The Kevin Sheehan Show - Recapping Memorable Win In Cincy

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Kevin and Thom with a recap of Washington's memorable win last night in Cincinnati. Thom expressed his love for the rookie QB. Kevin's "Game Take" included a breakdown of the historic performance by Jayden Daniels.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it, but you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. He just woke up Washington Nation. I mean, I spent time there at RFK and FedEx Field as a player. I know what those fans can bring. I know what a home field advantage that they had had for so many years,

and it's been a long time. And I feel bad for those suffering fans. But I can only imagine if you were a Washington Redskins fan, a Washington Commanders fan, and you're watching this game, it must feel really good because you don't want to annoy anybody right away, but I thought coming into this game that he had some intangibles, and he certainly has the athletic ability and all the things that you look for. But his intangibles, I thought, could take him over the top, and I really like him, and I think he's going to have a fantastic career. What I witnessed tonight, you know, well, time will tell,

but I would be really shocked, and I'm happy for Washington fans who have been suffering for as long as they have. Tommy's here. I am here. That was Troy Aikman, pretty excited and optimistic about Jaden Daniels. We've got our full recap show here today, but I do want to let everybody know that I did a show very late last night early this morning. Kind of a first blush reaction to what was an historic night for the quarter of. I had Tyler Biotish call in from the locker room, the starting center. So that's on there as well. So you can find that. It was a pretty short podcast from earlier this morning.

But I'll have my total recap coming up, what I liked, what I didn't like, everything else from the game. Tommy will have his thoughts. But Troy Aitman believes what we discussed the other day that if they went in and won the game and the quarterback played well, that it might be a bit of a conversation changer. What do you think? Well, first of all, not to basically be a downer here,

but it's kind of a low point when your hated enemy feel sympathy for you. Yes. He's done that before. There is that point. I know he had said that before. But, you know, if you're a commander's fan, you're thinking, oh, my God, the last person I need to hear about how miserable we are is Troy Aikman.

Yeah. Okay. Right. Look in the mirror. But everything else, I mean, how could it not be a conversation changer? We saw, like you said, a historic performance by a quarterback in his third NFL game. It's, we saw something we hadn't seen before, period. I mean, in terms of winning the game and feeling good, it's a feeling.

I'm sure for commanders fans they haven't had in a very long time. But to see that kind of quarterback play, and, you know, it wasn't like found money. Okay, this is your number two draft pick. Okay, this isn't like your six-round draft pick all of a sudden coming off the bench and turning in a historic performance and you're saying, wow, maybe we found something here. You expected to find something here, and last night you found it. Last night for sure, you found that he met or exceeded expectations. And for a second round draft pick, for this franchise, that's gold.

The show's presenting sponsor, as always, is Wind Donation. Call them at 86690 Nation or head to Windonation.com. Mention my name for a free in-home estimate. You know, the conversation changed your podcast from last week was really more about this season. Like, I understand the lead from last night is this incredible performance, one of the all-time great performances by a rookie quarterback in NFL history. I would put it up there with some of the great quarterbacked games in franchise history.

Oh, absolutely. Now, you know, I said last night on the podcast, it's not Doug Williams in the Super Bowl. You know, it's not Mark Rippin throwing six touchdown passes in a game. I'm sure Joe Thysman and Sonny Jurgensen had games that were greater. But, you know, the context of it being this was a coming out party. This was an introduction to everybody. I'm wondering if a 1 p.m. Sunday game would have generated as much attention and reaction as a Monday night game did last week where all of the talk, you know,

was exclusive to Jaden Daniels last night and this morning. But the conversation was really, in terms of it being changed by a win, was about this season. And this is where, you know, I want to make sure that the people who have been out there talking about, got to let it breathe, you know, this isn't the year. It's okay if they go five and 12 or six and 11 or seven and 10. You know, as long as we get to the end of the year and it looks like he's the right guy. I get it when we get to the end of the year. If we get to the end of the year and they're 7 and 10, I'm going to start thinking about, yeah,

but what did we get out of the year? Looks like we found our quarterback. Looks like the head coach is decent along with staff. McCaffrey's good. Sanra still's good. They got some good young players. That means Adam Peters may be doing his job. But in the moment, I can't think that way.

This is the GD NFL. Everybody's in this thing. And they just won a game on the road. With unstoppable offense, one of the best quarterback games in years. By the way, the number one PFF quarterback game of the season so far in years, as far as this franchise goes. They're two and one. They're in first place in the NFC East. I think this season is on.

You know, as our good friend Steve Zabin would say, let's go have ourselves a season now. Because they haven't punted in two games. They are, when you have a quarterback, and for right now, it looks like they have one, anything's possible. Yes. Okay, I understand what the limitations are, and there are limitations on this team because the defense threw three games anyway. But, yeah, they may have found their quarterback, and this might add to the building

block season, the rebuilding season. And, oh, by the way, I can't wait for 2025, 2026. No. You don't have any clue what will happen between now and then. You've got to, as an NFL fan, you've got to live in the moment. It changes so quickly. And they may be good enough now to go win more games than they lose. Oh, I think you're preaching to the choir today.

I think most people, I think the ones that were like saying, oh, if we're 5 and 12, you know, we can live with that as long as we see, you know, some progress from the young quarterback. That's hedging their bets. I think that's disappeared or at least like diminished significantly today. I think today people are looking at the NFL right now, the rest of the season, and thinking about the possibilities instead of limiting the possibilities. I think for the most part from what I've seen on social media and talking to a couple of fans last night,

That they do expect a season now because they have a quarterback who can deliver a season. And that's what I meant last week. If they win this game and he plays well, it's a conversation changer about this year. So I agree with you. I think a lot of people watched last night and said, 24, why not us? Why not us? They didn't beat an 0-and-3 team now, but the Bengals are not a bad team. I heard you talking about this with somebody on the radio on the way in.

I mean, they came within one point of beating the Super Bowl champions the week before on the road. Okay, so they're not a bad team. Yeah. So, I mean, this is not a diminished win because of their opponent. You went into their house, a seven and a half point favorite. Underdog. Yes. Yeah.

And you beat that favorite. So, look, I, I, there aren't enough. adjectives to describe what Jane Daniels did last night and how he handles the you know I was so impressed with the poise yeah the week before you fell in love last week yes you know well now now I mean the poise the poise in that Terry McCorren touchdown pass and and his his quote after the game where he said you know I knew I was going to get hit I knew I was going to take a shot but I wanted to give I knew if I gave my guy a chance he would go get it.

Yeah. I mean, my God, how can you not fall in love with a guy like that? How about the throw? Oh, my God. Yes. This from H.T.T. Dubs gave us five stars on Apple. Thank you. H.T. Dubs. I was walking my dog and got lightheaded and about passed out after hearing Tom's evaluation of Jaden Daniels. He's coming around after all. I think the Rock is a little bit more talented than his evaluation time will tell. Keep the great pods rolling boys. And then this from our guy Ivan down in Florida.

I think, Kevin, you've reached the giddy level. The question of the day, however, has Tom reached the giddy level yet? I think he reached the giddy level at hello last week, pretty much. Yeah, last night was really something. I want to mention something because I had this caller today on this show say, you know, we have this PTSD thing going on as a fan base, and I was just waiting for something bad to happen. I was waiting for the onside kick to be converted,

for them to go down and win the game, and this incredible, you know, night end in a loss. and somebody else actually said even if they had lost, you would have felt good about Jaden Daniels. Yeah, I would have felt shitty about the loss, though. I actually, there was a moment where I felt that way. I thought when Cincinnati went down, it was 31 to 20, they went down in about 18 seconds and scored a touchdown.

