Official Game Thread - Week 17 - 49ers @ Commanders

[DieselPwr44]

So Chase was basically silent this game . If there was any game he was going light a fire for it was this one, he really doesn't seem to care .,

Wouldn't surprise me if he retires at the end of this season.

No one is going to break the bank for him and he's the type that will be insulted with what he does get offered.

 

[Kel Varnsen]

So Chase was basically silent this game . If there was any game he was going light a fire for it was this one, he really doesn't seem to care .,

Yeah, if he can't do anything on that team in that defense, he's going to have trouble anywhere. The team that pays him will regret it.

 

[Bulldog]

So, that's TWO #2 overall picks blown during the Snyder era - Robert Griffin III and Chase Young.

One more week of the holdovers from that regime. I think we can all feel the winds of change swirling

 

[Boone]

I don't even want to wait until next Monday. Announce the housecleaning as the players are leaving the field Sunday evening

 

[Bulldog]

Tom Landry was fired almost as soon as the 1988 season ended by Jerry Jones.

It took a few weeks for Johnson and Jones to get started on cutting or trading players but once they got started there was an unprecedented number of departures for the time in the NFL.

Deion Sanders got rid of 45 players coming in at Colorado. After watching the game films, he said guys were walking through games. Told 'em all to hit the transfer window

 

[Om]

I get the sense Josh Harris is to Jerry Jones as Ben Hogan was to John Daly.

Too much class to intentionally embarrass Ron by firing him before the dust settles Sunday.

He'll wait until Monday afternoon.

 

[Boone]

Waste of 24 hours

 

[Om]

I hear ya.

I am kinda digging the feeling of having an owner whose name I can put in a sentence with "class" without throwing up in my mouth though. Let me revel.

 

[DieselPwr44]

I don't look for Harris to fire Ron.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if he gave Ron the opportunity to announce his retirement and let him go out that way.

Semantics? Sure. But it would be the classy thing to do, something the previous owner had none of.

 

[burgold]

Got to admit though it’d be funny if at the end of halftime Ton didn’t emerge from the tunnel.

 

[Boone]

I'm not saying I expect Harris to go Jerry Jones Sunday evening, just that I'd be fine with it. I wouldn't be surprised if DP isn't right - but if that's the plan, I expect Ron to announce this week that Sunday will be his last game as an NFL coach. It looks less pathetic that way.

 

[timmysmith]

I'm not saying I expect Harris to go Jerry Jones Sunday evening, just that I'd be fine with it. I wouldn't be surprised if DP isn't right - but if that's the plan, I expect Ron to announce this week that Sunday will be his last game as an NFL coach. It looks less pathetic that way.

I agree that Ron can save face. Not sure if he's that smart. Seriously. He is at the end of the line. I think he must be shown the door.

 

[tomwvr]

I hope they give him a professional send off, offer him a front office meaningless job. He has a good job fixing a lot of the non football issues. If he had just been a decent coach. Ron doesn't deserve to be fired sunday, since they waited to the end of the season to let him go. He is a good guy from all you hear. But has been a really poor coach since the first season. Cancer , death of his mom and perhaps some other issues have messed him up.

 

[Boone]

I don’t think hs done anything, other than being a decent human being. The sad thing is, when you’re about to be liberated from the concentration camp, that somehow becomes praise-worthy.

Rivera is a good guy and a decent human.

Now get him the hell out of here.

 

[timmysmith]

I don’t think hs done anything, other than being a decent human being. The sad thing is, when you’re about to be liberated from the concentration camp, that somehow becomes praise-worthy.

Rivera is a good guy and a decent human.

Now get him the hell out of here.

Should have been done years ago. He rode the wave of no one in charge to keep his job. Actually should never have been hired in the first place. Never been a good coach. Ever. He's just more proof of how clueless Danny was when it came to hiring.

 

[Bulldog]

Rivera didn't come here as a freebie to help the team out. He's being paid monies that will keep his grandkids from having to work.

I would not embarrass Rivera intentionally when moving on, but this is a business and we need to get started at 12:01 AM next Monday morning on our future.

Rivera was at the time the ONLY coach with an NFL resume that was willing to come in and work under Snyder. He made the Super Bowl in 2015 and his defenses over time were very good overall.

The fact he is finishing up here with the 32nd overall defense is a surprise to me, the issues on offense not so much.

 

[Chris]

Unless Washington beats Dallas, Rivera will finish his NFL HC career with a sub .500 record.

