00:00But we, you know, I really do believe that the consistency, the repetition of the basics that we're going to
00:07do today, yesterday, Friday, kind of carry over into what you see on Sunday.
00:21Oh, that was the David Bloud cut, one of the cuts that I wanted to play yesterday, that I teased
00:26all day yesterday, but because I'm a crappy radio host who doesn't, who teases too many things and then loses
00:32his mind.
00:35I forgot to get to that.
00:36So we talked about it.
00:38We just didn't play it.
00:39My bad on that.
00:40So, Anthony doing us a solid and getting that in first and foremost here.
00:45David Bloud, the offensive coordinator on the pre-snap penalties.
00:48I mean, listen, everybody knows how bad of a problem it is.
00:52Everybody knows.
00:53They only have 55 accepted penalties, but they've only played seven games.
00:59Most teams that have more penalties than them, most have like high 50s, low 60s, but they played eight games.
01:10Like the Rams.
01:12The Rams, for instance, have 61 accepted penalties, but they played eight games.
01:19The Bills were the only team that I could find that had played seven games and had more accepted penalties.
01:29Now, that's not just offensive pre-snap or at-snap penalties, which has been the main problem for the commanders.
01:36But think about it.
01:37Think about how bad the overall penalty numbers would be if they actually had a bunch of penalties that they
01:45took on defense.
01:46It's been overwhelmingly in favor of the offense.
01:51Now, that being said, there's been a couple of mind-numbing defensive penalties, too.
01:58They're going to have to make sure that against, yes, no Devontae Adams, they're going to have to make sure
02:06that they're not giving Matthew Stafford third and two instead of third and seven.
02:11I mean, Matthew Stafford can carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey on third and seven, on third and 12,
02:17on third and 17.
02:18You don't have to give him extra chances, but you have no chance if you're third and two, third and
02:23three because you're jumping off sides, encroachment, because you're giving them extra first downs, defensive holding, illegal contact, what have
02:32you, right?
02:33And obviously, all of those situations are a little bit different.
02:36I can give you some numbers a little bit later on in the show.
02:41I wanted to play you, before we get to the keys to the game, Adam Peters was the general manager,
02:47was guest of the Junkies right here on the Team 980 each and every Friday.
02:52Of course, 106.7, Monumental Sports Network and everything in between, Odyssey app.
02:57And he said, you know, look, and we've talked about this, right?
03:03The problem is, like, everybody just wants you to bench people.
03:06Got it.
03:07The problem is, is that there's not one culprit.
03:10It's been a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
03:13It's been like a Chinese food menu, right?
03:15Choice from column C, you know, and it's just been a bunch of different guys.
03:22AP agrees with that sentiment.
03:24I think it just boils down to communication throughout, you know, the whole offense, and that's on everybody.
03:30You know, I think it's not the same person every time.
03:34It's not the same kind of mechanism every time.
03:37It's just a matter of just locking in and being focused, you know, before the snap.
03:41You know, the thing of it is, we've had, like, two of our biggest plays come back due to pre
03:46-snap penalties, and that's what really killed you.
03:48Obviously, the back-to-backs, those can kill drives, but when you have an 87-yard touchdown and a 48
03:54-yard touchdown taken back, that really magnifies everything, and that's when it really kills you, and we can't continue to
04:01do that.
04:02Yeah, man, you know, like, it's a little bit of everybody.
04:08It's a continuous, repetitive problem.
04:11It's gotten worse, not better.
04:14And that's where I kind of worry slash wonder, okay?
04:21You guys know I'm not a blame-the-coach-for-everything kind of guy, right?
04:26I just never will be, and rarely do I.
04:31But when the problem doesn't get better as the season goes along, that's a major problem, obviously.
04:41Because there are a lot of teams, because they refuse to play in the preseason, and because they don't practice
04:47very hard, and this is one of those teams.
04:50There are a lot of teams that are sloppy early on.
04:53The Rams are a perfect example of this.
04:55The Rams are a very, very kind of haphazard, sloppy team, usually in the first month or so of the
05:03season.
05:03And this year is no different.
05:04Now, I can chalk that up to, oh, okay, they lose Miles Garrett week one, they lose their backup tight
05:11end, or, no, that was San Francisco.
05:13I'm sorry.
05:14They lose Devontae Adams a couple of weeks ago.
05:17You know, Matthew Stafford's banged up, all of that stuff, right?
05:20I can attribute that to a lot of different things.