Missed the two-point conversion, although that was definitely defensive pass. Yes, it was on chin. It's 3126, and it was, the drive that started with nine minutes and 42 seconds to go, Washington needing to do something with the drive, because let's face it, what we do know now or have a pretty strong indication of is that defensively, they're not very good.

So you've got to make your offense, your best defense, and you've got to score on almost every drive, which, by the way, they've been successful doing. It's been two games. And they had a false start on the first snap on that drive, and I'm like, here we go. you know, sometimes you can be so great, but the big spot pressure on the road, you know, false start, the nerves start to get the better of some of these players. I never thought it was going to get the better of him.

Like, although I'm like, you know, will he throw a ball that gets tipped up into the air, should be caught, gets picked off, and, you know, the one mistake. Because last night, one mistake could have cost them the game. That's how, you know, fine line it was because they couldn't stop Cincinnati. But like he did last week, he just delivered over and over again down the field. They overcame first and 15 in two plays. They overcame a second and 20, which included the fourth and four, which, you know, they were definitely, you know, there's a lot made about him waving over to the sideline. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

It was the only play to go for it. They were at the Cincinnati 39-yard line. There was just over four minutes to go. It was fourth and four. You're not going to kick a 56-yard field goal and potentially give them the ball at the 46-yard line or midfield. You're not going to punt it back to them up five. You know, and Quinn actually said after the game, I gave them a lot of credit for a lot of things, but we get some credit on that one. We were going for it.

Of course they were. And they convert that. And then the third and seven throw to Terry, which, by the way, there was some confusion. They had to call a time out. Then they barely got the 11th player back on the field for that snap. And it's zero coverage blitz, or at least that's the look. They did drop a couple of guys back. But he's got a free runner.

You know as a quarterback in that coverage, somebody's coming at you unblocked. It's planned that way. You know that. They're bringing more than you've got to block it. And you've just got to let it go. And he let it go with Terry McLaurin at the 19-yard line. and the ball landed six, seven yards into the end zone right in his hands. It was an amazing throw.

It was an absolutely amazing throw. What we saw last night in some instances is we saw growth. We saw growth from Jane Day. We saw a guy who, I think it was early in the third quarter or the fourth quarter. I forget. They were down around the eight-yard line of Cincinnati. and I forget what down it was. And he completed like, they were on a nine-year line.

He completed an eight-yard pass to Noah Brown, down to the one. Yeah. But he was ready to run. He was ready to run. All of a sudden, stopped, planted his feet and found Noah Brown. That's something where maybe last week he would have just ran, you know? So he showed. No, he definitely ran this week or scrambling.

or extended with eyes down the field. He made a couple of throws to Ertz that way. And, you know, he grew within the game on the play that he threw the touchdown pass to Terry McCorn against that zero coverage look. He knows he's got to put the ball in a spot where Terry has a chance. It was either the drive before or two drives before. They were, he threw one to Terry versus the same coverage. They came after him.

and he just let it go quickly and early to a spot that nobody could catch it. I actually think he should have thrown it to Ertz underneath. But he came back and he said, this time I got to make a throw and it's got to go earlier and it's got to go to the spot. And, you know, this was, I mean, you know, we mentioned a lot on the show last night. I did some of the numbers.

But for those of you that are listening to the show for the first time, What he did last night at 21 out of 23, that completion percentage is all-time high for a rookie quarterback. He was... And the two incompletions were both long bombs. They were both long plays. They were the one that I just talked about to Terry versus the zero coverage and the one in the first half that he badly overthrew. under pressure as well when Terry had wide open space because his defender fell down. His 21 of 23, 91.3% completion percentage all time for a rookie quarterback.

He also became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for at least two touchdowns, run for at least three touchdowns without throwing an interception in his first three games. It was so impressive, but at the same time, it's like, I know, the skill set and the talent is not surprising to me. This is what you saw at the college level, and all of these skills are kind of relatable to the NFL today. You had to find out if the other stuff was part of that, and that's what Troy Aitman spoke to a little bit. Yes, he did. You know, the intangible part. stuff. And that's the part you don't know from afar.

You know, does he have the work ethic? Is he, you know, football IQ high? You know, is he a good leader? Quinn has talked about all summer long, and I talked to Scott about this the other day because Scott sat down with him out in Ashburn last week for last night's Monday night countdown. And he said Quinn had kind of told him the same thing and others had told him that, you know, when you're the young guy coming into, you know, a business or a locker room and there's a lot expected. There is this, you know, inside straight you got to hit. It's like you've got to inspire confidence, legitimate confidence, because you're competent, without coming off as arrogant. Like there's a humility that you have to have so that people aren't off put by you.

Here's what I call it. No one when to be a rookie and knowing when to be a veteran. That's the balance. Yeah. No one how to act like a veteran when he need to and then know how to. to act like a rookie when you need to. Apparently, he has, you know, hit that, you know, over and over again since the beginning. And, you know, we don't need to get into the RG3 comparison. There are some comparisons. Certainly shock and all was similar to last night, you know, his very first game in New Orleans and the way people felt.

This is what I wrote about in my column that may have been posted already, is that, I mean, For people who say, well, we've seen this before. For one thing, you haven't seen a performance by a quarterback like this before in a long time wearing a Washington uniform. So you haven't seen it before, most likely. You've seen great performances along the way, great moments along the way. But there was always tomorrow. There was always, oh, God, it's the next day, you know, what's going to happen with this organization? You always had the aura of self-destruction that hung over the franchise because of Dan Snyder's ownership.

You never had the promise of tomorrow. You had the promise of today, but you never had the promise of tomorrow. It was an illusion. It never really existed. That's gone. Okay. What you have right now, and it's subject to all the things that could go wrong on a football. field. But that's all it's subject, too, I think, at this point. You have the promise of tomorrow now.

Well, we said once Snyder left, we didn't have to suspend reality to have conversations about the football team anymore, which we had to do for all of those years. It's like you went into the conversations, you understood, look, they'll never win. They'll never actually be any good as long as he owns the team. But that's not going to stop us from getting excited over, you you know, the 2015 team that won the division, let's go beat the Packers, who knows what will happen. Well, we know what will happen. It will fall apart.

You know, RG3, he'll mess it up because he'll, you know, end up spending too much time. Now, Aikman in the entire league, and he wasn't the only person that kind of referenced this. I've seen a lot of it on social media. People that understood what this place was, I think was excited for this place. There's a comparison.

You've got to go way back. You've got to go back to Brett Favre, who, by the way, there's a story about today. He's got Parkinson's Central. When the Packers had been terrible for a couple of decades. Since Lombardi left. Since Lombardi, I think they had a brief period in the early 70s and Lynn Dickey and a couple of teams in the 80s. But for the most part, it was a downtrodden franchise. But they had had this incredible history.

I'm not comparing Washington's history to the 60s Packers, but when they got good with Brett Farrv in the early to mid-90s, the league was thrilled like they wanted the Packers to be the Packers. You know, because even if you weren't old enough to remember the Packers being the Packers, there was this aura about them. I don't know that Washington's direct apples to apples comparison on that, but people who have followed the League for a long time and know what this used to be,

I've always had this sense that they wanted this to come back here. And they wanted it for the league. They wanted it for the fans that were as good as any in the league. I do wonder what last night did for the people that have really checked out. I still think that a lot of people are checked out because of, you know, some of the other things we talked about, name, et cetera. Not for today. We're going to talk about that.

