- 1 day ago
The Athletic's Barry Svrluga steps inside the press box to reveal the shocked, silent reaction as Washington’s game-ending disaster unfolded.
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00:00Say good morning to Barry Zerluga, columnist for The Athletic.
00:04Good morning, Barry. How are you?
00:06Great, guys. We'll have a couple of days.
00:08Yeah, it's been pretty long.
00:10I want to know what your immediate reaction was
00:13as soon as that play unfolded in overtime.
00:18What were you doing?
00:20How did you react to seeing Jaden Daniels go down to the field of play,
00:24no timeouts left, and realizing,
00:26well, they're not going to have enough time to run another play.
00:28You were in the press box, correct?
00:32Yeah, and I was typing furiously,
00:33because I have to file something right at the end of the game,
00:38and one of the items was like,
00:40well, when Jaden's healthy, he looks pretty good.
00:43And then you can't file that after that moment.
00:48I mean, it's almost like out of body.
00:50You don't know what you're watching.
00:53John Clime is right next to me, Aldridge, Nicky.
00:58I think we're just looking at each other and at the field,
01:01and it's kind of silent in the moment.
01:04Maybe somebody yells, what are they doing?
01:06What did they do?
01:07But it's like you're drinking it in,
01:10not understanding everything that they're not understanding,
01:14and just like, this game is going to end in a tie?
01:17Why did they even run the play?
01:18And then, you know, you start going to like,
01:22well, how could that have happened?
01:23Like, did they not know they didn't have any timeouts?
01:27What was the play call?
01:29Did Jaden not know he should have to spike the ball?
01:33Why was he looking?
01:34You know, why were there two receivers in the middle of the field?
01:38You're looking for a replay really, you know,
01:41as fast as you can to watch it again.
01:43I mean, how many times have you watched that play?
01:44Like, I've probably watched it 20 or 30 times, right?
01:48Yeah, exactly.
01:49Like, so it's really a defining moment for Dan Quinn's entire operation.
01:59I think once you get kind of removed from it,
02:03you can lay some blame at the feet of Jaden Daniels
02:08for not having more situational awareness.
02:11Just basic, like, look, we've got to stop the clock.
02:13He should probably know that.
02:15You can place, I think, in retrospect, some blame on David Blau
02:21because, as Quinn explained yesterday,
02:23the whole operation was really slow from the time after the Rashad White run.
02:32They were switching personnel groups.
02:34There's no reason to switch personnel groups
02:35when the next play is essentially going to be trying to incomplete a pass.
02:40So, but I do agree with Quinn that you have to look at him first.
02:47He's the one who, as a head coach who's not calling plays
02:53either on defense or on offense, his job is to manage the game.
03:00And he mismanaged it to an insane degree in which, you know,
03:06was it a tie and not a loss?
03:08Sure.
03:09It feels absolutely like one of the worst losses of your career
03:12because you did not do the basic thing to put your team in position to win.
03:19If Drew Stevens misses the kick, like, he's a rookie undrafted guy,
03:23like, that could have happened.
03:24He's also 7 for 7 from inside 50 yards,
03:27and that would have been a 42-yard field goal.
03:29So, you know, Quinn is one of the nicest, like,
03:35most real coaches I've ever covered in any sport.
03:38But that was egregious, and it lines up with, as I wrote this morning,
03:47a lot of large and small mismanagement things he's had during his tenure here
03:52that starts with keeping Jaden in a 38-7 game against Seattle,
03:57but also includes, like, a million, like, poorly used timeouts
04:02and all the pre-snap penalties, and that's really a coaching issue.
04:07Well, that's the thing that's so strange about it
04:08because there is kind of a track record with Dan
04:11and maybe some questionable decisions.
04:13With Jaden, it really is sort of the first major brain fart.
04:16Like, forget about interceptions and bad play.
04:18Like, it's just kind of staggering.
04:20Now that we've gathered as much evidence as we have,
04:23I don't think Jaden's going to tell us.
04:25I think he's just going to say, yeah, we've got to be better.
04:27Like, when you asked him, he's like, yeah, we've just got to be better.
04:29I've got to be better.
04:30But now that we've gathered evidence and it's been 48 hours or so,
04:34we know what should have happened.
