- 15 hours ago
Barry Svrluga joins the show to discuss the Dan Quinn situation, the Wizards season, and why the Capitals may have to make some lineup changes.
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00:00Joining us now, though, to break down everything going on, our friend Mr. Barry Sferluga from
00:05The Athletic.
00:05Barry, what's up, dude?
00:06How are you guys?
00:07We're good, man.
00:07Did you get golf in over the weekend?
00:09I did get some golf in.
00:12B, did you play at all?
00:14Nah.
00:15Not at all?
00:16Nah.
00:17Yeah, I played with the bye week, played poorly on Friday, decent on Monday.
00:24Did you get any golf in?
00:25I got some nice golf in at Langston on Friday.
00:28I love that.
00:28Beautiful day.
00:28I mean, this weather's been unbelievable.
00:30I might take advantage of it today.
00:32You need to play it like every day right now.
00:35Call Cody.
00:35You're around the corner.
00:36Cody's my guy.
00:37Although, Cody might be in Florida, I think.
00:39He's got like a big work conference.
00:40Anyway, there's a lot I want to talk to you about, but like the biggest thing going on,
00:46especially here in Ashburn, is the status of Dan Quinn, and you've got a lot of fans
00:51that have reached their breaking point.
00:53They've got one win through six games.
00:55But Brian and I just had this, like, I don't want to make it specific to Quinn and this
01:00situation right now.
01:02You've covered a lot of different sports for a lot of years.
01:05I'm sure you've covered some in-season firings.
01:07Yeah.
01:08I think you can have a legitimate, like, existential debate or discourse if firing a coach during
01:16a season actually helps.
01:18I mean, each situation is its own entity for sure, and you have to acknowledge that.
01:23But I'll go to two times in pretty recent Washington sports history where, I mean, 2019 baseball
01:32season, Nats have a ton of expectations.
01:38Davey Martinez is in his second year as manager.
01:41They were underwhelming in 2018.
01:43They start 19 and 31.
01:45They've got all this talent, all this payroll.
01:47And there was just no evidence.
01:49And, I mean, I wrote a column that May that was like, it's beyond even just questioning
01:55whether the manager should be here.
01:57It's clear he shouldn't.
01:58Are they going to sell pieces at the deadline?
02:00They won the World Series that fall.
02:02Yeah.
02:03In 2018, I know for a fact with the Capitals, there were two points, two precipice points
02:10where if the Caps had lost the next game, Barry Trotz would have been a midseason firing.
02:17Wow.
02:18They won the Cup that year.
02:20So, that's not to say these guys are going to win the Super Bowl if you keep Dan Quinn.
02:24And I get fans' questionings, but I think change for the sake of change is not really an organizational
02:30path forward, is how I decide.
02:33Like, when you look at it like that, I think one caller stated it, and I was thinking it.
02:38Like, we went through 20 years of that, 20-plus years.
02:42Every two to three years, they were changing.
02:45And then people wonder why we never got better.
02:47I think when you look at it, if you're going to do something, not in the middle of the season.
02:51I agree.
02:52At least you find out who's fighting, who's doing, you know, whether some assistant coach
02:58you really like to move forward.
03:00But when you do something in the middle of the season, I don't see much good happens from that.
03:04Yeah, and I think I get what fans are saying about, like, we've heard all the messages
03:10about brotherhood.
03:11We've heard about marching in the same direction and keeping the connection together.
03:16And it gets tiring at 1-4-1, particularly when you can look at the head coach in game management
03:24situations.
03:24Like, that's all true.
03:27Yeah, all of that stuff.
03:28And, you know, that has to get cleaned up on Sunday night against a team that is having
03:34these same existential conversations in Philly that are probably even more intense up there
03:40because the expectations going into the year were probably higher.
03:44So I get where all that comes from.
03:46But there isn't just a, okay, if we remove Dan Quinn, we've removed the problem.
03:53Like, that's just not a solution.
03:55And so this is not to stand up for him, to not say that the decisions have been good
04:03and the operation has been smooth because they haven't.
04:05But I think a mid-season firing, and this happened at Maryland, and I remember talking
04:10to people at Maryland prior to Loxley getting fired, and there was some sense that the thing
04:19you really solve with a mid-season firing is one day of fan satisfaction.
04:25That guy is gone.
04:26You have to wake up the next day and solve the problems with less brain power and less
04:32familiarity and less leadership to solve them.
04:35It's hard to do.
04:36Like I was saying, Jay, I think when you do it at this pro level, the people you say you're
04:41always trying to win, you just told them you gave up.
04:43That's right.
04:43That's absolutely right.
04:44And I think that right there in the NFL level is far, far worse.
04:49Fans want to be satisfied.
04:52But you better think about all the people inside that locker room, too, and how they're
04:55going to see stuff because doing certain little moves may never leave their minds.
05:01Yeah.
05:02So moving forward, their mindset may go from, okay, cool.
05:05I'll keep getting my money from you.
05:06Well, and think of it this way, too.