But you almost needed not only winning, which they haven't accomplished yet, but you needed a superstar to come with it. That's the best shot for Harris, Rails, Magic, and Ownership. In terms of making all of the other big topics, you know, subside in terms of importance, is not just sustained winning, but to have a superstar involved in that, participate in that. And Jaden's a really good bet to be that if they end up winning. He really is. Again, you know, I've mentioned this a number of times.

Ernie, of course, he told me about the quarterback has to be the guy who when he gets on the bus, the other guy's on the bus look at him and say, we can win because of him. I think if you read the quotes from some of these players after that game last night, I think they're there right now with their quarterback. I think what they believe that they're in every game as long as that guy is their quarterback right now. No punts, no turnovers. Again, 12 quarters, 13 straight drives. No interceptions for a rookie quarterback.

It's just astounding. No lost fumbles either. It is, look, the first two games were really good. Last night was not just his first. It was just brilliant on so many levels. I saw the PFF grade, for those of you to care. It's the highest PFF grade of any quarterback this season. It's the highest PFF grade of any Washington quarterbacks since PFF started to grade quarterbacks.

It was a 95-something. It was off the charts. He was brilliant last night. And for the second straight week, let's not overlook the fact that with the game on the line, you know, a lot of quarterbacks accumulate. Numbers, stats. Game on the line, last week, fourth quarter, this week, fourth quarter, every clutch play made to ice the game last night to win the game with a walk-off field goal last week. One other thing I think that was accomplished, at least in my eyes, last night, even though they beat the Giants the week before, I'm not sure.

I know I was not convinced that this coaching staff knew what they were doing. even after that went over the Giants. I just didn't have a sense that maybe Kingsbury and Quinn hadn't shown me yet their team on the field, their coaching values that they, you know, to scream and preach about for the whole summer. We hadn't seen that yet. You know, last night I think we saw that. Last night I think we saw the offensive guys know what they're doing. And the defense, that's a whole other question.

Yeah, I have felt good about the Cliff Kingsbury situation. Couldn't wait to see it. We've got, we're three games in. You can see they continue to add to it. He's got a, he's still got a rookie quarterback. But last night, you know, you think it's a conversation changer for the masses in terms of what's possible this year. You know, I will, two things.

One, it's the NFL. You just, it's week to week. We might feel completely different. next week. It's possible. With the big takeaway for the season being the quarterback, they got that right. Because I don't see that changing. Hopefully, I mean, he's got to stay healthy, knock on wood. But they do have a limiting factor right now.

And I know it's only three games, but they're a bad defensive football team. And there's no signs of them getting better defensively. So, you know, when you are that bad, especially stopping the run, but then on top of it, you know, you can't stop the run. Oh, by the way, you can't cover and you can't rush the passer. That's a bad combination. You've got a limitation. You can win more games than you lose in a league that's designed for good offense to trump good defense.

It's not the old days where defense wins championships. You've got to be good offensively in this league. And they're good enough offensively through three games it would appear to, you know, seven teams out of 16 make the postseason in the NFC. I think they're very much in this thing because of their offense, but they're limited by a defense, you know, in terms of what they really could do if they got in. Which makes these games basically track meets in the sense that they've got to, they can't stop scoring when they have the ball. Not against Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, and T. Higgins.

Or Kyle Murray. Yeah, and maybe not against Kyler Murray. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. Yeah, the, you know, they've got, the interesting thing is they've got some good defenses that they're going to face. You know, they, I think they faced one last week, actually, in the Giants. I think they faced one in week one. Last night, that was a vulnerable defense because of some of the injuries. But they got the Browns coming up.

They've got the Ravens coming up. They've got the Giants again. They've got the Steelers who may be the best defense in football. They've got the Saints who are good defensively. They've got some really good defensive teams yet on their scale. schedule. And offensively, I'm just looking through, that may be the best quarterback wide receiver combo they face this year. Next week? Or last night? Last night. Last night. Yeah, I think, you know, Jamar Chase is truly one of the true elite top two, top three receivers in the game. I know he is. In the

game. I know he is. But some of their coverage of him was curious last night. Yeah, it was. But they also have T. Higgins. They got a big time tight. They were running the football at Will. Yeah, fun night. You know, I think, you know, in week. You know, it's funny. You said a fun night. Joe Thaisman at one point during the game, he tweeted something about the, he tweeted that.

He tweeted, this is fun. Go commanders. And really, but that's what it felt like. And did he say go commanders? Yes, he did. Because I don't think Joe's a big fan of the name. Well, he said, go commanders. But he said, this is fun.

I thought that was a great way to describe it. Well, I think in week one, there were a couple of moments on some of the runs against Tampa where I got up and I'm like, woo! Here we go. Because I am a big fan of Daniels, as all of you know, going back to last year. Last night, the touchdown pass to Terry was not the moment for me because I didn't think at first it was a touchdown. I needed to see that he got that knee down. You know, knee equals two feet. And I wasn't sure when he caught it.

I'm like, you know, they called it a touchdown, but is this really going to be a touchdown? And by the way, if it's not a touchdown, it's fourth and seven. They're probably not going for that one. They're probably going to kick a field goal for a 34-26 lead. So now we still got a ball game. But it was more, I think, the throw to McCaffrey on the first fourth down, the throw to Terry 100 percent, the first one, the 55-yarder. A couple, the touchdown run on the read option keeper, there were some out loud, you know,

pump your fist moments with me. My son Corbyn was watching the game with me and my son Ryan, I mean, was calling every, you know, every commercial break. Yeah, I mean, my boys are excited about this and they haven't been excited in a long time. All right. Do us a favor, please. Follow us on Apple and Spotify and rate us and review. review us on Apple and Spotify.

Apple in particular, it takes 60 seconds to pause. Five stars if you see fit, write a quick one to two sentence review. Really helps us. And then hit the follow button or the plus button. That's big for us as well. All right. My game take, Tommy's thoughts more specific to what happened during the game right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Hey guys, I have found a product that I want to tell you about that works if you've got congestion.

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All of the week four, God, can you believe it, we're already approaching week four of the NFL season. All the lines are up. And Jaden Daniels, he's a line mover, Tommy. I can tell you that because it was five and a half last night before the game. Arizona was favored by Sunday. It's now three and a half. So watching Jaden Daniels and the Washington offense last night moved

the number two points. That's a ton of sharp money on Washington. It's also the largest total on the board at 50 and a half. Now, that's good news because they think Washington will score. It's bad news because they think the Cardinals are going to score as well. But all of the week four numbers are up. And let me see if I can find, I'm going to assume that the updated offensive rookie of the year odds at Jaden Daniels is now a prohibitive favor. favorite. Martin Harrison. Jaden Daniels is favored at my bookie to win offensive rookie of the year.