04:36Should have been coaches screaming up and down the sideline,
04:38hurry up, hurry up, all that.
04:39Should have been more urgency from all the guys, all that.
04:42What do you actually think happened?
04:46I think, you know, Quinn went into way more detail
04:50than I think any other coach would have yesterday
04:52on his conference call with us.
04:55And I do think, as I mentioned, switching personnel groups,
04:59like, it's Dan Quinn's job to say we're going to run another play,
05:04and it's David Blau's job to say, here's the play we're going to run.
05:08And I think that got muddied up because Blau said, okay,
05:12we're wanting one more play.
05:13I'd like to do it with 13 personnel.
05:14We've got to get the tight ends in there, blah, blah, blah.
05:16That was stupid, right?
05:18Yeah.
05:19But I also, I have to believe.
05:22What happened with Jaden's brain?
05:24That's what I want to know, Barry.
05:26Well, that's what I think.
05:28That's the meltdown within the meltdown.
05:31Like, Dan Quinn made the wrong choice in running another play.
05:36He did not need to run more time off the clock,
05:38and the operation was slow.
05:40But Jaden Daniels easily could have bailed his coach out by not breaking out
05:46at the line of scrimmage and jitterbugging around,
05:49just throwing the ball over the head of, I think it was Sinnott who was out
05:53to the left.
05:55That's a target.
05:57You throw the ball out of bounds, but it's an intended receiver,
06:02and they walk onto the field with, you know,
06:05the field goal unit walks on with five seconds left.
06:07I get what Quinn was saying, that he wanted to run more time off the clock
06:12because there had been four missed kicks in that game.
06:16So you don't want to give them 25 seconds or whatever if you miss the kick
06:21and they get the ball at the spot.
06:22So that's fine.
06:23I get that.
06:24But they didn't need to run that much time off.
06:27And I do think, again, I'm going to lay the blame overall at Quinn's feet,
06:33but it was very easy for his star quarterback to bail him out by just making a...
06:37But what do you think he was thinking?
06:39Do you think he just had a brain fart?
06:41Like, sometimes...
06:42Yeah.
06:43Well, don't you think...
06:44Just what we're guessing, and we'll probably never know,
06:47but just the way his body looked, like, this is an athlete,
06:51an elite athlete who is in control of all his actions.
06:55And in that moment...
06:57Yeah, it looked like poise went away, and he just freaked.
07:02Like, it was haywire.
07:03Like, you know, wires crossed, and there was a spark,
07:06and he just kind of melted down.
07:08But that's on the play itself, Barry.
07:10That's on the play itself.
07:11Once he goes down, he sits there for two seconds until people are like,
07:14we've got to go.
07:15I'm wondering, and I'm starting to...
07:18Look, I said 10%.
07:19I'm starting to think he might have thought there was another overtime period.
07:22Like, okay, we don't get the next playoff,
07:24but we get the next playoff in the next overtime period,
07:26and we win right there.
07:28I mean, that's probably a possibility.
07:31It has to be a possibility, I guess.
07:33But, like, the guy watches sports all the time.
07:37Yeah, but Donovan McNabb years ago didn't know the way that overtime ended.
07:41Sure, sure.
07:42And I think Kyle Shanahan didn't properly prepare his team in the Super Bowl
07:47for what the overtime rules were at that time.
07:49Like, I guess it's not crazy, but, you know,
07:53as players,
07:55I think one of the reasons that overtime is shortened to 10 minutes
07:58is because it's like a player safety issue.
08:00So I have to feel like guys in the locker room are like,
08:03we're not going to play 80 minutes of football.
08:05Like, that doesn't happen.
08:07Plus, they're telling him there's one timeout left.
08:10If you believe the coaches, and I believe them,
08:12that they did say there's one timeout left,
08:14and it was said in the huddle at least once or twice.
08:16That there's, or we have no timeout left.
08:19No, no, no timeout left.
08:19Right, right.
08:20No timeout.
08:20Yeah, right.
08:21Forgive me.
08:22I mean, Chris Paul said after the game,
08:23like, it was talked about in the huddle that there were no timeouts.
08:27Right, right.
