00:00We probably asked about Blau as much as anybody with you over the past several months.
00:05Now that we're halfway through a season, where do you think you guys are in the evolution of your relationship?
00:11Yeah, I think we're far ahead where we were in OTAs, but we're still growing and we're still, you know,
00:17learning and going through things.
00:19He's a first-time coordinator, so he has growing pains that he's going through and stuff like that.
00:23It's not going to be perfect as much as you want it to be, but we still continue to stick
00:28to the process
00:29and really just go on from there.
00:31Jaden Daniels yesterday answering a question from Barry's Verluga about his relationship with new OC David Blau.
00:39The part of his answer where he said he's a first-time coordinator, so he has growing pains that he's
00:45going through
00:46and stuff like that, kind of went within our, you know, bubble of fans of the team, went viral yesterday.
00:54And it was described, and I had not seen it yet, as very much Jaden throwing David Blau under the
01:00bus.
01:01So I went and watched it, and you guys just heard it.
01:05I personally don't think it's anywhere near listening to it and watching him answer the question.
01:12Anywhere near throwing David Blau under the bus.
01:15I think it's a fairly benign answer with the exception of he could have said, you know, things are going
01:25really well.
01:26You know, we're still, you know, evolving.
01:28We're still figuring things out, and we've got a ways to go, and we're really working at it.
01:33But I love working with him, and I feel like the relationship is very, you know, collaborative, and we're going
01:42to get there.
01:42And he didn't say that, necessarily.
01:45You know, we're still continuing to stick to the process and really just going from there.
01:50And I think that some context around this is that we, I say we, I'll speak for myself,
01:58there is a sense that I have, based on some of the inner circle thoughts about Cliff Kingsbury last January,
02:06you know, really pushing for him to be kept rather than moved on from, that the Daniels camp loved Cliff.
02:17I think that that is true.
02:19I think that is very much a true thing.
02:23By the way, I think he very much liked David Blau also, and working with David Blau since 2024,
02:30when Blau joined the staff with Kingsbury as the offensive coordinator.
02:36But this was not an out-and-out throwing David Blau under the bus.
02:41I didn't feel that way.
02:42That's my interpretation of it.
02:44I think Jaden, in these things, tries his best to give the best answer possible with brevity.
02:51I mean, likes to keep it short and likes for these things to end.
02:56Not his favorite part of the day, I'm sure, or favorite part of the week.
03:01Wish the coach felt that way a little bit more.
03:06But, yeah, I don't feel that way.
03:08I don't feel that way.
03:10I do think it raises the question, though, just how much Cliff Kingsbury is missed,
03:19at least through eight games of this season.
03:23There was always a possibility, and maybe a likelihood, heading into the season,
03:28with a first-time offensive coordinator and a first-time defensive coordinator,
03:32that it was going to take a while for things to get figured out,
03:35for everybody to be in rhythm, for everybody to really understand everything.
03:40And on the offensive side of the ball, it clearly appears as if this is a work in progress.
03:47Where it ends up, I have no idea.
03:49I like the style of offense that we were told David Blau would employ.
03:55More under center, more play-action passes.
03:58We haven't necessarily seen that.
04:01And so it's been, not necessarily Cliff Kingsbury's offense,
04:05but it's been, at times, something not necessarily resembling what we thought we were going to get,
04:12which was something more resembling Ben Johnson, and, of course, you know,
04:17kind of a mix of Ben Johnson, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan.
04:20But Blau always said there are elements of Cliff's offense that we will keep
04:25because Jaden's comfortable with that.
04:27You know, so he's still in shotgun a lot, and or pistol a lot.
04:31But they still go occasionally with some no huddle.
04:36I actually, and I have not done this research yet.
04:40It's just based on watching every play of every game and believing this to be true.
04:45But I think they've had probably more success than less success with no huddle.
04:52And hurry up.
04:53The two are not necessarily the same, remember.
04:56No huddle.
04:56You can end up snapping the ball after checking, you know, at the line of scrimmage.
05:00With five seconds left on the play clock, that's not hurry up, you know.
05:05But no huddle gives you a chance to go hurry up and, you know,
05:09snap the ball with 20 seconds left on the play clock,
05:12or 25 seconds left on the play clock, or even more than that, you know, if you want to.
05:17Last year was more about no huddle than it was hurry up.
05:22Their pace of play was not anywhere near tops in the league.
05:25But their no huddle rate was high.
05:30Yeah, I mean, what would they be right now offensively if Cliff was still the offensive coordinator?
05:40What would they be record-wise if Cliff were still on the sideline?
05:46Because I do have at least, you know, a thought that Cliff Kingsbury and or Dave Gardie,
05:52who was the guy in the booth that they hired from the league in 2024, who left this last offseason,
05:58that either the combination of the two of them or at least one of them,
06:02and it may have been more Gardie than Kingsbury, I don't know.
06:04But it makes sense that it might be Cliff.
06:06He was in Jaden's ear, the one that was in his ear until 15 seconds remained on the play clock,
06:11every single play, for every single snap in 2024.
