- 2 days ago
David Blough spoke to the media and addressed the disaster on Sunday, but bottom line, they need to improve against the blitz.
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00:01Grant and Danny on the fan. It's a field trip Friday and a football Friday.
00:07We'll take you up to 630. We're live at Mill Street Draft Garden in Occoquan, Virginia.
00:12It is beautiful out here. We're going to be outside, under the sun, 80 degrees, really, really cool vibes, good
00:19setup.
00:20And we're going to be here for four plus hours getting ready for not only a great NFL weekend and
00:25a nice college Saturday as well.
00:27At some point, I want to look at some of the college matchups tomorrow.
00:30These are my favorite weekends, I'll be honest.
00:32As a Commanders fan over the years, when I don't have to worry about Washington and I just get to
00:35watch football, that's the good stuff.
00:37Yeah, and then you pay for the back end, of course, with a primetime embarrassment, the thing that I'm concerned
00:41about.
00:41But I like that you're able to enjoy it.
00:44I like being – there is something to that, by the way, being able to have unfettered football access without
00:49fear of embarrassment or shame.
00:51No one gets coming later, but that 1 o'clock, 4 o'clock, there's nothing bad to discuss.
00:55Just so we're on the same page, though, I saw a stat today.
00:58Seven of the last ten underdogs in primetime games have won outright.
01:05Seven of the last ten now.
01:07Hmm.
01:08Washington will be a significant underdog against the San Francisco 49ers.
01:12I'm not saying.
01:14I'm just saying.
01:15Right.
01:15You're not actually saying.
01:17But you've shared information.
01:18There's just some information being disseminated.
01:21That's all that's happening.
01:22On the Grant and Danny radio program.
01:23Speaking of dissemination of things on this show, Greta Van Fleet tickets, we got them for you.
01:274 o'clock, Beltway Blitz time, Meriwether Post Pavilion.
01:30If you want the tickets to that show, you've got to be listening.
01:32That's about 90 minutes from right now.
01:36David Blau had not spoken since Sunday's game.
01:40He had effectively, and also fortuitously, because coordinators don't speak in the league until Friday after games,
01:48so he could kind of get away with it a little bit, but he had skirted a lot of the
01:53angst and frustrations of what happened.
01:57We've heard from Dan Quinn, his head coach, quite a bit.
02:00We've heard from Jaden Daniels multiple times.
02:03Blau has not had to speak until today, so I was fascinated to see what he was going to say.
02:07Okay, let's first hear Blau cut one on taking responsibility for that final sequence against the Giants.
02:16And then obviously the situational football.
02:18We had four opportunities as a unit to put the game away, and then as it pertains to the last
02:24play,
02:25I'm the one with the last line of communication to the quarterback.
02:28It falls on me.
02:30We have high expectations as a group as it pertains to communication and excellence,
02:37and I'm the leader of the unit, right, so you can put that on me.
02:42I said yesterday I wanted him to hear – I wanted him to say, and I wanted to hear something
02:46a lot like that.
02:47So I give him credit.
02:48For the record, since Sunday's fiasco, everyone's done and said pretty much what they're supposed to,
02:54starting on Monday with Dan Quinn.
02:55And they're having a fight over who's most at fault, which is exactly what should be happening
03:01from an accountability standpoint with that triumvirate that failed the team.
03:06Because Quinn didn't do his job, Blau didn't do his job, and Daniels, who was unbelievable all game long
03:11until that final moment, didn't do his job.
03:14And so Blau is trying to take responsibility for that sequence today, which I liked.
03:18Me too.
03:19Yeah, part of it is the sort of bad luck of how communication with the media goes.
03:25If Blau's available immediately postgame or he's available or he's at a press conference on Monday,
03:31we could have gotten this early.
03:32But to your point, we're all sort of sitting around looking at our watch going,
03:35when is Blau going to say that, my God, what I just did was so colossally awful
03:39and I screwed up really, really bad?
03:40Same thing, too, with Daniels.
03:41I saw people taking issue with the fact that he hadn't spoken early, midweek.
03:45That's not how the beats of the week go.
03:48And in his case, actually, he spoke later than normal because it's Monday.
03:51It's a Monday, yeah.
03:51So what happens is normally in the NFL, having covered a beat, Wednesday's quarterbacks talk.
03:56It's normally, you know, the four days before the game.
03:59So that's Thursday ahead of a Monday night game.
04:01And it just, that's how the schedule sets up.
04:04So you're not going to do a special press conference so he can explain away the end of the game.
04:08You get him after the game.
04:10Now, he could have done a better job, a cleaner job at the podium on Sunday.
04:13You heard his mea culpa for that a little bit yesterday, I thought, anyway.
04:16But he actually gets to speak post-game.
04:19Blau doesn't.