He's plus 148. That's the biggest favorite he has been. He kind of emerged as a favorite last week over Caleb Williams. Caleb Williams has really dropped. Malik Neighbors, the giant wide receiver, has the second shortest odds at plus 255. He is already obviously going to be. elite and they were teammates last year at LSU, which is one of the reasons watching LSU last year was so much fun because they were unstoppable offensively. Go to mybooky.orgie.org,

use my promo code Kevin, DC, and qualify for up to a $1,000 cash bonus on your initial deposit. All right, let's get to my Game Take. Pay attention. Here's Kevin's Game Take. All right, I'll go through what I liked, what I didn't like, and a few other observations. We'll let Tommy do the same afterwards. I do want to ask you before this show is over, because I wrote it down on my show notes for today. I do want to ask you if you saw the game involving Tom Brady Sunday, the Ravens Cowboys game. Did you watch that game?

No, I did not. What were you doing? Were you out at the Frederick Farragan on an NFL Sunday? Huh? I was out in Frederick. on Sunday walking around. All right. I also had it down

that I wanted to ask you about the C.J. Abrams situation. Yes. Okay. But first, let's get to the game take. What I liked, what I didn't like, a few other observations. So we'll start with number one, which should be Jaden Daniels,

but I'm going to start with the offense in general. Six drives, six scores, no punts, no turnovers. Five of nine on third down, three of three on fourth down. and oh, by the way, 38 points on six drives. I said last week after the game, yeah, they kick seven field goals,

but if you tell me that they're going to get the ball seven times a game and they're not going to punt and they're not going to turn it over, we'll take that every single week. That is unprecedented what they just did in back-to-back weeks. Last night's game, by the way, was the first game since 1940 to have no punts and no turnovers in an NFL game. game by either team. Crazy, crazy productivity offensively.

By the way, I think the game last night was less than three hours. It was because there's no drop passes. There are no turnovers. You know, the clock stops for scores and that's basically it. Yeah, when you only have two incompletions for, you know, one quarterback and not that many really for, what was Joe Burrow? He was pretty damn good in the game, too. Burrough's final numbers were 29 of 38, 3243 touchdowns.

Pretty good night for him too. But look, they had 356 total yards. And it was funny when I read that last night. I'm like, it's not as many yards as they had last week. Why is that? Well, when you only have six possessions in a game, there are only so many yards you can actually gain. It's not like they extend the field because you have the ball fewer times. They started at their

own 30. That meant the most yards they could gain on that drive are 70, unless you go backwards with a penalty, and then you can get more. They started a drive at the 38. They started a drive at the 25. They started a drive in Cincinnati territory after the Austin Echler kickoff return at their 33, and then they started their last two drives at the 30. That's 380 yards of total possible offense, but they had two false start penalties, 10 yards, which means there were 390 yards out there for them to get. And they got 356 of the 390. I was thinking about this.

What a strange game. But I was thinking about it. Like, I don't know if I've ever heard anybody describe it that way, but that's how you have to think about it. Because sometimes it's like, well, they only had 300 yards. Yeah, well, they're only 350 yards available for them to get because they started on short field sometimes. So that limits the yardage.

I mean, essentially what they did last night is they got 91.2% of the yards available. I've never seen statistically it represented that way, but I have to believe that that's really high, like off the charts high, because they didn't stop until they scored. And they kicked one field goal in the game. Look, over the last two games, they've scored on 13 consecutive drives without a punt and without a turnover. If you go back to the end of the Tampa game, which I don't want to do because that was a

meaningless drive against a soft defense down 23. It's 14 straight drives with points. It is remarkable. It's the first time that a team has done this since 2000. Wow. And I think offensively, Cliff Kingsbury gets a lot of the credit. You know, there is little chance of this kind of productivity. no matter how good the quarterback is without an offensive coordinator that is matching up schemes and formations and plays with what the quarterback does well.

Cam, Taylor, Britt, the corner for Cincinnati, you know, referred to this as a nice little college offense earlier in the week. Whatever it is, it diced up Cincinnati all night long. And look, there's a lot of college offense, if you even want to refer to it that way anymore, in the end. NFL now anyway. It's been that way for years. I loved some of the unique formations. They run this I formation that's offset from the quarterback that they run multiple plays off of. I've never seen a formation like that. They did move Terry around. They used Senate. They used Ertz in motion. They had two running backs in the game when Eckler was healthy. I think that this is progressing to something really nice. But the bottom line is

It matches up to what the quarterback does well, and that's number two on the list of things that I liked. You start with the numbers. We talked about it in the open. 21 of 23 for Jaden Daniels, 254 yards, two touchdowns, zero interceptions for the third straight game, zero turnovers for the third straight game. He rushed for another 39 yards in a touchdown. He accounted for three total touchdowns and 293 of the available 390 yards. Tommy, last year when he said, someone asked him right after they picked him here, somebody said,

so how would you describe your game? And he said, go watch the Florida game from last year, which was the game in which he clinched the Heisman trophy. He had 606 yards and five touchdowns in that game. He was so spectacular in that game. It was against a bad defensive team. But last night, if somebody were to ask him, what kind of game do you have as a pro quarterback? He could say, go look at the Cincinnati game. And that's how perfect it was last night. 91.3% completion percentage, as stated, all-time rookie quarterback. One of the best quarterbacked games in franchise history, it really was for a rookie or for a veteran.

I'm not going to put it up there with some of the big clutch performing. Doug Williams is number one. All-time great quarterback games is Doug Williams in Super Bowl 22. I would put it based on the context. That's number one. But he was incredible last night. He was sensational. He missed a few things.

And Troy Aitman was kind of nitpicking some of those things early on. And I think he was right about a lot of those things. There were a couple of times where he took a sack, early in the game when he probably could have hit Noah Brown. There was that all-out blitz where Terry has, you know, the defender stumbles and goes down. There was an opportunity there. I personally think on some of the zone reads, he could have kept it. I don't know if they'll go back and look at the film and say,

leaving it in Brian Robinson Jr.'s gut on that play was the right call. You should have pulled it. I think he should have pulled it more often. They were definitely geared up to stop number eight last night. They loaded up the box and they're like, we're not going to let that dude run for 120. If the quarterback gets outside, whatever, but maybe we can hit him. But there were some things to nitpick about.

But look, bottom line is he threw it when he needed to throw it. He ran it when he needed to run it. He ran it, as you pointed out, and threw it, extended and then made throws this week. big jump in where he was last week. You know, the runs were a combination of designed runs, option runs. He's under center. He's in shotgun. He's in pistol.

They threw quick screens. They threw bubble screens. They threw hitches. He threw over the middle. Obviously, he threw deep. It's something I talked about all offseason. He was the best deep ball thrower in college football last year. He, you know, he definitely.

delivered when it mattered the most like he did last week. That is huge to know that it's not just between the 20s. It's not just first quarter to third quarter. It's this demeanor that he has, this poise, this style, where it just doesn't seem like anything is too big for him. He never seems, you don't see him shuffling his feet in a panic mode. like you see with a lot of rookie quarterbacks when they're under duress.

They were three for three on fourth down. He made the two throws to McCaffrey and Ertz late. He also had a run on his own read-read option for a first down. This whole thing with him is like it starts, what they're doing right now, there is a lot of similarity of 2012. Imagine, like Kingsbury's doing a great job. Can you imagine if Mike,

and Kyle had this guy. I mean, seriously, because there are some brilliant guys out there that were all in this building. Kingsbury's doing a great job, though. Don't get me wrong. But it starts with more than anything else. His ability to run the football. It changes the way defenses defend you.

