00:00Dietrich Weiss, remember him?
00:03Important offseason signing last year.
00:06Needed an edge-setting defensive end.
00:09Somebody who could help stop the run.
00:11Washington not very good in 24 against the run.
00:15That was a real priority of last offseason.
00:18We've got to find players that can help us stop the run.
00:22Dietrich Weiss came in as a free agent from New England.
00:2630 years old and had been sort of this 6'5", 285-290-pound edge-setting defensive end.
00:37And the truth is, last year in the first two games,
00:40he played pretty well against the Giants and the Packers.
00:44But he got injured in that Packer game, lost for the season.
00:49But he, like Dorrance Armstrong, are both expected back.
00:53They had to re-sign Dietrich Weiss to bring him back.
00:55Dorrance Armstrong was under contract.
00:58They were, you know, certainly Dorrance Armstrong was the best defensive player on the team.
01:04And he only played seven games last year before getting injured against Dallas in Week 7.
01:10But Weiss is coming back, and he should certainly be a part of the rotation.
01:15But he said something yesterday.
01:18He was on a podcast.
01:19I think it was NFL Network.
01:21He was on the NFL Network.
01:22Yeah, just doing a little quick hit.
01:23Doing a quick hit with the NFL Network.
01:25And he said this about his team's quarterback.
01:28You weren't the only guy who got injured last year.
01:31It felt like it was just one of those seasons where nobody could stay healthy in Washington,
01:35including your quarterback, Jaden Daniels, who dealt with a lot through his second year in the NFL.
01:40Sometimes through those trials, you learn things about yourself.
01:43You've seen Jaden a little bit, at least, I would imagine, coming back in this offseason.
01:46What do you anticipate seeing from him as he goes into year three?
01:50Well, really, everybody's hungry.
01:52Everybody's hungry.
01:53Everybody's ready to go.
01:54And our leader, Jaden Daniels, is doing his thing as well.
01:57He's phenomenal.
01:58He has that look in his eyes that he's ready to take over the league.
02:04League takeover.
02:05Incoming.
02:06Take over the league.
02:07Play the question again real quickly.
02:09Who was that asking the question?
02:10Do you know?
02:11I believe it was Pellicero or Garofalo.
02:14I'm not familiar with how their voices sound.
02:16You were the only guy who got injured last year.
02:21It felt like it was just one of those seasons where nobody could stay healthy in Washington,
02:25including your quarterback, Jaden Daniels, who dealt with a lot through his second year in the NFL.
02:30Sometimes through those trials, you learn things about yourself.
02:32You've seen Jaden a little bit, at least, I would imagine, coming back in this offseason.
02:36What do you anticipate seeing from him as he goes into year three?
02:39I wonder what Jaden's learned from last year.
02:43You know, when we had Quinn on now two months ago, I said,
02:48what can you take away from a season like this one where you were just constantly in flux
02:54with the players that were going to play for you?
02:56You weren't even sure during a given week who was going to be available and who wasn't.
03:00What can you take away from it?
03:02What can you learn from it?
03:03He said, it's really hard to learn from that kind of a season, but you have to go back
03:09and you've got to see why it happened in terms of being the most injured team front line starter
03:16in the last seven years in the NFL.
03:18That is something we got to check.
03:21Did we practice in a way that led to all of these injuries?
03:25Was it our training?
03:25Was it our nutrition?
03:26Was it the way we handled the injuries when they happened?
03:29I mean, you know, I don't think I said this to Quinn because it would have been a little bit
03:34obnoxious,
03:34but could have said one way to protect your quarterback is when you're down 31 with eight minutes to go
03:41in the game,
03:42maybe not have them run RPOs, maybe not have them in the game at all.
03:46Um, that would certainly be something that I would imagine they learned from last year.
03:53Like that would be number one on the board.
03:55What did we learn from last year?
03:57When we are getting our ass kicked on, was that a Sunday night game?