04:20It's just not the rhythms of it.
04:22Referees don't talk.
04:23Coordinators don't talk.
04:24It's head coach and players, basically, after games.
04:27This was Blau cut two here.
04:29He was asked what actually went wrong, and this is what he had to say about that.
04:33And as we talk about it, right, we have really high expectations for it.
04:36And just being ready for that moment as a group, we certainly just have to continue to refine our process
04:45as we go back and reflect from the play call to the communication to making sure that we're ready to
04:51be able to handle that.
04:52And as we go forward, we know that Monday night we could have the same opportunity.
04:57So we're looking forward to that there.
04:59What I thought Blau did a good job of today, he kept being asked questions where if there's a truth
05:08that maybe he did give Daniel some information that wasn't followed or whatever, he could have made that known and
05:14he didn't.
05:14So we'll never know exactly what was said on the headset and what wasn't.
05:17I told you that I was told early in the week that it was made very clear many, many times,
05:22not in the seconds leading up to the final play, but over the course of the drive, there are no
05:27timeouts.
05:27But he was asked pretty point blank, did you talk about not having timeouts?
05:31Was he instructed to throw the ball away?
05:33Did you think that when you called that play, he would do the very obvious quarterback thing and throw the
05:37ball away?
05:38He never took that bait, though.
05:39And he just kept wearing it and saying, look, I got to do this better.
05:43We got to do this cleaner operationally, meaning coaches getting things into him.
05:47So you put this to bed now, finally.
05:50Everybody's talked.
05:51Everybody said their piece.
05:53Everyone knows it was unacceptable.
05:54One line that Blau had today that I thought was really good is he said, look, we got to move
05:58on.
05:59As a group, we can't have this continue to fester.
06:03But he said, and I love this, he goes, this is a scar we will all wear.
06:07I thought that was awesome.
06:08So correct.
06:09And what I mean by that is he knows.
06:10I'm a first-year coordinator.
06:12People are going to be thinking about this and talking about this when I'm interviewing for a head coaching job
06:15in three years, even if I'm good.
06:17Yeah, so I go on to great success, right, here.
06:20It all goes according to plan.
06:21I'm interviewing somewhere.
06:22The first question a general manager should ask, 55 seconds, what happened?
06:26Who said what to whom when?
06:28I still need to know.
06:30And, again, I don't think the timeout part of it was an issue because nobody tried to call timeout, right?
06:35There was no Chris Webber moment.
06:37The issue was, did everyone know what the rule was?
06:40Why was no one in a hurry?
06:41Why weren't you in a hurry?
06:42What should have happened that didn't, et cetera?
06:44And we'll never get to the bottom of it, to your point.
06:46And he gave plenty of those really good podium-style answer-non-answers, right, where you're not going to roll
06:53anyone under the bus.
06:54You're not going to inevitably say, like, no, listen, I told the kid, you know, you saw what he did.
06:58None of that stuff.
06:58Or, yeah, Dan Quinn didn't say anything to me after a minute, two seconds left, and we basically won the
07:03game.
07:04Nobody's going to say anything bad right there in that moment.
07:07So, yeah, he put it to bed, thought it did a good job of wearing it, acknowledging that, yes, this
07:13one isn't just, hey, we lost our Week 4 game.
07:16No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
07:17This is a different animal altogether.
07:18Week 5, rather.
07:19And I think now we have to go try to beat the 49ers.
07:23So we've talked a lot about the end of the game, and I think deservedly so.
07:27Well, there were other coaching things in that game that we would normally have really harped on and didn't.
07:34But from a Blau standpoint, it was somewhat alarming how long it took them to figure out New York's cover
07:41zero.
07:42You know, they got to a point in that game where they were up 14 points, and you can make
07:47the case, not to take anything away from Blau,
07:50who I think did some really good things early in that game schematically,
07:52but they were up 14 points on two off-schedule, amazing athletic plays by Jaden Daniels.
07:59Those aren't designed quarterback touchdown runs.
08:02The C's part, and he just takes off because he's the best athlete on the field,
08:06and he rips off a 38-yard and 26-yard touchdown.
08:10And so in those two sequences, you go up 19-6 and 27-13.
08:15When the Giants make an adjustment to keep him in the pocket, to hem him in with the blitz,
08:20to basically force the ball out of his hand, Daniels has really struggled statistically,
08:24not only this year, but since the beginning of last year against the blitz.
08:28He's kind of around Cam Ward and some other guys in that capacity.
08:31It's now up to David Blau to get the ball into the hands of playmakers
08:36and to help Jaden Daniels with some outlets and some safety valves.
08:41And when they made that adjustment after the back-to-back touchdowns from Daniels,
08:4572- and 81-yard drives, the next drive for Washington, three plays for minus four,
08:50three and out, four plays for 19, punt, four plays for 18, punt.