05:08We've spent a good deal of time over the past two and a half years talking about, oh, wow,
05:14Washington might be a place that people want to come to play because of the commitment
05:19of ownership and the vibe that Dan Quinn creates in the room.
05:23Now, we've got two straight or a year and a half of poor results.
05:28But what are you sending as a signal to prospective players about what your organization stands
05:37for and the direction it's going in if, like Brian said, you now have created another hairpin
05:44turn in the trajectory of this franchise?
05:47Again, it sounds like I'm standing up for Quinn specifically, and I'm really not.
05:53But that's why I try to make it more of an overall conversation around it.
05:57I also think individual sports are so different.
06:00Even college football, where Maryland got rid of locks, and I think it was the right call,
06:04versus the NFL.
06:05College football is a constant state of recruitment, right?
06:09Like you're recruiting high school kids and you're recruiting in the portal.
06:12And that is, I'm the present, right?
06:15In the NFL, you know who's under contract.
06:17You know what your team looks like, at least structurally, salary cap-wise, three years out.
06:23It's just a very different being.
06:24So for college football, like you saw UCLA canned, who was the former running back that
06:29was coaching there?
06:30Foster.
06:30Foster.
06:31Sean Foster.
06:31They canned him early to start their search early.
06:34They landed on the JMU guy.
06:35Like in college sports, if you've gone sideways, it can make more sense to me to can a guy
06:43during the season.
06:45It's week eight.
06:46Yeah.
06:47Like, this very well could be a loser-leaf-stown matchup between Quinn and Sirianni.
06:52One of the, the loser of this game, the losing coach of this game Sunday night could get axed.
06:57I think that's a very realistic thing.
06:59I'm not sure it makes Washington better come week nine against the Rams.
07:02Right.
07:03But maybe it doesn't matter either, right?
07:07Like, I wonder if we get to that Titans-Cardinals portion of the season when you're into December
07:15at that point.
07:16That, to me, would feel a little different.
07:18But it is early right now.
07:19I also think, and I think we've talked about this before, like, part of the reason the
07:25commanders are in this situation is the cadence of the schedule.
07:28Like, the Giants are in first place.
07:29And, yeah, they just won a good game the other day, and maybe they have a new person
07:34at quarterback.
07:36But they, coming into week eight, have already played the Cardinals and the Texans.
07:41Like, those are two of their three wins, right?
07:43So, like, that, or two or four wins, I guess.
07:47They don't have the Niners and the Seahawks.
07:50You know, I mean, we all spring talked about, wow, this schedule stinks for Washington.
07:57And guess what?
07:58It stinks for Washington.
08:00Yeah.
08:00But, like, I think also, like, I don't know why you think if they are planning on at least
08:05letting him go at the end of the year, they don't have to wait until they let him go to
08:08start interviewing people and talking to coaches.
08:10I mean, even close doors.
08:10And I think that's the thing about this whole thing.
08:14Like, it's like the whole thing.
08:17Fire him, fire him, fire him.
08:19Well, how are you going to continue moving this thing?
08:21I mean, I'm old enough to remember when the Jim Zorn-led Redskins lost at Detroit to break
08:33the Lions, I think, 19-game win this season.
08:36And Dan Snyder got on his plane and flew from Detroit to Denver to talk to Mike Shanahan in
08:45the middle of the season.
08:46We didn't know it at the time.
08:47But that's what went down.
08:49Like, that's the kind of thing you start thinking about who are good leaders, who's
08:55out there, what are you looking for.
08:57That doesn't mean...
08:58Because the making, the firing, the actual firing the move is to satisfy people.
09:03Exactly.
09:03And I think that's unnecessary if you know you're going to do it anyway.
09:07It's also short-lived.
09:08Yes.
09:09Like, you'd have logistics to work out in, you know, is Anthony Lynn going to be the head
09:14coach, all that stuff.
09:15I also think, like, we've really got to see what happens in this game on Sunday.
09:21Because, again, we've talked about penalties.
09:24We've talked about game management.
09:27If that stuff goes off the rails on Sunday night, then, Jay, I think we're, you know,
09:33it's a danger zone.
09:34A lot of it depends how it looks.
09:36Right.
09:37Right.
09:39And as it should.
09:40Because if they cannot break these terrible habits that are costing them ballgames, maybe
09:46the next guy can.
09:47Maybe you go to a guy like Lynn, who has head coaching experience.
09:51Maybe you give Izzo a crack at it.
09:52And maybe, like, for Quinn to come out of the bye and say no personnel changes on the
09:59offensive line is what I expected, but it also doesn't necessarily show the desperation
10:08that might be necessary for Sunday night.
10:09Right.
10:10But you don't make a move just because people think you've got to make a move.
10:13Because you probably don't have nobody better.
10:15But my whole thing is you fire him, and then in two weeks you lose two more, but you're
10:20going to fire that person.
10:21Right.
10:21You know, so, like, you don't satisfy, you don't have to satisfy people's appetite when
10:28you know you might do something later.
