It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.
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Rich Eisen and Daniel Jeremiah are bullish on the Commanders
On the Rich Eisen show, Rich and Daniel Jeremiah discussed the top-5 NFL teams most likely to breakout. They each put the Bengals and Chargers in the top two spots (though in reverse order), and each ranked Washington in the #4 spot, behind the Bears and ahead of the Cardinals.
Rich Eisen and Daniel Jeramiah each ranks Washington among the top-5 teams most likely to breakout in 2024. Rich focuses on offensive playmakers while DJ focuses on the impact of Dan Quinn. pic.twitter.com/KEfsBWiMKO
— Bill-in-Bangkok (@billhorgan2005) June 25, 2024
Mike Tanier is laughing at the roster and coaching staff
Meanwhile, longtime NFL analytics guru Mike Tanier, writing on his Too Deep Zone blog, went the other direction.
The Commanders are absolutely set at the Old Guy Who No Longer Produces YAC position on the depth chart with Ertz and Ekeler. Their choices at left tackle, however, are 33-year old (in July) journeyman swing tackle Cornelius Lucas and third-round pick Brandon Coleman of TCU, whom many experts projected as a guard. The Commanders’ major acquisition at outside cornerback was Michael Davis, who allowed nine touchdowns for the Chargers last year. Armstrong looked great for the Cowboys when getting blocked on third-and-long by whoever wasn’t coping with Parsons and Tank Lawrence, Fowler looked OK when getting blocked on third-and-longer by whoever was left after that.
Quality edges, left tackles and cornerbacks are expensive and hard to find. The football faction of Harris’ multi-sport council of geniuses surely knows that it will take a year or two to find playoff-caliber starters at those positions. That’s fine, but it’s not an excuse to double down on the failed-prospect edge rushers and older-than-dust tight ends.
As for the Commanders coaching staff, Kingsbury isn’t the only oddball. Offensive line coach Bobby Johnson punched a Giants linebacker during a training-camp dustup back in 2022; he probably should steer clear of Wagner on hot days. Johnson was also the mastermind behind the Giants’ decision to cross-train all of their linemen at multiple positions in case of injuries last year. When the injuries arrived, it turned out that no one was any good at any position.
Meanwhile, running game coordinator Anthony Lynn, a head coach and well-regarded offensive mind until he failed to make Justin Herbert an insta-Hall of Famer (funny how that keeps happening), revealed the coaching staff’s secret plan for overcoming deficiencies on the offensive line: let Jayden Daniels run more.
“You have a quarterback that can create and move a little bit,” Lynn said during OTAs. “You don’t have to have Trent Williams when you have a quarterback that can do that a little bit so that we can move the pocket, change the launch point.”
Sam Howell, the Commanders’ starter in 2023, was very mobile. He was sacked a league-high 85 times. Justin Fields, who is as mobile as Barry Allen, led the NFL with 55 sacks in 2022 and has a 12.4% career sack rate. Lynn may just have been riffing optimistically in response to a direct question about Daniels’ scrambling, but it’s still discouraging to hear a coach equate mobility with sack prevention, especially when talking about a rookie, when young quarterbacks have been running themselves into trouble for several generations. And Lynn is the Commanders offensive coach I trust the most.
The Commanders deserve credit for being very busy in the offseason. Once the Ertz/Ekeler scaffolding falls away and Wagner and Magic launch their exclusive line of speedboats or pocket squares or whatever, the Commanders should be left with several useful players. The draft class looks promising. Better to aggressively churn the roster right away than to spend a year performatively “evaluating” everyone, which Harris got out of the way last year. Everything could turn out fine if Daniels doesn’t pick up bad habits and/or injuries as a rookie. It’s just a shame that the Commanders appear to have baked that scenario directly into their plans.
So, what’s the reality?
We’ve got professional analysts who look at the Commanders team and draw opposite conclusions. The only two things that everyone seems to agree on are that Jayden Daniels is a promising rookie quarterback prospect, and the Commanders didn’t do enough to solve their offensive line problems.
The optimistic view is that better coaching, strong playmakers and a Dan Quinn defense will be enough to smooth the rough patches in the roster and turn 2024 into a playoff season for this totally remade franchise.
The pessimistic view is that the thin spots in the roster and lack of top-end talent mean that the team doesn’t have the horses needed to compete, and that the coaching group is a ragtag group of underachievers that won’t be able to raise the level of play for the collection of mid-tier and aging players that comprise the roster.