08:55It was not until overtime and the end of the game debacle that they moved the ball again.
09:01So we keep talking about the defense blowing it,
09:05allowing two touchdowns on drives of 75 and 72 yards in the fourth quarter, and they did.
09:10But the offense had three drives where they could have done anything to change the momentum,
09:14to score more points, to bury the Giants, and they didn't either.
09:18And that actually came up today with Blau when he was asked why it took until overtime
09:23to make some of the adjustments he was finally able to against New York.
09:29I think there's adjustments that you make throughout the course of the game.
09:32And so, you know, we found a couple things that worked, and then the guys went to make plays.
09:35Right?
09:36You lean on Terry, Traylon, those guys, Jaden getting it out of his hands.
09:39So we kind of had four opportunities there at the end of the game.
09:43And really the last one was the only one that we could piece together to kind of get down to
09:48field goal range.
09:51Yeah, to me it was an unacceptable performance all the way around.
09:53And I think you said it really well.
09:56This would have been a coaching indictment game were it not for the endgame gaffe,
10:01where the coaches, of course, you know, have, should, and need to wear that.
10:06And it's forever the stain on them.
10:07But the rest of the way, you're going, where's my adjustment?
10:12They get you once on something.
10:13You look at the Microsoft Surface and go, oh, okay, here's our plan.
10:16They didn't have anything.
10:17They had no counters.
10:18And that shouldn't be happening at this level.
10:20It can happen at a level where you can't block my guy because I've got five D1 linebackers
10:26and a front seven, and you're, you know, a 2A high school here,
10:30and you're getting smashed because Hayfield recruited and you didn't.
10:33That can happen at that level, not at this level.
10:35You can't have one play call where they're waving their hand at you going,
10:39we're not even disguising it.
10:40We're not doing some sort of, like, crazy, unexpected blitz where the cornerback comes.
10:44Like, against the Colts.
10:45Remember they got Cal Lake-Manus once on a corner, disguised it super, super well from the slot,
10:50came unblocked, sacked him.
10:52And you go, yeah, they got you right there.
10:54Right?
10:54They disguised it and they got you.
10:55They fooled you.
10:56There's no fooling anybody.
10:57There's no pretending.
10:58This was a pitcher going, fastball, right?
11:01Here it comes.
11:02And they beat you on it time and time and time and time and time again.
11:05That's terrible.
11:06Yeah.
11:07Over and over.
11:08And there wasn't seemingly an outlet for Daniels.
11:13Every time looked similarly like they would win.
11:16By the way, their speed gave Brandon Coleman fits, I thought.
11:19He said today in his presser, Blau did, that Coleman had some good moments but struggled in the game.
11:25The words he used were he had some reps he wanted back.
11:27But that's about as much as a coordinator is going to say to say it was a rough outing for
11:31him.
11:31And he's played pretty well, I think, at left tackle.
11:34But he went up against the best pass rusher he's faced this year.
11:37I have to tell you right now, Abdul Carter's a superstar.
11:39He doesn't have the sack totals yet.
11:40His speed, his ability to get pressure quickly.
11:43Nobody in the league has as many quick pressures, 2.5 seconds or fewer, after a snap than he does
11:48since the start of last year.
11:50And he is coming into his own.
11:51He eventually has a chance to be a defensive player of the year type.
11:55He's that good.
11:57But Blau, I think, is going to have to wear this like a scar, like a scarlet letter that the
12:02end of this game happened.
12:03And it's just a part of the growing pains of having a coordinator who skipped a couple of rungs on
12:09his way up to O.C.
12:10He wasn't a pass game designer and pass game coordinator.
12:15He wasn't a quarterback's coach for four years.
12:17He hadn't been in those meetings.
12:19He was playing in the league a couple years ago.
12:20And they fast-tracked him.
12:22And it doesn't mean it was a bad hire, but it certainly is partially responsible for how Sunday can happen.
12:29And we don't need to go back through it, but obviously your quarterback has a chance to make you right,
12:33and that didn't happen either.
12:35Grant and Danny on the fan.
12:36I want to get to Bill, who may not play on Sunday, based on the way things are trending with
12:42the injury report.
12:42We'll do that at the top of the hour in 20 minutes.
12:44It's also good news, Trey Amos seems to be on his way back.
12:48I think there's a lot of folks that feel like the defense makes a big jump with him returning, that
12:53the secondary, the coverage gets better.
12:54We can have that conversation on Grant and Danny as we continue.
12:58It's a field trip Friday.
12:59We're in Occoquan, just off the highway.
13:01So if you want to come out and see the show, get out of traffic and hang out with us.
13:06We're at the Mill Street Draft Garden today.
13:08This is the fan.
13:10This is the fan.