 

[burgold]

I wonder if he cares. He's just coached with so little passion this season. Maybe he's always been this stoic on the side lines, but his heart just seems absent. I don't really blame him I guess. Once the season got derailed, he knew this was a very lame duck season and he'd need a deep playoff run to save himself and so once he saw the defense collapse, he stopped fighting. I honestly think we'd see better, at least a temporary bump, when he took over play calling and maybe there has been one, but not nearly enough. Nothing like what we imagined his D should look like. His Carolina teams might not have been winners, but he always had a tough defense.

 

[Bulldog]

This guy's career shows mostly mediocre results at 7-9 or 8-8 with a few outliers at 15-1 and 2-14 that balance things back to the mean

Everyone knew this was going to be his last year. He became a lame duck the minute Snyder sold the team but wasn't going to walk away and give up the $5M, so he stoically went forward and has mostly walked softly through the season.

There has been really no moves in terms of discipline and accountability other than benching Forbes after he was torched for back to back long gainers early in the season and the final move to symbolically fire Jack Del Rio for the failure of the defense to improve.

But the team hasn't made any moves to pick up guys off other teams practice squads or veterans released to try and improve the performance at any positions on the fly.

No doubt Ron was told the ownership was not going to endorse any major changes in 2023 or commitments of money so he went with the roster he had and probably in the back of his mind knew from training camp forward that this was a 5-11 type squad. He just went with it.

Reminds me a bit of Spurrier after Year 2 getting up and saying 'Well, 5-11, not too good finishing fourth in a division of four teams."

A week later he was on a golf course in Florida relaxing when Snyder called him to move on from him.

By all accounts Spurrier was relieved.

Ron looks the same way, as a soldier knowing his term of enlistment is coming up very shortly and he's going home.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

I wonder if he cares. He's just coached with so little passion this season. Maybe he's always been this stoic on the side lines, but his heart just seems absent. I don't really blame him I guess. Once the season got derailed, he knew this was a very lame duck season and he'd need a deep playoff run to save himself and so once he saw the defense collapse, he stopped fighting. I honestly think we'd see better, at least a temporary bump, when he took over play calling and maybe there has been one, but not nearly enough. Nothing like what we imagined his D should look like. His Carolina teams might not have been winners, but he always had a tough defense.

I have roasted Ron plenty. So, I'm going to do a roast and then a reprieve:

Roast:
It feels like he mailed it in starting in January when he knew the team was going to be sold.
- He announced immediately they were going in with Howell. Like a week after the Dallas season finale. No QB search, nothing. The guy we got is the guy we're rolling with. That's just lazy.
- They did virtually nothing this off-season. In FA, they signed low-level guys late. Part of that might have been ownership not wanting to spend money. BUT they signed Payne to a big money extension. The way the NFL works, there was money to do stuff. Because of the cap and shared revenue. They could have been more aggressive and weren't. Lazy.
- They drafted to fill holes they thought they had. They've admitted several of their high draft picks were to be backups. Either lazy or stupid. Probably both. Take your pick.
- Hired EB and basically turned the entire team over to him. EB set practice schedules, days off, ran the offense. I'm not entirely sure what Ron was doing. Lazy.
- Let Jack just do whatever for 9 games while it was completely failing. Just said, "I believe in what we're doing." Lazy.
- Tapped out on a number of games. Lazy.
- Kept switching the narrative: it's all about Sam, Growth and Development, it's not about Sam, it is about Sam, blah blah blah.
- Right up there with Bruce Allen's "We're Close" or "The culture is damn good" quotes is the "send me my ring" quote. That was just stupid.

The whole season just seemed lazy, un-engaged, with no leadership or energy. He seemed entirely disinterested. It seemed like he thought they had a good enough roster to compete for the 7th seed, and maybe keep his job, but when things started to turn sideways, he didn't seem to have any interest in fixing anything until he had no choice but to fire Jack.

The slight reprieve:
I think the cancer battle and losing members of his family, combined with all the other Dan stuff he's surely had to deal with, probably wore him down to the point where he honestly and truly just didn't have the fire to really do anything anymore. I've done a lot of charity work with different cancer related organizations, I know a lot of survivors, and based on their stories, I know how unbelievably draining the experience is, and how it changes your perspective. Ron not only fought (and won) his cancer battle, but he did so during the height of the pandemic, dealing with the social justice issues, coaching a football team, and dealing with Dan. Just typing that makes me want to quit my job.

So, if he lost the fire to coach, I don't honestly blame him. I wish he would have just resigned/retired at some point rather than going through the motions. But he didn't, and here we are. So he is rightfully going to be crushed on his way out.

But I do think he's a better coach than he's been the last couple of years, and I think that's probably due to all he had to tackle all at the same time.