You know, going back to 2012, this is why so many people thought, this is not leaving the game. It's why Mike Shanahan, I mean, Shanahan, told us early on, it's 11 on 11 football. Usually the quarterback hands it to the running back and it's 10 on 11 with nine blocking and the runner running it. When the quarterback's a threat to run it, it's 11 on 11. It's advantage offense. His ability, whether it's under center, whether it's in the pistol, whether it's in shotgun, to make the defense accountable for him as a runner. And by the way, an elite runner is everything that is coming off of it.

Because then you see, oh, by the way, he can throw it on the move. He can throw screens. He can throw over the middle. He can throw deep. And this is where I would just say, and I'm repeating myself, but he's got every skill set and talent at a high enough level, if not an elite level, that means for today's game he's got a chance. It's the health because of his frame that's always been my number one concern.

And number two is, does he have the intangibles? I think we're starting to learn that he's got a lot of them. You know, that's the stuff that you don't know. He was brilliant last night. There were a couple of other things that I liked. I actually, despite the defense being awful, I thought their urgency and effort was there right from the beginning. They were flying around.

They're just not very good right now. So I give Quinn credit for having that team ready going into that building to play a team that was desperate to win. Austin Echler was incredible last night. He is a massive part of what they're trying to do. I hope he's okay. I would imagine he's in concussion protocol. They left him behind. They flew to Arizona.

They left him behind. I don't know if that means he's not going to play Sunday. number 30 had 119 all-purpose yards last night in barely over a half of football. Yeah. I mean, they started off three of the first four plays. Echler for eight yards, Echler for eight yards on a pass. Echler for 14 yards on a pass. And then he had the 62-yard kickoff return.

He had the 24-yard touchdown run. He's really an impactful player. He looks like the Austin Echler from a couple of years ago. I was so happy that Terry McLaurin had this kind of a game. You knew he wasn't going to average 4.9 yards per reception. And no for all of you that have tweeted me saying, do you think he's elite now? I don't.

I think he is what we saw last night. He's a very good receiver. You know, there wasn't a lot of separation on either one of those two deep balls. The first one, he beat double coverage, which was great. He's very good as a contested catch guy. We've seen that in the last couple of years. I was happy for him because he's such a pro's pro. And, you know, the first quarter, first quarter and half of that game, he was non-existent again in terms of production.

And then they finally hit that big one. By the way, his average yards per reception jumped to 11.6 or something like that. Noah Brown is a really nice addition. He gets real separation, as does McCaffrey, by the way. Yes. And I really like what I think Jaden's comfortable with Noah. around right now. He talked about him last week. Some big spots he went to him. McCaffrey got all that separation last week. I think he was third in the league in separation as a route runner, but Jaden

never found him. Well, he found him last night on the first big fourth down of the game. Ertz has been spectacular. He did fumble on that little middle screen. Tyler Biotto's huge to recover it. I thought the offensive line really was good last night. I thought it was too. I thought it was, too. I mean, I give them a lot of credit. I had some major concerns about them going into the season. But here's what I don't get. I look at the, I glance at the pro football focus grades. And I thought Spencer Coleman, what's his name?

Brandon Coleman? Brandon Coleman, that's it. I thought he played very well. He had a tough matchup a lot of times against Hedrickson. I know he allowed that one sack, but I thought he handled him pretty well for the most part. And he didn't have a high grade. So I don't get the grading system. Look, I don't want to get into the grading system. I think they do a much better job now. They do because they know so much more than they used to know. But I thought personally, Tyler Biotis and Allegretti and Cosme were good. And I really

thought Lucas was pretty good last night. But it's just hard. You know, no matter what, you know, all of the film experts out there will tell you about it. And I'm not talking about the film. experts, the real film experts. I'm talking about the internet guys. This is, along with the secondary, the hardest positions for us to evaluate because we really don't understand responsibilities. We don't understand a lot of times the technique that they're being taught, etc. I know one thing. They mauled the Giants last week in the run game. They're physical as an offensive line. And I think last night against a lot of dialed up pressures, they held up pretty well on Echler's long touchdown run,

Allegretti and Cosmy were outstanding. I thought Biotish, I think it was really important that they went out and got a veteran center. And I had Biotic on the show that's out there already today from the locker room last night. And I just think the old line, when you don't punt for two straight games, you can't ignore the offensive lines roll in that.

It can't be all scheme and all quarterback. But with that said, one of the reasons I wasn't sure about smashing the offensive line before the season started is we've seen this throughout the years. When you have quarterback and you have coordinator, sometimes average offensive lines look a lot better. And they also changed out a big part of it. Allegretti is a big addition, as it turns out. He's playing pretty well, and I think Beaudish was big. Special teams-wise, they had a kicker. not miss a field goal or an extra point.

Right. They had a 62-yard kickoff return. They had a big hit on coverage. Reeves went down there and nailed one of the returns. And by the way, they recovered a rather important on side kick at the end, Zekees did. I also think it's interesting. It seems like they are more inclined to kick into that landing zone because they feel good about their coverage. And it held up pretty well last night.

You know, Tell the Truth Mondays for Coach Tell the Truth Mondays. Part of what the Tell the Truth Mondays are about is starting field position. Well, they won that last night. And they were very good on coverage. Lastly, there was just one sequence defensively, and I think that's it. That was impressive. Sandra Still, on the last play of the first quarter, sniffs out a screen to Chase Brown and blows it up. That's a big play because they had third and 11 to start the second quarter.

it's seven to seven and you're not probably going to get off the field many times. And then on third and 11 they threw to Gisicki. Percy Butler is not in the best shape, but Jeremy Chin comes over and breaks up the pass

and knocks it out of Gisicki's hands and they were forced to kick a field goal that McPherson missed. That was a big turning point score-wise in the first half because you knew you were going to be in a game where there aren't going to be many stops. I mean, they went right down the field and scored. And then to force a field goal attempt was big, but for him to miss it was huge.

That was about it defensively. List of things I didn't like. There's one thing. The defense is porous right now. I know it's only three games, but last week was a concern because they made Daniel Jones and Devon Singletary look good. Last night, the backs, Zach Moss, and I like Chase Brown, I've been a big fan of his going back to Illinois. They ran right through Washington's defensive front. I don't know why Cincinnati didn't run it more. I think they made a mistake. I think they could have controlled the clock.

You know, my key to the game going into the game last night was hold on to the ball offensively and keep Joe Burrow off the field. I should have said for Cincinnati, they need to keep Jaden Daniels and the Washington offense off the field. They scored too quickly when they scored. They ran for over six yards per carry. They shredded Washington up front, just like single dairy did. Well, I mean, you know, it's hard to play when you don't have your two best defensive linemen,

Jonathan Allen and Duran Payne, right? What do you mean? They didn't have those guys last night, did they? They did. They played? They did play. I didn't think they played. So this is going to be an interesting thing.

This is where I would love to have a conversation, not with an internet film person, no offense. But with somebody who really knows what they're talking about, because I think Duran, they would probably tell you is doing a pretty good job. He's taking on a lot of double teams, a lot of double teams. So is John at times. I think some of the pass rush they've gotten, which hasn't been much. They got more in the Tampa game than any other game, has been in part because Duran's clearing some space for people. But I'm also predisposed to thinking that he's incredibly talented. I think their defensive ends are a problem right now, not just pass rush-wise, but

stopping-wise. And I know a lot of the runs are going up the middle, but I think, you know, tackles aren't necessarily there to tackle. They are there to eat up space so others can make tackles. Typically linebackers. Yeah, typically linebackers. And look, Bobby Wagner's got to be the leading tackle. on the team. Louvo's got to be second, I would think. I like Louvo, too. I love the energy level.