06:15Last year's kind of tough.
06:17There weren't, you know, many games or many plays to really judge off of.
06:24But at the very least, they would have won the Giant game with Cliff.
06:30I do believe that.
06:32Cliff's a head coach.
06:33Cliff's a former quarterback.
06:35Cliff is a former, you know, a longtime OC.
06:40I believe, I really believe that if Cliff Kingsbury were the offensive coordinator,
06:46at the very least right now, at the very least, Washington wouldn't be a 2-5-1 team.
06:53They'd be a 3-5 team with a win over the Giants.
06:58I also kind of believe that the ball would have gone into the end zone at some point against the
07:03Rams.
07:05And maybe, perhaps, the ball would have found its way closer to the end zone against the 49ers.
07:11Look, the odds are, overwhelmingly, that even if they did the right thing in the 49er game on the 4th
07:19and 2,
07:20or at the very end of the game, or at the very end of the game on Sunday against the
07:24Rams,
07:24that they still would have lost both of those games.
07:27Would they be a better offensive team?
07:29Would they be more cohesive?
07:30I absolutely believe they would be.
07:34Would it be the right long-term decision?
07:38I'm talking about for these first eight games, and maybe even for this season,
07:43would they have been better off with Cliff?
07:45I think so.
07:46I think the answer is yes.
07:49Now, that does not answer the question as to whether or not it would have been the correct long-term
07:55move.
07:56Because maybe Blau will turn out to be the best long-term solution.
08:01I prefer that offense over Cliff's offense, and I like Cliff's offense.
08:05I like some of the elements he had in the offense.
08:10I'm not a believer in the Cliff Cliff.
08:14I mean, I've gone through that many, many times during the course of his career.
08:18It had much more to do with bad defenses and injuries in terms of people figuring out Cliff's offense.
08:26Really?
08:26How did Detroit do with that in the playoff game in January of 2025?
08:32How'd they do with figuring out the offense?
08:3545 points.
08:36How did Tampa do with that?
08:37How did Philly do with that?
08:39Twice at the end of the season.
08:4136-33, five touchdown passes.
08:44And then in the NFC Championship game, they moved the ball up and down the field.
08:48They just turned the ball over.
08:52301-230-0980.
08:54301-230-0980.
08:59What do you think they would be had Cliff Kingsbury remained as the offensive coordinator?
09:06As an offense and record-wise.
09:09I'm telling you, I think that they're no worse than a 3-5 football team,
09:14and probably they're a 4-4 football team somewhere.
09:18They would have perhaps won one of these last two games or maybe won the opener against Philadelphia.
09:24I think offensively, there would be a lot more explosive ability, consistency, comfort.
09:35Again, I'm not speaking to whether or not keeping Cliff would have been the right long-term play.
09:40I'm speaking to the short-term.
09:43Would they have been in a much different position through eight games?
09:47Because one of the things you've got to take into consideration, and we talked a lot about this from January
09:53on,
09:54Dan Quinn entering his third season off of a 5-12 season and a little bit of loss of confidence.
10:00I don't think that he necessarily earned the loss of confidence with the 5-12 record.
10:04You know what I think about last year?
10:06I think most teams would have been 5-12, given the number of key player injuries that they had.
10:13But there was always a risk in going with two new first-time coordinators.
10:20Now, in the league as a whole, we saw more first-time coordinators offensively and defensively
10:28than we've ever seen in the history of the league.
10:30Washington went, though, both sides of the ball with two new coordinators.
10:37So there was a risk there.
10:39I also believe that it wasn't just Quinn involved in the Blau decision.
10:44This was organizational, and I think Peters had a big part in that decision.
10:49I think Adam Peters grew up and was reared, for the most part, in a Shanahan-style situation with Kyle,
10:58and he saw Jaden as the perfect quarterback for that kind of offense.
11:02I agree with him.
11:04I think he'd be phenomenal in that offense.
11:06We really haven't seen that offense yet.
11:09We've seen it periodically, and there was a nice under-center play-action throw to Antonio Williams
11:14for 18 yards on Sunday.
11:17But it's not what we've seen overwhelmingly.
11:20They're still near in the bottom, I think, bottom quarter of the league in under-center snaps.
11:25They're still nowhere near the top half of the league in play-action pass attempts.
11:29I thought the absolute given coming into this season would be that Washington, like Caleb Williams in Chicago with Ben
11:37Johnson,
11:38like Jared Goff when Ben Johnson was in Detroit, like every quarterback that played for Kevin O'Connell,
11:45like every quarterback that's played for Sean McVay, would be among the league leaders in play-action pass attempts.
11:52We haven't seen that.
11:55301-230-0980.
11:58301-230-0980.
12:00What would this team be record-wise, and what would the offense be like if Cliff Kingsbury were still the
12:07offensive coordinator?
12:09Kevin Sheehan Show, the Team 980 and theteam980.com.
12:12301-230-0980.
12:12311-230-0980.
12:12311-230-0980.
12:13311-230-0980.
12:13311-230-0980.
