that audio for you. But we've been talking a lot about Hayfield, you know, they dominated everybody all year out, scored them 600 to 13. They were running a Dematha level program in a district where the teams are not on that level. You're simply not there. You're in the football district in terms of like the quality of play at that level. Division six, I think it is in the state and that they're like, let's, let's go run a good counselor. The math there. And so they were just waxing the floor with everybody. They're told a week before the playoffs start, they're not going to be in the day of the playoffs by way of a judge. They get back in and now everyone's ready to play in the playoffs and a team that was a playoff team gets bounced and, you know, at the concession stand at like Braddock and all these places where they're planning for a game and to spend thousands of dollars on food. There's no game two hours later. It's just been a fiasco. Well, now Hayfield's back out of the playoffs and a parent, I believe, of one of the players on Hayfield joins us now. Chris and Alexandria. What's up, Chris? Hey, guys. How are you? Good man. Very well. Thanks for the call. Listen, bottom line is this guy got hired, he recruited players and there's no doubt about it. They've been unbelievable students, they've been unbelievable people to kids that were here like my son. But what we need to understand, and I went to Hayfield, I graduated in 2001, had a kid early, no doubt about it, but people have been recruiting kids for a very long time in this district. It used to be a district that composed of Robinson Lake Braddock, Hayfield, Annondale, so on and so forth, but people have been recruiting for a long time, and yes, we turned a blind head to it. That's no doubt about it. And if you want to call them homeless, you want to call them whatever, these kids had nothing to do with it. And the fact that that school district board member, whatever it is, that we have a lot of questions for me as a parent. If you have a lot of questions, we shouldn't have been pulled out until you have all the answers. That's the bottom line. So I have a few questions for you, so your son is on the team, yeah? He is. Okay. So first of all, I do want to say, I do feel awful for the kids. It sounds like like your son that did nothing wrong, and even the kids, frankly, they came in that now don't get to play in the playoffs. I don't think they're the bad guys in this story. I think they're victims and I feel awful and I hope they're not dealing with, there's a lot of media coverage and things. There's a lot of harassment and people being untowardly toward them, but I guess my question to you is, what lesson does that send and what is to prevent anyone from doing this in the future if they are allowed to go win a state championship? Because you said, well, this has been happening. There's a player here and a player there where somebody moves or has an address or whatever. It has never happened before that dozens of kids and a head coach come into a program, not like a pillar program like a stone bridge where you're going or Madison baseball where you're going because they're the best in the area, but a program that's never won before to go win a championship. So let's say you're right that speeding happens and people go 75 and 80 miles an hour. Well, they're going 200 miles an hour. What should we do? Nothing? Okay. So let me give you an example of a program that has five players, five. Sarah Lawson lived in the West Potomac district and played for West Springfield. She averaged over 40 points a game at West Springfield, her senior year. She benched 235 as a female. Tell me that that doesn't change a program. Well, it does, but I'll tell you though, Chris, what my dad told me when I would fail a test and I'd say so to Jeff Howe, he'd say, I'm not Jeff Howe's dad. So my question is that was wrong and should have been dealt with. But right now, we didn't get dealt with this car. You're right. It didn't. It didn't. And that's wrong. But so we're just should do nothing now. Again, this is the most public opportunity. This is everybody's paying attention. What if they do nothing? Why wouldn't another school do the same thing next year? Do you think it's good for high school sports if teams keep doing this? It's the NIL following down. It's just flowing down. And if you don't get that, like it's how much can I take? If you give me 100 yards of a leash, I'm going to give you 1,000 yards of a leash. They're going to try it until they get tested. Do I like it? No, my son didn't get to play this year because, listen, those boys were ballers. And I'm-- They're so good. Yeah, they're great. Yeah, I love sports. And how do I teach my son? You've got to work harder. That's the lesson I have to teach because this is where we are. But if you think that this is going to stop it, they're going to try another way. The NIL, if we can pay players, it's just going to float down. We have to understand this is the new day. When the NIL started in college sports, this is just the same. Chris, let me cut you all super quick. I think you're probably right about the big picture and the grand scheme of things. There are rules written down. There were violations here. It seems, right? So your big picture is probably right. That's not what we're