The 5 O’Clock Club: Daniel Jeremiah says the Commanders are among the NFL teams most likely to take off in 2024

The 5am Club appears from time to time during the season and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussions at a time of day when there is not much NFL News Feel free to suggest topics that interest you in the comments below.

CLICK HERE to see the complete 5 o’clock club archive

Rich Eisen and Daniel Jeremiah are optimistic for the Commanders

On the Rich Eisen Show, Rich and Daniel Jeremiah discussed the five NFL teams most likely to make the cut. They ranked the Bengals and Chargers in the top two spots (but in reverse order) and ranked Washington fourth, behind the Bears and ahead of the Cardinals.

Mike Tanier laughs at the squad and the coaching staff

Meanwhile, longtime NFL analyst Mike Tanier wrote in his Zone too deep Blog, went in the other direction.

The Commanders are absolutely entrenched in the “old guy who doesn’t produce anymore” position with Ertz and Ekeler. Their choice at left tackle, however, is 33-year-old (in July) veteran swing tackle Cornelius Lucas and third-round pick Brandon Coleman from TCU, who many experts have projected as a guard. The Commanders’ most important signing at outside cornerback was Michael Davis, who allowed nine touchdowns for the Chargers last year. Armstrong looked great for the Cowboys when he was blocked on third-and-long by whoever was left with Parsons and Tank Lawrence, and Fowler looked good when he was blocked on third-and-long by whoever was left afterward.

Good edges, left tackles and cornerbacks are expensive and hard to find. The football faction of Harris’ multi-sport Council of Geniuses certainly knows it will take a year or two to find playoff-ready starters at those positions. That’s fine, but it’s no excuse to rely even more on failed edge rushers and ancient tight ends.

As for the Commanders’ coaching staff, Kingsbury isn’t the only oddball. Offensive line coach Bobby Johnson punched a Giants linebacker during a training camp altercation in 2022; he should probably avoid Wagner on hot days. Johnson was also the mastermind behind the Giants’ decision to train all of their linemen at multiple positions last year in case of injuries. When the injuries hit, it turned out that no one was good at any position.

Meanwhile, running game coordinator Anthony Lynn — head coach and valued offensive player until he failed to get Justin Herbert immediately named to the Hall of Fame (funny how that keeps happening) — revealed the coaching staff’s secret plan to overcome the offensive line’s deficiencies: get Jayden Daniels to run more.

“You have a quarterback that can create and move,” Lynn said during OTAs. “You don’t need Trent Williams when you have a quarterback that can do that a little bit so we can move the pocket and change the launch point.”

Sam Howell, the Commanders’ starter in 2023, was very mobile. He was sacked 85 times, a league-high. Justin Fields, who is as mobile as Barry Allen, led the NFL with 55 sacks in 2022 and has a career sack rate of 12.4%. Lynn may have just been talking optimistically in response to a direct question about Daniels’ scrambling, but it’s still disheartening to hear a coach equate mobility with sack prevention, especially when it comes to a rookie when young quarterbacks have been getting themselves into trouble for several generations. And Lynn is the Commanders’ offensive coach I trust. the most.

The Commanders deserve credit for being very busy in the offseason. Once the Ertz/Ekeler framework goes away and Wagner and Magic launch their exclusive line of speedboats or pocket squares or whatever, the Commanders should have several useful players left. The draft class looks promising. Better to aggressively revamp the roster right away than spend a year “performing” everyone, which is what Harris did last year. Everything could be fine if Daniels doesn’t pick up any bad habits and/or injuries as a rookie. It’s just a shame that the Commanders seem to have built that scenario right into their plans.

So what is the reality?

We have professional analysts looking at the Commanders team and coming to opposing conclusions. The only two things everyone seems to agree on are that Jayden Daniels is a promising rookie quarterback candidate and that the Commanders have not done enough to address their offensive line issues.

The optimistic assessment is that better coaching, strong playmakers and a defense with Dan Quinn will be enough to smooth out the difficult spots on the roster and make 2024 a playoff season for this completely re-formed franchise.

The pessimistic view assumes that the team does not have the horses required to compete due to its thin squad and lack of top talent, and that the coaching group is a ragtag group of underachievers who will not be able to raise the level of play of the mediocre and aging players that make up the squad.