But for whatever reason, it seems like everybody's getting moved too far down the field before they're touched. The tackling, once again, suspect. And they make up for it with no past rush and terrible coverage. So this is a problem. They've got to get pressure with more than four. So now you've got coverage where you've got Mikey Sanders still in single coverage on Jamar Chase. You can't allow that. Then Chase gets singled up again and Burroughs going to find Chase when he's single covered. And both times it was touchdowns. And I don't know what the answer is.

This is going to be a problem because it's such a limiting factor on what they could be this year, even with a potential great offense. Right now, by the way, DVOA-wise, it's only three games, small sample size. number nine offense in the entire NFL. I think they're fifth or sixth overall in the standard yardage per game. They're high up on third down conversions as well. And yet they don't have a lot of third down conversions because they're so good on first and second down. But defensively can't stop the run, can't cover, and the only way they're able to pressure is with more than four.

That's a problem. And I don't know. Manuel Forbes coming off, coming back, I don't think is the answer. Mike Davis. Okay. Here's what we don't know. We assume it's talent. We don't necessarily know its talent.

We have a defensive coordinator who's doing the job for the first time. Yes. That is fair to wonder. Yeah. But it does, like I think St. Juice looks good at times. I think Louvue looks good at times. Wagner looks good at times, pain looks good at times. I actually think, number one, Noah Igben Ogeny, Noah I, for short, number one,

I think he actually, there's something there with him. They did not play Mike Davis after he got burned by neighbors last week. He did not play a defensive snap. He played special team snaps. I don't know what the answer is. They don't have good cover corners. We knew that going into the season. We were hoping that the Dan Quinn, Joe Witt, Jr., everybody's into the season versus last year where everybody who's checked out, that you were going to be able to scheme up some defense, scheme up some pass rush, scheme up some turnovers.

They have the Benjamin St. Juice punch out, which was a big one last week as their only takeaway of the season. The good news is they don't have any giveaways. They don't have any. They only have four sacks in third. three games. I think at times they're getting some pressure when they scheme it up with more than four, but this is a problem. They're not a good defensive team right now, and I don't know where it comes around. Now, are you going to face Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase and T. Higgins back? You know, every single week, no, but I think the run stopping is the most alarming thing.

You know, if you don't have great quarterbacks or great receivers, but the other team can't stop the run. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. I mean, last week, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I mean, they get, you know, Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. this week, James Connor. Then, you know, Deshawn Watson the following week is not a very good quarterback right now. The Ravens, I mean, how are they going to stop the Ravens?

I know. You know, the Panthers, if Andy Dalton. Derek Henry? Yeah. Lamar Jackson. They're going to combine for like 200-yard, 200-yard. 150 yards by themselves. The Panthers will be a different team with Andy Dalton than you would have thought about.

Yeah, I mean, that's the concern. Again, this is what I mean, a track meet. In other words, they're going to have to get on the field, score points, and then when they get the ball again, score points again. I think that you're going to see the over. It's going to be a pretty safe bet for a lot of commanders. games this year. Already. I mean, week one, it was like they had one of the lowest totals against Tampa, and now they've got the highest total on the board.

Speaks to that very point along with how good they are off offensively or potentially can be. Look, you just mentioned Joe Whit Jr. They're going to need to improve a little bit defensively, and it's probably going to be on the coaches to figure out the players, the positions. That was the secret sauce, remember. The secret sauce was we know what we have and we put them in the positions for them to succeed. That's our secret sauce. Well, right now, defensively, it ain't working. No.

The sauce is not creating a very good meal. You know, they didn't waste a great performance last night by Jay and Daniels. But if there are games when he plays great and the defense really betrays them, there'll be a lot of frustration. Yes, you know, but at the same time, at the same time, if you end up, you know, at the end of the year with a... You can't do that. No, no, you can't do that. You can't switch from saying... I'm not switching. I'm not switching. Because you should be frustrated if you think they can have a season. I think they can have a season with a bad defense that exceeds what a lot of people thought they could have even last night before the game started. That's my point is we can... This team has a chance.

with what they have offensively to go win more games than they lose. But if they waste top performances by their quarter. They're going to. There are going to be some games in here this year that the offense is like, I mean, you've got to be kidding me. They rushed for 220 yards and we lost 35, 34. There may be some games like that. Quick set of other observations.

Jamon Davis last night played more at linebacker, I think, than defensive end. I already mentioned, I thought Jaden could have kept the ball more on the zone read. The fumble recovery by Tyler Biotish on Ertz's middle screen fumble was a massive play. You know, they haven't turned the ball over. That would have been a big turnover. He slid last night, if I haven't mentioned that already. It wasn't a Trey Turner slide. Yeah, but it was really smooth.

I don't know how smooth it was. Oh, it's the perfect quarterback slide. Oh, it was not a smooth slide. Oh, I thought it was. You need to go back and look at it. I've looked at it three times. It was a bit awkward. That's a Patrick Mahomes slide.

I didn't think it was awkward at all. I'll go back and look at it again. He slid at LSU last year. There was never a problem with him sliding. He didn't do it as much because he was always trying to get the extra yardage because they needed to get the extra yardage. It's very interesting. On a team last year where they couldn't afford to punt because the defense was so bad,

he's in the same situation this year. But so far they haven't punt it. Yes. You know, so that's a good thing. Yeah, that's it. You got anything else? I'm excited. I think you should be excited.

For the Arizona game. I was legitimately fired up to see him last night because I thought they had a chance to play well. I did not pick them to win. I picked them to cover. They were a smell test pick. I picked a high-scoring game for them to lose 30 to 27. But I thought that there was a chance that they could hang in there. And I think the offense has a chance to keep them in a lot of games.

this year. I didn't see the offense scoring. What was your prediction? I forget. I had the moves in 3516. 3516. Because I had them plotting along on offense. Right.

You know, maybe eight-minute drives to kick a field goal or to score a touchdown. Yeah. I didn't think they would quick strike or strike literally as much as they did last night. All right. I have a probability number that I want to read to you and get your reaction on. You're going to weigh in on C.J. Abrams, and I'm going to weigh in on Tom Brady because I did not talk other NFL on the show that I did very early this morning. We'll get to all of that more right after these words from a few of our sponsors. All right, guys, best time of the year is football season. It is back. NFL Sunday's college football. Saturdays, football on Monday night, Thursday night, and of course, the glorious grind of fantasy

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Stay on top of your grooming game and be ready for anything the season throws your way. All right, Tommy, tell us about Shelly's. I bet the place was buzzing last night. I'll bet it was the place to be last night with their eight high-definition TV spread throughout the bar and restaurant. Imagine the days when Sammy Baugh was lightened it up for the Redskins at Griffith Stadium. Okay. If you were there for those games, and I know some of you were. What did you just say? If you were there for those games.

Which games again? Again, the Sammy Ball era. This at Griffith Stadium? Yes. There's nobody listening to this show right now that was there for the Sammy Ball area. No. Okay. No.

How old would you have to be right now? Let's just say you were seven years old in 1945. All right. So you were born in 38. That makes you 86 right now. That's not, that's, don't look at me and tell me that's not doable, buddy. It's doable. It's doable.