dealing with right now, though. Isn't it? Don't we have something on the books? We have some pretty brazen nose thumbing at those rules, so nothing should happen. I'm not saying nothing should happen. I think something should happen. Obviously, the AD has already been fired. Honestly, the principal should be fired. The principal acts like nothing is her fault. It's on her watch. But at the end of the day, as the individual you interviewed last, we still have a lot of questions. Again, we're making decisions before all the questions are answered. I don't know. But I don't know. Are the questions ever all going to be answered in fairness? Well, we haven't done a full investigation, though. Well, so that part, if you're pointing, ask me to get the back of the Fairfax County School Board and they're heel dragging on this. I'm not going to. You're right. The 11th hour screwed it up. That's a total screw up. That's 100% true. And to me, once you let this toothpaste out of the tube, I would have just let the guys play. And then I don't know what else to do about that, but to me, it was back in February when the violation started. That it should have been done. So I'm looking there, but it's no there are no winners here to make before that. Some of the violations I move for that students were in in September and October and November. There you go. That's where if you're going to call them violations and we'll see which ones are violations and which ones aren't, we'll see. We'll remember several players got ruled ineligible initially based on the addresses not working, right? Right. So I mean, that is some evidence that, you know, at least initially that it wasn't all done in a way where everyone had the right address, no? Again, you're not going to you're not going to catch me telling you that's not right or wrong. My son lives two miles away from the school and I'm upset that he didn't get to play this year, but I also turn around and say how impressed I am with the kids that showed up that they went to class, that they got good grades. I still wanted my son to play. Of course. We're not going to disagree on that point. But what I will tell you is these students, no matter where they're from, no matter they call themselves homeless, not homeless, they had a home, whatever. They let them start playing, you let them finish playing and then you deal with it after the fact, the way that they're flip-flopping, they let they let schools out of the playoff because they let hayfield in. Totally. Sorry. Chris, I completely agree with you that when the season started and they did basically the superintendent was like, oh, we did an investigation. It's fine. Then the week before for the VHSL to say they're out, then the day of for them to be back in. Now for them to be out again, that's all ridiculous. The back and the fourth is I think it's absurd. It's absolutely egregious. Yeah. The yoyoing is ridiculous. I totally agree with you on that. But my bigger point, fellas, is there were kids there that have been there and there are some seniors there that have been there for four years and you were taking it away from them, make a decision or no make a decision. The wrong decision was made this week to pull hayfield out. Once you put them in because the kids that were there have nothing to do with this because you screwed up because you kicked the AVF, that's all irrelevant. So I agree, Chris, let me say this real quick and we got to let you go in a minute, but I appreciate you. Sorry, since you're the only reason we're keeping you so long is it's fascinating to chat with someone who's on the inside of this. The only thing I would say is I totally agree with your son and so many other kids there, the new kids, the old kids at hayfield, that this is not fair to them. But if they continued to play and just absolutely destroyed West Springfield and Lake Braddock and everyone else they played in their path, how is that fair to those other kids and what messages sent? Well, technically it's not fair, but at the same time for a five seed to have a buy is not fair either. Totally. Yeah. I think it's a four seed and nothing about we're not looking at fair anymore. I agree. Fair taxes. Fair facts as they. Oh, it's not fair. They got a buy. They didn't bring in 30 kids, you know, if someone's getting screwed, it might be the team that violated the rules, yeah, well, let's let's define violating the rules again. There's loopholes and everything. Let's define violating the rules before we define the week. So you think everything that happened in the rules before? Do you think everything that happened was on the up and up then? I'm not saying it was. Okay. Well, then I then we got an argument for their loophole. Yeah. I appreciate the call. Oh, we're way late. We're going to get in trouble for being late. Good. Thank you. Oh, we got to get to a break. Great to hear from a parent who's in the thicker things. And again, I hope everyone's leaving the kids alone because they on all sides, you know, the hayfield kids like this is not about them if I'm being frank, a G and D on the fan. 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 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, casually insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. 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