The Commanders Have Had A Type So Far In Free Agency

WJFK-FM / 106.7 The Fan

Sam Fortier of the Washington Post wrote a story on how the Commanders have targeted big & strong lineman... And they love it.

Transcript

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00:32that we sent you. That's kmlawyers.com. Rolling through Sam Fortier's story here in the Washington

00:39Post. It's a good one. It's kind of next level. It's not just, hey, they signed this guy,

00:43he might play guard. It's the why, the where, with kind of what they call scouts one-liners

00:49about a role a guy might have. But Tobes, the big thing just to catch people up is

00:54not the, not the Lerner and Lerner-Tunsel, the big dude, not the Tunsel and Debo Samuel signing,

00:59and maybe not Jonathan Jones at corner. That's a different position, but

01:03size and physicality seems to be the name of the game. Yeah. I like getting guys that are outliers

01:08or dudes that, you know, have something that's unique, whether it's long arms, whether it's,

01:12you know, a unique frame or something like that. Like we talked about, obviously they need to have

01:16the skill of a football player, but even just getting your depth guys to say, well, at least

01:20I have a mammoth of a human being to step in at left guard when Allegretti steps out. Or,

01:25you know, when I need to throw in someone for Biotis, I've got a huge dude or my swing tackle

01:28is going to weigh 330 versus weighing 290, right? Like having dudes who are larger, who have long

01:34arms like Dietrich Weiss rushing off the edge, different stuff like that. I like that idea,

01:38bigger, faster, stronger, right? That's the whole idea when you get some of these dudes,

01:42you know, the reserves and the guys that are going to step in. So I don't hate it. I think

01:46it's something that having a bigger team is generally going to help you out as long as you

01:50still get athletic guys. And like you talked about last year with the draft, that was something that

01:54they focused on getting guys that were still relatively athletic for the size that they

01:59were and getting guys that fit what they're trying to do with the position. So I think

02:03building a foundation that way with guys that you feel like can physically impose.

02:07And I think they want to be a physical football team. It's a good thing. And it counteracts the

02:10team that was one of the most physical in the league, if not the most physical team in the

02:13league last year that won the Super Bowl in the Philadelphia Eagles. So I think it makes a lot of

02:16sense. So let's, let's put the cards on the table here. The big, I don't, what do you want to call

02:22it? The big bet or the big X factor. I wish there was a better term, the next factor, but the

02:26biggest variable signing to me, as if this could be a unit, you ain't as smart as you thought you

02:31were, or my God, these guys are geniuses is who Jevon, Jevon Kimball, right? Everybody knew that

02:37right away. As soon as I started bringing it up, if they're right and they've got him for a role

02:41that he hasn't really done a lot of maybe a little bit in New York towards the end,

02:44they tried him as kind of an on-ball nose tackle. Nope. But towards the end of the season,

02:49they said, okay, maybe move to kind of a bigger defensive end role. Apparently had a little bit

02:53of more success. Dan Quinn had a guy like that. This is from a Sam story in red Bryant in Seattle,

03:00who did a couple of things. He played that big defensive end spot and he blocked 700 kicks

03:05against Washington. Like that's the things that he's known for, for his life, like wherever red

03:10Bryant is, if someone from Washington, DC, not state kicks the ball, he will block it. That's

03:15FYI. But maybe that's your early down defensive end. Maybe that's kind of the role, but maybe

03:21that's a setup. Are you buying that? I'm interested to see if they're going to get a

03:25little frisky with some fronts. Now, generally Dan Quinn runs a lot of four down. That's kind

03:30of what they usually are, are going to major in, but I'm curious if they're going to get a little

03:34frisky with some of this stuff where you can have Newton, maybe line up outside and as like a,

03:39a three tech or a defensive end and a three, four, right. And have some of these things.

03:43And maybe you run three down with a Goldman in the middle, and maybe you have pain rotate in there

03:47and you have a Kinlaw on the outside and you've got some dudes. Cause I think if you're looking

03:52at their best defensive lineman right now, with the exception of Dorrance Armstrong, most of them,

03:56even though I don't necessarily love the Kinlaw signing, most of them are defensive tackles.

04:00And so maybe you can find ways to configure these things a little bit differently. And maybe you do

04:04that, who knows, maybe it just, you stay four, three, and you run a big end and you say,

04:08go ahead, try and run this way to a dude that weighs two 90, 300 and whatever Kinlaw was,

04:13what'd he say? He was like, yeah, three 19 or whatever. Go ahead and try to run this way at

04:17this guy. I don't know, but I'm interested to see what they're going to do. I think they're

04:22going to be able to try some different things. This is something that I think last year that

04:25they enjoyed having guys that they can do different stuff with, whether it was chin,

04:29whether it was Lou Vu. And obviously they kind of unlocked Lou Vu being a second team all pro,

04:33maybe they view Kinlaw as the same sort of thing, not necessarily moving positions.

04:37He's still in the D line, but is he inside? Is he outside? The answer is yes. All over the place.

