00:00Let's get to the Commanders, though.
00:02And I wanted to start the show taking people's temperature
00:05on Jaden Daniels here on Thursday.
00:07The Nats played in our time slot.
00:09We had a very short show yesterday on Grant and Danny.
00:13I want to make predictions on when he comes back
00:15and when we see him playing again.
00:19We still don't have a good update.
00:21Dan Quinn has effectively chosen so far to say nothing.
00:25Now, that can either be strategically because he doesn't want to.
00:28He just keeps saying he's meeting with specialists.
00:30Or you could give him the benefit of the doubt and say
00:32they really don't have the information yet, which I don't believe.
00:36Regardless, we don't have an update.
00:37They've all been non-update updates on Jaden Daniels.
00:40But we know how this is trending.
00:41Either he gets surgery and his season is over,
00:43or they put a brace on it and he comes back within a few weeks.
00:47If it's option B, he could either come back in a couple,
00:50two to three weeks, and avoid IR,
00:52or they could put him on IR and he's out for four weeks
00:55and he comes back five games from now, essentially.
00:58So I guess there's three different paths in terms of time missed.
01:01So where are you putting your money right now
01:04on a Jaden Daniels return timetable?
01:08I'm between San Francisco Monday Night Football in week six.
01:13That's October 19th.
01:14I'm between that game and then after the bye week
01:17for that extra rest, extra security, extra whatever you want to call it
01:21to not repeat the same process as last year.
01:26It might be sooner than that, though.
01:27Just given your point, they're going to keep this opaque.
01:30They're going to do the thing.
01:31They've decided that this is the way.
01:32Now, who knows, maybe tomorrow or even today or Friday
01:36or something like that.
01:36They give you some kind of clarity.
01:38We expect them back in three weeks.
01:39They just don't seem to want to do that at any point in time,
01:41which that's their prerogative.
01:43But that's my best guess is maybe at San Fran on Monday Night Football
01:48or after the bye week against Philly.
01:50So you've got Seattle Sunday at home.
01:53They fly across the pond to London to play the Colts next week.
01:58The following week is the Giants and then only San Fran before the bye.
02:03I've got him coming back against the Giants on October 11th,
02:07which means not only do I think he doesn't have surgery,
02:10but I think he wins out in whatever tug-of-war is going on here
02:15where he's pulling the rope in the no surgery, no IR.
02:19Maybe I don't even know that they're pulling the rope in the other direction,
02:22but my spidey senses tell me that this thing's lingering
02:26and all these opinions are maybe that there's some kind of differing
02:29in opinion on what should be done.
02:31Otherwise, I feel like you're not still seeing specialists like three days later.
02:36But I think he wants to brace it up and play
02:41there's no reason to play in the London game as soon as next week.
02:45And by the way, I wouldn't even travel him.
02:47Me neither.
02:47Stay back.
02:48You just think about the logistics.
02:49No, thank you.
02:5030,000 feet, being over there, rehab every hour of every day in the building,
02:54and you get ready for October 11th,
02:56which basically gives him almost three weeks from now,
03:01but three weeks from the injury to get all the way back.
03:04So that's my guess.
03:06It's not what I would do for the record.
03:07I would advocate like hell if I'm Adam Peters to get the surgery so this never happens again.
03:12But I keep hearing everyone say, and I guess they're right, it's his body.
03:16I mean, it's up to him.
03:17You can't make a player have surgery.
03:19We've seen this in hockey with Jack Eichel.
03:21We've seen this with other guys where a team may have wanted a player to have a surgery
03:25that they didn't want to have, and they end up butting heads over it.
03:28I don't think this leads to butting heads.
03:30I think you go, hey, man, what do you want to do?
03:32And he says, according to Adam Schefter, the report we have is he doesn't want to have surgery.
03:37So that means okay.
03:38Now we either IR him, which is what I would do, keep him out a full month,
03:42gives me more time to make an informed decision, or we don't, and he comes back sooner.
03:48But keep in mind also that four games is also five weeks because that's when the bye week happens.
03:54That's fine.
03:54Games are all that matters.
03:55Right.
03:55But my point is in terms of rest and recovery.
03:58Yeah, I think it's huge.
03:59That's why I think it's that much smarter.
04:00Yeah, if you IR him, you miss Seattle, Indianapolis, the Giants, and the Niners.
04:04Then he gets the bye week, and he's back November 1 against the Eagles.
04:08That gives him a full month plus from now and six weeks total to come back.
04:16I think that's really smart.
04:17Here's the problem with that, though.
04:19What if those four weeks go really badly?
04:23Is he just coming back to a lost season?
04:25I mean, there is a world where you lose to Seattle, you're an underdog.
04:30I actually think they can beat the Colts.
04:32Watching Indianapolis the last couple days, that's the worst defensive team in the league.
04:37Agreed.
04:37I think they can beat Indy, but let's just say they don't.
04:40Okay, it's a pick-em type game.
04:41They'll probably be an underdog on a neutral site, or it's going to be right around, you know,
04:45one or two points spread either direction.
04:47But you may be seeing two 0-3 teams play when you go to London.
04:51You lose to the Colts.
04:53If you beat the Giants and then lose to the Niners, we're talking about them being 1-5 when
04:59he comes back.
05:00Do you reset at that point and have a conversation with him during the bye where you go, look,
05:06like maybe Dan Quinn's fired if you're 1-5.
05:08I don't think he would be, but that's also on the table.
05:10Maybe you're making a change.
05:12If you're not, you're just 1-5 and you're bad, and the season is spiraling down the tubes,
05:16and, you know, it's going down the toilet.
05:18Do you go back to him and say, Jaden, is this really worth it?
05:20Let's get the surgery now.
05:22You'll be ready for training camp.