It's doable. Somebody listening to us probably saw Sammy Baude. Griffith Stadium. I retract. My original thought. You'll be able to watch a game like that in a smoke-filled stadium. There'd be guys smoking cigars, you know, slapping each other on the back. Lots of pipes.

Yes, but cigars. Cigars, too. Yes, cigars too, because no one smokes pipes anymore. No, I'm saying it at Griffith Stadium. I know what you're saying. You know what you do the showy's commercials, you can talk about the pipes. But they would be dressed up coat and tie at those games. and you have lots of cigar smokers.

Yes. Well, that's what it probably was like last night at Shelly's background because people dress very nice at Shelly's. Yes, they do. I mean, when they go to Shelly's. Not you, but everybody else does. But everyone else, you know, because that's not my look. You know, nobody expects me to dress nice. Yeah.

But there'd be a smoke-filled room, watching them cheer for the commanders, watching a high-scorn, exciting game with a great drink, maybe some great appetite, some great wings or mozzarella sticks or something like that. Shelly's is the place. I'll be there Thursday night to watch Thursday night football this week. Shelley's back room at 1331 F Street Northwest in the district. You know, when I went to games at RFK Stadium as a kid,

I can still like, I know what it smells like. Yes. You know, there are places, that is a sense that has an incredible memory, doesn't it? Of course. This is why, this isn't part why I smoke cigars. Yeah. Because my father smokes cigars. Right.

And I grew up with that smell. I mean, cigar smells RFK, you know, walking up the ramps. Like, I can still feel it and I can definitely smell it. But when I was a kid, there were a lot of pipe smokers. Yes, there were. and they brought out the cherry, you know, whatever, tobacco, and they'd stuff the pipe. It was a great smell. And cigar smoke is a great smell, too.

And by the way, weed, the real weed from back in the day was a great smell. Yes, it was. Not the new weed smell. But I can still remember those smells, and it has so much to do with the smoke. Because if you go watch a game on YouTube, you sent me something recently. What did you send me? I don't remember. You sent me a game from YouTube.

I've been watching some of these games for years on YouTube. Like, they're all out there. You, I mean, you're out taking walks, you know, and Frederick, and you could be watching, like, Tom Seaver pitch a masterful game in 1965. I saw him pitch that game in 1965. So, yeah, what was I going to say? I don't know what I was going to say. You were talking about the joy of the smell of the stuff. cigars. And you have that at Shelly's, but not the frustration of the smoke, because they have a

great smoke ventilation system. Yes, they do. What I was going to say was when you watch some of these games, especially from the 70s on YouTube, indoor games, it's all smoke-hased arenas. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. Like, it's amazing. Like, you know, you didn't think about it when you were in the arena, but you were just, I mean, everybody was smoking. There were no non-smoking, you know, there weren't smoking areas and non-smoking areas. You know what? I've been thinking would be a great magazine story to look at, to examine how they possibly were able to stop television advertising of selling cigarettes.

Think about that. I mean, they banned advertising. of cigarettes. I mean, that usually, you can't, once you step forward, you usually can't peel back. And the fact that they did that must have been, I'll bet you, a hell of a story.

Imagine to that. What year did they do that? In the early 70s, I think, in the 70s. Imagine, okay. Yeah, because I think of something. You had Camel Joe or whatever. Yeah.

And the Marlboro Man. Yep. You know, I think of some things like today. Like today, I think of, of, Okay, speed cameras, you know. There's no going back from speed cameras now. No, they're the biggest revenue generators in the city. Right.

Yeah. But imagine if somebody, if they decided one time that this is not right, that this is, this is, we don't want to use speed cameras. He couldn't do it. In other words, you couldn't advertise liquor on TV for years. Right. And now you can. Right. Well, they're not going back from that.

Right. You know, that's usually do not step back. I mean, there's a difference between, you know, photo enforced and surgeon general's warning. Yes. You know, I mean, that's, that was it. This thing that you love and has been built up and romanticized so much is actually going to kill you if you keep doing it. But don't imagine all of revenue that was lost. Yeah.

Oh, I know. I know. That's stunning. But they'd never banned it right from print. Or did they? It was just TV? I think they did from print, too. Okay.

I wanted to read something to you. A lot of people had this out there. Yeah, but if you read it, it's special. No, it's not that. It's that I'm not going to tell you from whom, you know, the Twitter account that I'm reading it from. Jaden Daniels, 27-yard touchdown pass at the end of the game to Terry McCorn, had a completion probability of 10.3%,

the most improbable touchdown of the season. season the most by the commanders in the NGS era. That's the next gen stats era. Well, I would have thought that they did this all the time, a pass like that. I mean, who consumes those things and says, oh, thank God. I found out that there was just a 10.3% chance. watched it with my own eyes. It was like such a long shot.

I get it. Like, do I really need, I guess there's, look, there's clearly a market for that. But when I see that stuff sent my way by people, like, I'm always like, it's like, the other thing is the win probability rate, you know, that it's posted. Oh, my God. Yeah. Look, when they're down 35 to 7 with two minutes to go in the game, I do realize it's a long shot that they can win the game. The fact that it's 99.3% chance of losing the game,

I don't really care. I don't know. That stuff just... Well, you know, I mean... It's not for me. It's information overload in a lot of ways. Tom Shales, the TV critic for the Post once said, we are the most over-informed, under-informed society in American history. And I think that's true. No worries. We drown in information, but like I've said before, there's a difference between that knowledge. I think for some people, the internet and the information available just made them insufferable. I mean, oh, I'm not going to mention the writer, but Tony once said about a writer in town, the internet was the worst thing that happened to him because all of his columns now are all of these different things.

I know who you're talking about. And it's just, it's too bad because without it, he was great. And now he's just writing columns around these, you know, internet, you know, statistics that come out. Tell me about C.J. Abrams and why he was sent down to the miners after a curfew violation. It had to be more than that. It had. It's more than that. I don't know all the details, but it's a pattern of behavior. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. And to me, in part, and try to follow along with me on this. I'll try. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to all the bozos out there. Okay. I've spoken about this issue before.

The learner's cheapness basically resulted in Mike Rizzo's inability to bring in strong veteran presence in that clubhouse. Joey Gallo on a one-year. year deal when he doesn't play half the season because he's hurt is not a strong veteran presence. Veteran leaders teach young kids what's acceptable or not in the clubhouse. You say, well, the coaches can do that. The coaches are the bosses.

They work for the boss. Players see coaches as spies for the manager. So they don't listen to them the same way. This important in baseball, as much as any other sport, there to be veteran clubhouse leadership to basically show these guys what's acceptable and what's not. Now, I'm not talking about saints. I mean, Jason Worth was hardly a saint, right, okay?

Speed along the beltway at over 100 miles an hour. But for the most part, something like this probably might not have happened if there were veterans with stature and presence, like a Ryan Zimmerman or something like that in the clubhouse. I don't think it would have gotten this far. But what got this far? I don't know specifically if it's a gambling issue or a nightlife issue. Okay. Okay. I don't know specifically, but, but I mean, I think you have to applaud Mike Rizzo for for coming down on him like this. Of course you're going to say that. Well, but you do. I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't know the details. I would assume because Mike Rizzo is an excellent.

General Manager, that you're not going to publicly embarrass one of the key cornerstones of your hopefully competitive future over hanging out one night late in the season, you know, until early morning hours in a casino breaking curfew. It's got, please tell me that it is a pattern of, you know, behavior that was addressed previously and previous to that. Are you breaking curfew? That's your, you get benched. You know?