04:42Right. So maybe that's something they have in the plan. And so maybe that's my thought is I'm still,

04:47I'm such a, this defensive tackle plays defensive tackle. I'm still in that mode,

04:53right? It took me a long time to make an adjustment to the NBA, for example,

04:57where I'm like, who's the point guard? All of them. Who's the center? Two or three of them.

05:02Who's the wing? Everybody. You know what I mean? Like the way offense is around this,

05:06this sort of positionless five out type stuff. And it took my eyes a while to adjust.

05:11And you still have some throwbacks where you, you got, you got to, you got to cover a

05:14Vucevich or you got to cover up, you know, the occasional honest to goodness, big that's old

05:19school. But for the most part, it's everyone's away from the basket and we're, we're diving a

05:22kick and we're playing Euro ball. Took me a while to figure that out. Maybe there's an evolution

05:27here for, for the line as well. You mentioned Lou Vu and that's the key when they were at their

05:31best. It was against, to me, I always put it this way. It was against offenses. They weren't afraid

05:34of when they didn't think that you could beat them. They had this feeding frenzy mentality

05:39where Lou was basically lining up at, at a standup edge rusher spot. Like it's a three, four, like

05:44he's a, he's Kevin green coming off the side. He's your Jerome Harrison or something like that.

05:47Right. They basically said, we're coming after you. Now we're up big. We know you ain't running

05:52it. And if you do so what we will come get you the next play. Maybe that's the idea. Maybe it's

05:57the three biggest lineman you can find and a standup edge AK Frankie Lou Vu as, as a quote,

06:03unquote Blitzer, but he's not because they're only rushing for maybe something to that,

06:07where they're going to mix and match more than I'm thinking of.

06:10Okay. Here you line up next to the guard here. You line up in between the center of the tight

06:14end or the, the, the tackle the tight end. Maybe there's something to that, the mixing and matching.

06:18Well, and to your point, I mean, position flex was something that Ron talked about a lot

06:23and he was terrible at it. He loved it. So he was terrible at it. So having a coaching staff

06:29that kind of understands I'm going to get a fringe guy, a guy that maybe can't play safety

06:34can't officially played linebacker, but can play a little bit of both Jeremy chin, right?

06:37I can't necessarily throw him deep, but I, I can't always play him in the box, but somewhere

06:41in between Lou Vu, I can't just line them up at edge. I also can't just throw him in past coverage

06:46of linebacker. I can do a little bit of both of that. Maybe that's what they're looking at.

06:49Kinlaw because you think, dude, that size would be good against the run. He's not new flesh.

06:55He's not, you think you could just throw them in the middle and say, okay, stuff,

06:59the running gate after the passer. Well, he can do one of those things a little bit,

07:02but he can't stop the run. So yeah, maybe have to get a little interest.

07:08This is where it's tough though. For me, Danny is, and this is what people bring up all the time.

07:12You have to trust Adam Peters and that's rightfully. So he's, he's done well, but this

07:16is where it's tough for me saying you paid a guy 15 million for a, we hope we can't like,

07:21that's tough, right? Like you, you might have a plan, but I'd rather spend on someone that's a

07:26little more sure, but that's kind of the difficulty of free agency. That's part of it. The sure part

07:30costs a lot of money. Well, and the other thing is, and we'll jump out on this is if there was a,

07:41I'll go, I'll put it this way. The thing I always say about the Ravens over the years

07:44with Ozzie Newsome and now the cost of being in charge is they were, when they were picking late

07:49in the first round all the time, cause they're always good. They didn't care about what you

07:54couldn't do. They would look at 12 subs who didn't run a good 40 and go, well, we'll find

07:59something for that guy. We got something. We'll be just fine. And he's a Hall of Famer cause he,

08:04cause they had to rush the pastor. They didn't have them in space to be in a conventional

08:07linebacker. They ran a thing that made him really good. Cause he could do it. He could

08:11do something really well. And if you find that and go, this is undervalued, I'll go sign that.

08:19In other words, you find a cornerback that plays great bump man, press man coverage.

08:25Even though your team doesn't play a lot of that, you go, I don't care that he's not a

08:28great zone corner. We're going to have him play press man or vice versa. Correct.

08:33It's risky to me when you haven't seen any of it from, from a guy that's the Kinlaw signing to me

08:38is I go, if he was this great run stuffer, that's undervalued and you're giving him more money than

08:44anybody else would. All right. That's important to you. That's fine. Or if he was this dominant

08:48pass rusher that was miscast. Okay. That's fine. He hadn't done either. That's the part that makes

08:55me nervous about it is that's a big bet. And could you have gotten him for less?

08:59That's that's your part. Was, was the market that robust where you had to do that on day one?

09:04Yeah. I mean, that's, you've nailed it right there where if you feel like you found something,

09:08maybe the big edge rusher is their thing. Maybe the big end is their little thing that they think

09:13they've found baby, but it's just tough for me. I don't want to become the same just because it's

09:18different with Adam Peters. You know, we were crushing Ron cause he brought in all the dudes

09:21they're familiar with. And then you look at here and it's just.

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