05:23This season is effectively over.
05:26We'd have to rip off six wins in a row or something.
05:29You've got the Eagles and the Rams coming up.
05:31The schedule does get a lot lighter after that.
05:33It does, yeah.
05:34But you still have two more games that you would be underdogs in at 1-5.
05:38I wonder what the minimum number of wins they would need to avoid that kind of combo,
05:43because these guys don't think that way, I don't think.
05:44I mean, as evidenced by last year, when they were so confident in their operation
05:49that was turning in terrible results, that they didn't make any changes.
05:52I will always go back to that.
05:54The only thing they did different when they were losing by 25 a week was move Joe Witt's seat.
05:59There was no heads rolled, no panic, no lineup changes.
06:03Just same process, same practice, same everything.
06:05Let's go.
06:06We got it.
06:06We're so confident in ourselves.
06:08And it was ludicrous.
06:09They kept beating their head against the wall,
06:10and they lost every meaningful game except for a Giants team that they tried to lose to.
06:16But, you know, those guys would end up being more chaos than Washington to fire their coach
06:20and blow out the whole staff, et cetera.
06:21Should the record matter?
06:23It should to me.
06:25Isn't it right or wrong regardless?
06:26Of course it does, Grant.
06:27And last year I said it's kind of the same thing as we were talking about trying to bring
06:31Daniels back when they were 3-9 or wherever the thing was.
06:33And I go, this one's over.
06:35Turn the lights out.
06:36You've lost the privilege of trying to keep him healthy.
06:39And so we had that long conversation about, you know, shutting him down or not.
06:42But that's not what I'm talking about here.
06:44They will look at it as, if he's back, we got a shot.
06:48And we've got Arizona, Tennessee, Atlanta.
06:52You know, we thought Minnesota would be bad, but here they are 2-0.
06:54But you know what I mean?
06:55Like, they're going to look at it and go, we got a chance.
06:57We harvest our nuts.
06:58We win a couple of games.
06:59We got five.
07:00But if you're 1-5, the bad teams get you to, like, six or seven wins.
07:04I know.
07:05I mean, you still have to, like, we don't know.
07:07Is Minnesota actually really good?
07:09They might be.
07:10Might be good.
07:10They're 2-0.
07:11That was a very winnable-looking game the day after Christmas.
07:13A lot of people feel like Jacksonville is one of the best teams in the AFC.
07:16That's the penultimate game of the season.
07:18You're playing the Cowboys to close out the year.
07:20Now, you might get the gift that they don't need the game because either they have already
07:25wrapped up a playoff spot or they're not going to make the playoffs.
07:27Or George Pickens lit a fire to the place.
07:29Yeah.
07:29They just dominated you and could have scored 50 probably if they wanted to.
07:35I don't think the record should matter, honestly.
07:38I think if he is needing surgery, he should get surgery.
07:44And if he doesn't need surgery and he's just going to brace it up, then he shouldn't.
07:49And regardless, like, when you start basing it on record and jobs, I think the wrong thing,
07:54it should always be about Daniels.
07:56What is best for you?
07:57Agreed.
07:57What is best for the business of Jaden Daniels over the next 10 years?
08:02And I would make every decision based on that.
08:04But that might mean that you go back to him in a month if he's on IR and he's getting
08:11ready to come off and you say, hey, I know you didn't want to have the surgery on September
08:1725th because it was only two games into the season.
08:21But we now have four more weeks of data.
08:24And again, this is this worst case scenario, like hypothetical.
08:26Defense isn't that good.
08:28It's not what we thought it would be.
08:29We've won one football game.
08:32We're ranked second to last in the NFC right now, whatever it is.
08:35Do you just have the discussion again?
08:37And maybe he's more open to listening to the surgery dialogue at that point.
08:42It's a great question.
08:43Again, we won't know those conversations.
08:45But for me, I take the same process that you do, which is I'm not that concerned about
08:52a week, two weeks, three weeks.
08:54A lot of fans are wired that way to be concerned about the next game, next man up, and they
08:57want to yell all the platitudes and tough stuff.
08:58That's fine.
08:59To me, this is the future of the franchise.
09:01He'll be the quarterback when Peters is gone, when Quinn is gone.
09:03That's what I want.
09:04I want Jaden Daniels.
09:05I want it.
09:06When people think of Washington, their quarterback is Jaden Daniels.
09:09He'll play with different guards and tackles and running backs and receivers and linemen.
09:12I want him to be the furniture and everyone else to rotate.
09:15If he can stay on the field, all of that can be true.
09:17And that's what I want.
09:18And so I want the decision to be about that, not about, God, if he comes back, maybe the
09:23Rams are beat up.
09:24Maybe we get them in week nine.
09:26I don't want to do that.
09:27Right?
09:27But I think that's how they're wired is to think short term.
09:30All right.
09:30Let's take some calls on this.
09:32800-636-1067 is the number.
09:35That's 800-636-1067.
09:37So a couple of different questions we are chatting about here.
09:40Should the next few weeks be a factor into when and if Daniels returns?
09:45If he is out for two to three games and they lose those games and the season is already
09:51spiraled out of control, should that affect the types of dialogue the team's having with
09:56him on whether or not he should then maybe revisit the surgery combo?
10:01The other thing I think we could ask is just a basic prediction.
10:05When do you think we see him?
10:07I think we see him against the Giants on October 11th, which is very bullish, by the
10:13way.
10:14But I'm basing this on zero information internally that I've heard from anybody.
10:19And really, based on Schefter, Rappaport, the guys who get the leaks from the team, and
10:24what they're saying, I think it sounds to me like he wants to brace it up and go ASAP.
10:30And that might mean they could get him back in a couple weeks if they don't stand in his
10:36way.
10:38Grant and Danny on the...