08:28So maybe he forgot his own words?
08:31Like, I don't know.
08:33I think that's honestly it.
08:35Barry, was he asked, maybe I missed it,
08:37was he asked in the postgame presser
08:41if he thought there was another overtime?
08:43No.
08:44He was not asked that.
08:45He was not asked that.
08:45No, he was not asked that, for sure.
08:47Got you.
08:48No.
08:48But he was asked if you knew that you had no timeouts.
08:53Yeah.
08:54But he kind of skirted that.
08:56He kind of fell back on, it's situational football.
09:00We've all got to be better at situational football.
09:02Like, Jaden is a nice person who's not,
09:08like, his interactions with us are not confrontational.
09:12But he's also, he's just not going to give you a lot.
09:16And that includes, you know, it's almost the opposite of Quinn,
09:20who extremely patiently and painstakingly yesterday,
09:25kind of right off the top of his call with us,
09:28went through what happened.
09:30He took an incredible amount of questions on just that play,
09:35on his job security, on if he's talked with ownership,
09:37all of that stuff, Jaden, in a very coached-up way,
09:42and it's his choice, is going to fall back on the platitudes of,
09:47like, it starts with me, we've all got to be better.
09:49I think everybody would say that from the top down
09:51and not give very much detail.
09:55And it actually is, like, it's wild that this week comes in advance
10:00of a Monday night game because we don't talk to any of the players
10:04until Thursday afternoon.
10:06It's going to feel like an eternity because, you know,
10:11the Niners game is coming up.
10:12They're 1-3-1.
10:13They're in last place when they could have been right back in the mix.
10:16And are we going to get into that locker room on Thursday
10:18and talk to Jaden on Thursday about that play from four days earlier?
10:22I think we're going to have to because there's a lot of blanks to fill in.
10:26Talking to Barry Zerluga, columnist for The Athletic,
10:29so a question which we posed to our listeners
10:31and some callers weighed in is let's take a look at the next month.
10:36So it's San Francisco, bye week, then Eagles, Rams.
10:39Does Dan Quinn survive that?
10:41This is speculative.
10:42What do you think?
10:45I think he does, not because they're going to, you know,
10:50go 3-0 in those games and thrust themselves back into the thick of the race,
10:55but because I don't think it's Josh Harris' nature and history to fire coaches
11:03in the middle of the season.
11:05I think in the building he has a lot of credibility in terms of not backbiting,
11:14trying to keep things together, you know,
11:17really taking ownership of his own failures
11:21and then addressing all the issues in-house.
11:25Now, I will say there's a caveat.
11:27Like, even though the record is miserable,
11:30the games have been largely competitive,
11:33and I give them a pass in the second half of the Colts game in London
11:37because you're dealing with, you know,
11:39the third-string quarterback who had never taken a staff, blah, blah, blah, blah.
11:42Like, that's a little bit of a different situation.
11:44I think if we start seeing what we saw last year in, you know,
11:51the Seattle game that was 31-7 at halftime
11:53or the game at Dallas that was, you know, equally non-competitive
11:58or the home Detroit game that was over before it started,
12:01if you start seeing that,
12:02then that seems like you would want to make a change
12:07because, you know, you're talking about after the Rams game,
12:11there's still half a season left.
12:12Like, this season feels long already,
12:15and we're still a month from the midway point.
12:18But I just think it's more likely than not
12:23that they are going to be, if Jaden is healthy,
12:27competitive in these games.
12:28They already were competitive in Philadelphia.
12:30The Eagles are kind of a, you know,
12:33they're having freak-out calls on WIP up there right now, right?
12:36Like, this is a disaster for them.
12:39And the Rams, like, a lot of talent.
12:42They're not closing out games, as we saw last night.
12:45So, anything's possible.
12:47I just, like, if I'm, if it's a binary choice,
12:49do I think Dan Quinn survives through that stretch?
12:51I would say yes.
12:52I think he does.
12:53The only thing, I think everyone is leaning on this,
12:54that Josh Harris, you know, he's just a professional owner.
12:57He doesn't do that kind of thing.
12:58This team's different than all the other teams he owns, right?
13:00This is the team he loves the most.
13:02And he has fired a Devils coach in the middle of his season.