04:03The Seattle game?
04:03Yep.
04:04Sure was Sunday night game.
04:05When we're getting our ass kicked on Sunday night football to the tune of down 31 with eight minutes to
04:10go.
04:11And we've got the likes of, you know, Robbie chosen and Chris Moore and Traylon Burks who just arrived three
04:17days earlier and all sorts of players that we had to introduce ourselves to, uh, earlier in the week on
04:23the field.
04:24That is, you know, that is, we're going to save ourselves for a sunnier day.
04:31This is a rainy day and it's not going to work.
04:34We're not going to win.
04:35We're going to pull our starting quarterback from the game and we're going to put Marcus Mariota in the game
04:39and he's going to play.
04:40Or if we're going to leave our starting quarterback in the game, he is going to do one thing and
04:45one thing only.
04:46He is going to take a snap and he's going to hand the ball off to Bill Krosky Merritt or
04:52to Chris Rodriguez or whomever was in the game that night.
04:55That would be an actual, you know, area of, okay, nutrition check, training check, the way the doctors handle the
05:03injuries check.
05:04Hey, I'm not going to have our quarterback run an RPO down 31 with eight minutes to go because something
05:11bad could happen.
05:13More likely than not, it won't happen, but there's only one way it will happen.
05:18And that is, if we call that play with him in the game, that really, those are the things that
05:25just drive me crazy.
05:27Self-inflicted, totally self-inflicted.
05:30You know, I go back to Jaden's first game as a rookie in Tampa.
05:34I still can't believe down 37 to 13.
05:38Was that the score?
05:38Something like that.
05:39What was the final score of that Tampa game?
05:4237, 20.
05:43It was 37 to 13 at the end.
05:45I mean, we're at the two-minute warning.
05:47I mean, they're down 24 points, 37 to 13.
05:54It ain't happening.
05:55And you got your rookie quarterback in his very first game running read option at the goal line on a
06:02condensed field, which is even harder.
06:05And he took some shots.
06:07That was stupid.
06:09Him in the game against Seattle running an RPO was stupid.
06:12But I know an RPO, typically, he's just going to throw the ball.
06:15It's going to get out quickly.
06:16But on a condensed field in the red zone, sometimes you think it's there, and it wasn't.
06:22He kept it and dislocated his elbow.
06:26So that's that.
06:27But what could Jaden have legitimately learned from last season?
06:32I don't know what he could have learned.
06:36I guess even when you have to run to keep the team alive, you got to be more careful.
06:43I think that's probably, you know, top two or three areas of we got to live to fight another day.
06:52We can't take, no matter how competitive we are, we can't treat second and eight in the first quarter like
07:01it's fourth and two in the fourth quarter of a tie game.
07:06We have to recognize game situation management in terms of the decisions we make with the football.
07:14Jaden plays, and this is the one thing, and I know it concerns many of you, Jaden plays the first
07:21quarter, three, three, eight minutes to go, first and ten, the same way he plays fourth quarter, 24-23, have
07:33the ball down one, and it's fourth and three.
07:36You can't do that.
07:37You know, you've got to understand game situation, and, you know, you have to be, you have to assess the
07:45risk worth.
07:46Is it worth taking this kind of risk?
07:49You're never going to get him, and I would never want him on fourth and five in the fourth quarter
07:55down seven to do anything other than dive head first to try to move the chains and keep the ball
08:01and keep the game alive.
08:02There's always going to be risk in those situations, but he can't take those risks in other game situations that
08:10aren't nearly as pressing.
08:12I think that through the first two years, that has to be part of the takeaways for Jaden Daniels.
08:19I mean, I think about last year, we've been through this so many times.
08:24I just am in disagreement with many of you who say that when he did play, which was barely, he
08:30wasn't very good.
08:31I completely disagree with that.
08:33I think week one is always a bit of, you know, a figure-it-out week, a head-fake week,
08:39and he was fine against the Giants.