10:29You've got to let someone go through it at some time.
10:32And think about, JP, you'd remember it because you were right in the thick of it, you know,
10:39the year that Jay got fired, how lost the rest of that season under Callahan felt.
10:45It was like you really could make no progress because you knew that staff was dead people
10:55walking.
10:55Totally.
10:55And it was hard to develop anything.
10:58It was hard to care.
10:59That was week five.
11:00Week 0 and 5.
11:01This would be week 8, week 9.
11:05To me, it just feels far too early, and I don't know that it accomplishes much.
11:09And think about, Brian, you saying that if you do that, you're declaring the season over.
11:15Well, the Colts fired their long-time GM quite early, and guess what?
11:21It was a signal that that is over, and all you're going to think about is, did they do
11:27the right thing with Daniel Jones?
11:28What's the next move at quarterback?
11:30All of that stuff, and you've got to, that's 11 weeks more, you've got to just chew on
11:35that?
11:35That's hard.
11:36Talking with our friend Barry Sverluga here from The Athletic.
11:39If you're watching on YouTube or on The Monumental, you can see Barry sitting with us, kind enough
11:44to join us here in Ashburn.
11:48We got weeks, probably months, to chew on this.
11:51I did want to get to two events that are happening tonight.
11:54Caps back on the ice.
11:55Looks like you could be getting Logan Thompson back in net.
11:58They've been off a while.
12:00How are we feeling about the Caps, 6-4 through 10 games?
12:03So, I went out there yesterday, and it is just a weird schedule, because they've had
12:09one game in seven days, and it's just like, the Carberries, like, you can't, if you lose,
12:17you can't get the taste out.
12:18You've got to go through practice.
12:19If you win, you can't build the momentum.
12:21So, that's been strange.
12:23I wrote about Ovi, because Ovi's always a better headline than anybody else.
12:28He's got one goal in 10 games.
12:30He's never had one goal in 10 games.
12:32His underlying numbers are really bad.
12:34They're a better team with him off the ice than on it, which is hard.
12:39That doesn't mean they can't win with him, because they're a really deep forward group.
12:42But they've had so many games at home in the month of October.
12:47They go to Nashville tomorrow night, come back home on Saturday.
12:51They've given away two of these games at home, to Seattle and to L.A., that they probably
12:56should have won.
12:57Kings were winless, too, right?
12:59Yeah, they have to get ahead of the schedule, because it's so front-loaded at home.
13:05So, they need a win tonight against Philly.
13:07They need to kind of back that up by going to Nashville with a strong performance, and
13:11then they need to beat Minnesota on Saturday.
13:15This is a team that really thought highly of itself and its structure and its lineup on
13:21the way into the season.
13:23They're a little bit behind in where the results are, and part of that is that Thompson has
13:27not been as good as he's expected to be.
13:29I mean, just looking at the Metro standings, the Hurricanes, now granted, they're the defending
13:33Stanley Cup champions.
13:34They have 22 points.
13:36Granted, they've played more, but the Cavs are 10 behind.
13:39Well, that's four games in hand for the Canes.
13:42So, that's what I'm saying, is they're behind a little bit, not only in games played, but
13:47in some of the wins that they should have had.
13:49You don't want to be chasing the season, and they're on the cusp of having to chase
13:54the season.
13:55All right, switching gears from pucks to hoops.
13:59Wiz are on the court tonight against Cleveland.
14:01Wiz threw four games, been some highlights.
14:04AJ is supposed to be available?
14:06That's a big question.
14:07Do you think AJ goes tonight?
14:09Do you want to see him out there as soon as they can?
14:11Well, I'll defer to...
14:14I think he just said that he's available.
14:17Oh, really?
14:18He's available tonight.
14:20Yep.
14:20I'll defer to my esteemed colleague, David Aldridge, who is sitting to my left in the
14:26commander's media room.
14:27He didn't think he was going to go tonight.
14:29He was at shoot-around.
14:31But I'm in the...
14:32I heard you guys talking about it on my drive out here.
14:34I'm in the B-Mitch cap.
14:36If he's ready, roll him out there.
14:38And that's like, not just because, you know, for a ratings thing, it's a competitive thing.
14:46If your best players are healthy, please play your best players.
14:50And that'll be...
14:52We'll have a three-screen experience tonight, because you've got Caps, Wiz, and then World
14:56Series Game 5.
14:57That's a lot going on.
14:58Yeah.
14:58Yeah.
14:59It could be a big one.
15:00I just think...
15:01Of course, all ears.
15:02You're going to watch that live.
15:02But if he's healthy, and he's ready, it doesn't make a difference where.
15:07Right.
15:08Right.
15:08You know, I understand.
15:09Like, if he plays tonight, and then he comes the next game at home, you think people are
15:14not showing up tonight at first game?
15:16I mean, what if he goes for 24-8 tonight, and people will be like, jacked to come on Friday
15:23night?
15:23That's true.
15:23That's true.