13:04Yeah, he has done it before, A.
13:06Yeah, yeah.
13:06And B, I'm telling you, it's different when I'm telling you,
13:10he has a different feeling for this team than all the other teams he owns.
13:13This one's different.
13:14This is, yeah.
13:14This is the big E.
13:15This one's personal.
13:16I agree, I agree, and I think that's why, like, I mean, I don't want to get off topic,
13:22but if I were a Sixers fan, I'd be like, well, who's this carpet-banging owner from D.C.
13:26who actually loves D.C. teams, who's, like, trying to put a winner together here?
13:30Like, this is the one that, you know, he grew up going to, like, watch the seats bounce at RFK.
13:37Like, that all matters.
13:40But I also think, like, Eric, then you're thinking, like, he's going to make an emotional decision.
13:45And I don't think he became a billionaire by making—
13:49If they lose the next three, Barry, that's three and 17 in their last 20.
13:54No, you're not wrong.
13:56Then you get fired.
13:57Are you on the—I think he does not survive the next three games?
14:02I think it's very possible that he does not survive because they're going to be dogs in all three games.
14:08Now, the one good thing is, and I did want to touch on this with you, Barry,
14:12is that Jaden did show us, brain fart aside, what a superstar talent he really is when you keep him
14:18healthy and upright.
14:19Like, you know, 99% of that game, I was just, like, watching.
14:23I was going, God, I'm so thankful we have him, and he's healthy so far-ish.
14:27And, like, what a future this guy has if we could keep him healthy.
14:32He—what number of quarterbacks can run away from entire secondaries like he did twice?
14:37Yeah, yeah.
14:38With ease.
14:39There's, like, one or two.
14:40That's it.
14:41Put the—right.
14:42Put the last 15 seconds aside, which obviously you can't do.
14:45It was disastrous.
14:46That's all we should talk about.
14:48But, like, in that game—and he wasn't, like, the best version of himself on everything.
14:56No.
14:57But he threw a couple of lasers, like, right into Terry on a slant that they needed that you couldn't
15:03go in another spot.
15:04And then, like, I think he really has learned to be a smart runner.
15:11And it's, like, I am taking off in its open space.
15:15And guess what?
15:16Here come two defenders.
15:17I'm sliding.
15:17It's not just sliding.
15:18It's, like—
15:19Totally.
15:19He is—this does not mean he's going to be healthy for the rest of his career.
15:23But he is doing his best to be the dangerous weapon that he is and that almost nobody else is,
15:31but protecting himself and, therefore, his team at the same time.
15:35I think if they had just spiked the ball and kicked the field goal, we'd be spending a lot of
15:42time this week being, like,
15:44holy cow, man, like, if he stays healthy, like, he covers up so many fins.
15:50His own, others, defensive, like, there's a real possibility in any game that they play because of him.
15:56Yep.
15:56Just like he did as a rookie.
15:58And Barry—
15:58He did that in 2024.
15:59Barry, real quick, when we had Kaimon on Monday, we asked his reaction when he went into the locker room.
16:03He said that the looks on the faces of the players, especially with Terry McCut, were just different than he's
16:08seen before.
16:10Agreed.
16:10You know what I mean?
16:11Agreed.
16:11And that's where, yes, and—
16:14And that's where you wonder if he's—if DQ is starting to lose the locker room.
16:19Correct.
16:19Correct.
16:20And so that is the one thing where—and you can read locker rooms, man.
16:25Like, you can understand when, like, you know, guys respond in different ways and they say, you know,
16:33we just have to run the play that's called.
16:35It's our job to execute.
16:36It's not our job to make decisions.
16:38Like, they're not calling out the coach, but they're not sticking up for him.
16:43And I think that's where Quinn's task yesterday in his first meeting with them since was, like, I've got to
16:50make sure I say the right things, that they're back behind me.
16:54And that's taking ownership of the moment.
16:57But, you know, who knows, like, what guys are having conversations about when we're not around.
17:02It's totally, totally, totally worth monitoring this week and into the next month.
17:07Barry, great to catch up with you.
17:09We'll talk with you again soon.
17:10Thanks, Barry.
17:11Thanks, guys.