Hogs Haven
No. 1 – Last year’s Hail Mary play
The key words in that sub-titles are “last year’s”. As Jayden Daniels so eloquently put it earlier this week, “That Hail Mary isn’t going to help us win a game on Monday.“
Okay. That’s behind us.
No. 2 – Caleb vs Jayden
The Bears fans are the only ones who are filled with angst here because it was the Bears who had the choice to make. Bears fans, of course, fear that their team chose the wrong guy and so, twist themselves around in a constant battle to reassure themselves that Caleb was, in fact the right choice.
Washington fans are perfectly happy with the outcome of the draft, and, for the most part, are happy to cheer for Caleb’s success whenever he isn’t playing against the Commanders. He is, after all, a hometown kid from Gonzaga high school in DC.
There’s room in the NFL for each to achieve his potential as professional players.
No. 3 – The Ben Johnson affair last year
This is less of an issue because, unlike the Hail Mary and the draft, this simply didn’t matter.
National and most local beat reporters got out over their skis during the coaching search last year by declaring that (a) Ben Johnson was the top candidate, and (b) Washington was the most attractive head coaching opening. A lot of people drew a conclusion and reported it daily as if it were a fact — that is, that BJ was at the top of Adam Peters’ list in the coaching search.
I’m here to suggest that no one making those reports had a clue about what Adam Peters was thinking.
Remember all those reports about the Laremy Tunsil trade in the days and weeks before it happened? No, I don’t either because the front office didn’t leak a hint that it was in the works. It was a complete surprise — so much so that a lot of people later commented that they didn’t realize that Tunsil was even available for trade.
Remember how natural it seemed when Brandon Coleman was benched recently in favor of Chris Paul? Yeah — again, me neither. Despite all the discussion of a re-worked offensive line at the time, everyone was talking about the right guard position, and no one had a clue that there would be a change at the left guard position until it was announced by the team.
The same pattern held true with the Terry McLaurin contract situation this offseason. LOTS of “reporting”, including one national ‘insider’ who stated that the two sides were far apart — making that final report about an hour before the new contract agreement was announced by Terry’s agent. They were all guessing.
Speaking of McLaurin, he’s about to miss his 3rd game due to injury, and I don’t think anyone outside the team even knows what...