You don't get sent down to the minor leagues. Remember, Rizzo, when Sean Kelly was a relief pitcher for the team, in 2018, when Davey Martinez wouldn't take him out of a game, he got mad. And he slammed the glove on the mound right in front of Davy's feet, okay, showing up his manager. Sean Kelly was gone within two days. Rizzo does not put up with that kind of stuff. Yeah. You're trying to create a culture. We talk about it in football all the time.

You're trying to create a culture. And because he's a cornerstone, it's more important for him to buy into the culture than most other players. You hope it's repairable. I mean, because it's clearly an embarrassment. I mean, he must feel embarrassed because they didn't send him down to play for Rochester. There's no minor leagues going on right now. He's down in spring training, you know, playing catch with. with some 18-year-old right now, probably.

Yeah, I mean, if there were issues here, and it sounds like there were, you want this to be a wake-up call for a guy that, you know, has... But what if they don't wake-up? Well, then that's a problem. Then you made a mistake. Yeah. I'll tell you what, we've got some really exciting wild card races,

by the way, coming down to this final week of the season. It's actually, you know, the Orioles, by the way, have fallen apart. They have. They're going to be the number one wild card team. But you've got like, I think it's five teams or four teams for two spots in the American League. Right now the Braves are on the outside looking in behind the Diamondbacks and the Mets. The Mets and the Tigers are the two big surprises. No doubt.

The Tigers especially recently. All right. I want to finish up with this. So I watched Tom Brady for the first time call a game this weekend because the opener that he did with Cleveland in Dallas was at the same time that Tampa and Washington were playing. And then in week two, I think he had a one o'clock game during Skins' Giants. So he did Ravens Cowboys the other day. And so it was my first time listening to him.

I thought it was really rough. He's incredibly cliche driven. He states the obvious so much. Now maybe, you know, they've told him, keep it simple. you know, there's a mass audience here for you that made me, you know, casual fans. I think for like hardcore football fans, I'm not getting anything from Brady on the game that I watched. Now, I did see that the reaction from people who have listened or watched the first three weeks was that he got much better. And I did say to my son, we were sitting there watching it and he's like, man, Brady.

And I'm like, yeah, this is not good. And I'm like, but you know what? this guy's one of the all-time badass winners. He'll figure it out, I bet. Like, you can't bet against him. Joe Montana did not. Some guys don't. Drew Prys didn't.

Drew Brees didn't. Yeah. Some guys don't figure it out. You think Brady needs the money? No. Of course not. That would be my initial reaction. But how hurt was he by the whole crypto scandal?

Oh, I don't know. I'm sure badly hurt. like a lot of them were, but I don't think Brady's got money issues, do you? I don't think so. I mean, he just bought a piece of an NFL franchise. Probably not. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah.

I mean, because, like, we talked about this before. You compare Brady post-playing career and Peyton Manning, his rival, post-playing career. Yeah. Two very different paths in the world of sports communication. Patent's been much more creative in his way than just simply open a booth. But Peyton, unlike Montana and Brady and probably Breeze, Peyton has a sense of humor. He's incredibly self-deprecating. He's got a great sense of humor. I love the ad they're running right now.

You know, Peyton, you know, it's a Geico commercial, right? I think it is. I forget. You don't even know the product. By the way, somebody should do some research on when you use. he's a Peyton Manning in an ad. Yeah, but what was the ad for? He was just so good in doing his part. I actually think Eli on the Manning cast is just as good,

if not better than Peyton. Eli has a very dry sense of humor. Yes, he does. But, yeah, I don't know. I just wouldn't bet on Brady improving. Certainly wouldn't bet on him because he's not a guy that's going to say, oh, they say I suck, so maybe I do.

No, that's not Brady. No, you're right. So is it really even important anymore, these announcers? It's not to me, but obviously it must be. I don't think it's important. If they're spending $35 million a year on the guy. Yeah, because the NFL attracts so many, you know, casual sports fans. Caitlin Clark, by the way, for her playoff game on an NFL Sunday,

they drew 1.8 million people to her game in the middle of an NFL Sunday for WNBA. for a playoff game. A women's basketball game. I think it's the biggest audience, except for maybe a WNBA finals game, you know, a few years ago. One more thing. What did you make of the Woage retirement from a $7 million a year job for ESPN? Well, here's what I, I didn't know, I don't know Woage. I've run across him from time to time. and my vision of him was always at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. You know, the press room, the workroom is like a giant airplane hanger. And, you know, unless you're at the Washington Post or the New York Times to have their own room,

everyone works in the same room. And you work all hours. And I remember walking through the press room at two or three in the morning. And there was Wojj. sleeping on the floor. Really? Yeah. Sleeping.

So he was a kick-ass worker who really worked his way into becoming one of the premier sports reporters of his time. But I think because he was a newspaper guy, and I know, you know, I tend to favor newspaper guys, I think he had the perspective that his life had already exceeded his dreams. okay and he had more money than he ever would have dreamed of making and I think those two things were his perspective to say I should go be happy he's he's a huge St. Bonnie alum big fan of the program and oh imagine what I'm not saying you could or you would but imagine if you had the same opportunity to work for Maryland.

I would never want to do that job. No? Manage NIL money? No, no, no. Not just any job. Any big job where you work for your alma mater. Yeah, there are certain things in my life that are really important. Maryland is important to me.

Maryland basketball, Maryland football important to me. I think he felt that way. Like I said, I think, you know, there's that line and network. What do you do when your life exceeds your dreams? And I'm sure for Woge, that's what happened. Yeah, you know, there was a lot made about the job, you know, that he had. That is not an easy job. It's well compensated, though.

Yeah. Let's just mention that. Yeah. There are a lot of jobs that are harder than being on your phone, you know, 24-7 to break stories that get compensated much less than $7 million a year. But I can imagine, you know, those guys that are. are tied, you know, to multiple phones and have to be the guy that breaks these stories. There really isn't much of a life because these leagues that they cover are year-round. Yeah.

You know, it's not like there's a time to get a break. Okay. Anything else? You did a nice job today. You know what I didn't mention? I didn't mention you're in studio with me today. Yes. And that is because, why don't you tell everybody why it's because?

Well, at the D.C. Gray Cigars and Curve Balls Fundraiser every year to raise money for the Grays, thanks to the generosity of Kevin. Every year, we auction off in our live auction, the opportunity for someone to come in to the studio, to the mecca of the studio here that Kevin has in Bethesda and watch us do the podcast in person. Right. we have our 2023 bid winner here, Alex Estelle from Annapolis, right? Alex is a great dude. I met him there. I think this is the second straight year. Yeah.

And by the way, he came in solo. Remember, we've had people come in with groups. Yes, we have. We've had people show up and say, you don't mind we've got six or seven of us with us. Yeah. And 135 square feet might be a problem. Here's what else Alex did for future winners. He brought gifts.

He did bring gifts. He brought some beer here. It's some sort of Belgian beer that's like, what did you say it was, 13, 14% ABV? We thought about having one or two during the show. That would have made for a better show. But we still have work to do today. So not for this together. I'm done with you.

Actually, spending an hour and a half with you is enough. This is enough. Yeah, but good job today. Thank you, boss. Appreciate it. I'll be back tomorrow.