05:24But teams usually that work on problems, that identify problems, that understand how to fix problems, usually get better as
05:37they get more oil running through the engine.
05:39It might not be week one.
05:40It might not be week two.
05:41It might be whatever.
05:43But it's not.
05:44Where are we?
05:45Week nine and getting worse.
05:48You heard AP kind of reference the back-to-back penalties.
05:51I know the Ravens did the same thing last night.
05:53Got it.
05:54They're on a short week.
05:55Different quarterback.
05:56Third string quarterback.
05:57Whatever.
05:58I know the Commanders have had all three quarterbacks play.
06:00Got it.
06:00Got it.
06:01Got it.
06:01But it's getting worse.
06:03It's getting worse.
06:05Not better.
06:06Worse.
06:08And that's the problem.
06:09That right there, in a nutshell, is the problem.
06:13Now, again, I can give you all the different numbers to back that up and whatever, and I gave you
06:17a bunch of the penalty numbers yesterday on the show, but I'll give them to you more.
06:22Right?
06:22Like, the Commanders right now, again, we mentioned 64 penalties overall, 55 accepted.
06:31But in the last two games, and I'm going to give you a bigger snapshot, because Anthony mentioned this yesterday,
06:37and it made me look, oh, yeah, okay.
06:38In the last two games, it's seven penalties two weeks ago against the 49ers.
06:45And, again, that's accepted and called.
06:49And nine last week for 70 yards against the Eagles.
06:53The two weeks before that, so we're talking the London game against Indianapolis, 10 penalties for 84 yards.
07:01Now, you chalk up some of that, obviously, to Ethan Kelly-Ikmanis, okay, and obviously the one big play that
07:07Adam Peters was just referring to on the screen where Antonio Williams busts one for, what is it, 84 yards
07:14or whatever it is,
07:14and it gets called back two different penalties, one an illegal formation or shift, I can't remember, and then one
07:21on a hold.
07:22Okay, fine, whatever.
07:23But 10 for 84 there in London, nine for 69 the week after that against the Giants, in addition to
07:32the clock meltdown at the end.
07:34So the last four games have actually been statistically, realistically, and in every possible way worse than the first three
07:45games.
07:46I mean, the first three games weren't great.
07:48Six, five, and nine on the overall penalty counts.
07:52They weren't great, but they weren't terrible, terrible, terrible, awful, awful, awful.
07:58It's gone from bad to worse.
08:00Now, of course, there was one radio host, one radio show, that noticed this on day three of camp and
08:05just kept tweeting about it and kept mentioning it every day,
08:08and everybody just, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you just ain't the team.
08:11No.
08:12I was telling you what I was seeing.
08:14This has been a problem since day three of camp.
08:17I was there.
08:18I was boots on the ground, on the sideline, right behind the commander's bench.
08:22They had five offensive pre-snap penalties called by officials that day.
08:27Not called by me, called by officials that day at camp.
08:31And I kept mentioning it, mentioning it, and then it got worse and worse as more practices happened.
08:35It got worse and worse as preseason games happened.
08:38And then, much to my dismay, it got worse and worse and worse as the game, and again, it's not
08:44getting any better.
08:45It's getting worse.
08:46How many times can I say worse in, like, a three-minute segment?
08:51It's really bad.
08:53And because of that, I don't know how anybody has any faith that this team is going to get out
08:58of its own way,
08:58that they are going to just automatically snap their fingers and fix this.
09:05And when you go against a team like the Rams, offense, defense, their special teams stink,
09:12with the coaching staff that they have, forget about Cliff Kingsbury.
09:15I know everybody wants to talk about that.
09:16You're not, whatever.
09:18Sean McVay, Chris Shula, right, who's done a great job with their defense.
09:23When you go against that staff and that team and Stafford, and yeah, they don't have Devontae Adams and Puka,
09:29and the tight ends that they have and the defensive line that they have,
09:35you cannot give extra opportunities.
09:37You cannot punish yourself.
09:41Instead of third and three, now it's third and eight.
09:43In the red zone, instead of at the eight-yard line, you're at the 13-yard line.
09:48Or worse, that is going to cost you games.
09:52Period.
09:53Against lesser opponents.
09:54Never mind good opponents.
09:57And I know the Rams have not been great this year by record.
10:01Their last two games, they beat up on a couple of tomato cans.
10:05Got it.
10:06Maybe it's also that they're starting to round into shape.
10:10Good evening.