08:42He didn't look like he did against Atlanta or Detroit in the playoffs or Tampa in the playoffs or even
08:47Philadelphia in the playoffs.
08:49He didn't look like that.
08:50That's true.
08:51And I remember coming out of the game, hey, it didn't really look like last year, but it's week one.
08:55You know, it's week one, and he and Terry weren't together, and they barely played football.
08:59They haven't been tackled since the NFC championship game, and he still threw for 233, you know, in a touchdown,
09:06no picks, and rushed for 68 yards and had, you know, his QBR was over 50 in the game.
09:11That's a solid game.
09:14And I thought he had a solid game in a 21-6 win over the Giants.
09:18Week two, unquestionably, was not a good outing, not only for him, but for anybody.
09:27They got absolutely manhandled by Green Bay up front.
09:31They didn't have much of a shot.
09:33He certainly did take some shots and get hurt.
09:37He wasn't sharp throwing the football.
09:40Had a very low completion percentage for him in that game.
09:43Didn't throw a pick.
09:45Took a couple of sacks.
09:46Wasn't really able to run the ball.
09:47They couldn't run the ball at all.
09:48That was a mismatch on a short week.
09:51Nobody played well.
09:52He didn't play well either.
09:54The Charger game was the game that looked like 2024.
09:57You know, after that first series, you know, he'd come back from the Green Bay injury and missing a couple
10:02of games, and he comes back.
10:03And that first series or two didn't necessarily look great.
10:06And then all of a sudden, he lit up the Chargers.
10:09You know, 15 completions for 231 yards of touchdown, no picks.
10:14Rushed for 39 yards on eight carries.
10:17Had that incredible play at the end of the half to McCaffrey.
10:20And they rolled a team that was pretty good on defense.
10:23The Chargers, 27 to 10.
10:26The Bears game, I thought he was fine in until the end.
10:31You know, he had that one early misread pick and then really got it going through three touchdown passes, you
10:40know, threw for over 200 yards, rushed for over five yards a carry.
10:43And they're in position with a 24 to 22 lead to win the game.
10:48And the rain came and it came harder.
10:50And can't use that as an excuse.
10:53He fumbled the football.
10:54He handed Chicago the game or the opportunity to win the game.
10:59What still disgusts me about that game was, you know, you didn't have to just let them move down the
11:06field after Jaden's turnover.
11:08If you recall that last drive, they just lined it up and ran DeAndre Swift, you know, literally into field
11:18goal range.
11:19Like they were so horrendously soft with the game on the line and Jake Moody made the kick for the
11:26Bears to beat them.
11:27You know, the Dallas game was okay.
11:29The Seattle game was a disaster for everybody.
11:31There were receivers out there that nobody was familiar with.
11:35They were running the wrong routes.
11:36And truly the Minnesota game, if you go back and really dissect it as we did here, they only had
11:41the ball twice in the first half.
11:43Three times total in the game with him in the game before he got hurt because defensively they couldn't get
11:48off the field.
11:49I mean, it was the only time that Minnesota fans all season long thought maybe J.J. McCarthy can be
11:56a starting quarterback in this league.
11:58In that game, it was his best game of his young career.
12:02And they had that incredible 98-yard drive on 19 plays that took over 12 minutes.
12:12Yeah.
12:13All right.
12:14I don't know why we just did that.
12:16But I don't know what he – I think the learning for Jaden Daniels from the first two years is
12:23really – it's like kind of risk management.
12:30It is understanding when it makes sense to be a dog, when it makes sense to be super highly competitive,
12:39no holds barred.
12:42Like, we have to have this play or we're going to lose the game versus plays in which, yeah, we're
12:50going to live to, you know, run a second down and 10 play rather than a second down and 8
12:56play with me taking a brutal shot trying to get two yards.
13:00That doesn't really make sense.
13:03Thank you very much.
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