Taylor Heinicke States His Case
I saw someone call Ron Rivera “Jeff Fisher with a pornstar name” and I can’t get it out of my head, because it’s dead on. Out of every current head coach, there isn’t a better analog to our old friend Jeff. This makes sense to me, because both were part of the 1985 Bears super bowl shuffle. They have a destined connection to that game and to also be mediocre coaches who luck into a Super Bowl appearance and then fart around for a decade afterward taking teams to mighty mid-range records.
But genuinely, I have no idea what the hell happened this past week. The Commies traded for Wentz in the offseason. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely considered a bad move. But Taylor Heinicke wasn’t anything special the year prior and Wentz…I guess had potential. In the same way, a terrible guy will get into relationships with girls who are convinced they “can fix him”. They can’t, and it’s only going to make your life worse. The Commies started Wentz, and they started losing football games.
They stumbled to a win over a Jaguars team that wouldn’t find itself for another 8 weeks. They then lost 4 in a row before flopping around like a dead fish slightly less hard than the Bears. They lost the Titans game pretty much directly to a classic late-game WINTZ. Luckily for Ron, Wentz made the decision to move on for him by injuring his finger, throwing Heinicke back out there. That’s when the team started winning!
I’ve liked Heinicke since his debut against Brady in the playoffs in 2020. He was an easy guy to root for. Not the most talented dude, but he had the fire and passion and damn, you gotta love a guy who is clearly trying his best. His best wasn’t great, but as the Commies started to win games it was also clear he just had more chemistry with everyone around him. The team looked more lively. When Wentz was healthy again, Ron kept him on the bench. Shit was working! They even managed to hand the mighty undefeated Eagles their first loss.
Looking back, that win is the actual only impressive win of that stretch of games, but winning is winning and they weren’t doing that with Carson under center. Which is what made the move back to Carson in week 17 such a headscratcher. Yeah, the team had cooled. Heinicke hadn’t played incredibly in either Giants game and he got plastered by the 49ers, but the Giants love to cause Washington pain and the 49ers are destroying everyone with that defense. He was still the hot hand. Playoffs are on the line. Why on earth would Ron switch to Wentz now? What good is it to switch to a guy who maybe put up better stats but kept losing and never gelled with his teammates in an elimination game? Well, turns out Ron didn’t know it was an elimination game. The Commies sucked, Wentz sucked, and the team got eliminated. The dream of an all NFCE playoffs, up in smoke.
They announced they’d go back to Heinicke in week 18 until a lot of people giving them the same criticism I am delivering now seemed to change the vibe, and now they are starting rookie Sam Howell. Two years in a row, with playoffs on the line, a team turned to Carson Wentz and paid the price. The steep, steep price. The price is my laughter. Hahahahahahaha. Also no playoffs.
Why did he go with Wentz? I thought Heinicke must have been injured. Nope! Just fucking start the guy the team clearly loves more and plays harder with! An epiphany hit me. What has pretty much every coach in the Snyder era had in common? It’s the extreme sense of apathy and disconnection from life they get towards the end! Ron wants out. He’s been here for the name change, the Snyder files, the toxic workplace, everything. He’s had to go out there and deal with the difficulties of defending Jack Del Rio whilst also condemming him for his racist bullshit. Ron has gotten the full Snyder experience. Can you imagine wanting to continue to work for that? Ron might not admit it, he might not even be able to admit it to himself, but he wants out. He wants freedom. Don’t we all, Ron. Don’t we all.
Damar seems to be recovering about as well as he can. We can’t have asked for much better. Get well soon, Damar.
he is trying to get fired
B R U H
Moment
Taylor Heinicke is up there with Gardner Minshew and Jimmy Garoppolo as backup QBs that could start with a QB needy NFL Team to either start for them or become a bridge for their rookie QB.
Taylor Heinckie does remind me a lot of 2002 Brady, neither of them were good but did just enough to keep their team winning.
Not sure about the 2002 Brady comparison. Relative to the rest of the league at that time, he was still very good (top 5-10 in most stats and even led the league in TD passes that year) whereas Heinicke barely cracks the top 20 in everything. Agree with everything else though. Heinicke is solid backup QB option that can definitely bail you out in a pinch but he is not and never will be a long term option for any team.
Plus wasn’t Brady playing through injury around the latter half of the season?
Certainly explains why there were so many Carson Wentz Christmas ornaments in the clearance section of my local Hallmark store.
Good King Wentzlaus
“This made a lot of people very angry and was widely considered a bad move”
best use of that line I’ve seen today
I’m totally on board with bringing back “scoundrel” as a common insult, you rapscallion.
Someone at work accused me of pulling out a (not-especially-fancy) words just to look smart. Needless to say, a torrent of Rabelaisian invective soon thundered forth on the subject of any who might impugn the sincerity of my sesquipedalian loquacity, filliped liberally with antique and archaic insults; both scoundrel and rapscallion, blackguard, addlepate, prackwit, and dunderhead all were invoked during my jeremiad! I work in a kitchen.
Whatever happened to Carson Wentz?
Too much hero ball with none of the requirements met to succesfully play hero ball. And somehow ever since he got injured during the Eagles SB season he seems to be unable to actualy deliver under pressure leading to him reliably throwing ints everytime the team needs a game wining drive
Got unlucky on a few bad teams and a bunch of media and fans made up narratives about him.
He’ll be fine.
I think you’re being just a bit too tough on rivera here saying he lucked into a SB appearance. I thought it was widely understood he didn’t deserve to be fired in carolina. Yes, the stuff in WSH is a bad look with the elim game stuff, but other than that, who has he had playing under center after that carolina run? Heinicke (Which he got to do well in carolina for a few games), broken cam, broken wentz, heinicke again…When cam was good, the team won. Ron has had trash to work with since then (Heinicke maybe isn’t trash but I don’t think he’s very good). I know coaches matter but the players matter more imo, and the teams he’s coached have been dearth of talent basically his entire career after the SB run at the most important position on the field. I don’t really put that on him.
People know they can quit, right? Why ruin other people’s careers just for a severance package or the rest of your contract’s value?
I just answered my own question. Please disregard. I’ll go back to cursing the NFL for allowing neutral sites for all affected teams in the AFC Championship but letting an AFC Wild Card Game go to a coin flip? What’s the protocol for a Division Round Game? Drawing straws or a throw of the dice?
Again acknowledging that Damar’s health is the most important thing and that what I’m about to complain about is small potatoes ….
I don’t understand what the thinking is behind the NFL making up these — I won’t even call them rules, they’re just decrees. No rule is perfect and there are certain downsides to the winning-percentages-only option. But it’s on the books. So what if the Ravens beat the Bengals twice in a season? That’s the sort of argument that makes a delusional Nick Saban assert that they he belongs in the college playoffs. And don’t forget, the NFL is the same league that defended its rules when it let a 7-9 Seahawks divisional “champion” host a playoff game. (Which, btw, led to the legendary Beastquake)
I think the protocol is really just “Hey TV execs, what do you want us to do?” For competitive integrity they would have put Jags-Titans in the Sunday 8:00 pm slot — by far the game with the highest stakes and the least dependency on the result of earlier games — and had the GB-Det game in parallel with Sea-LAR. But GB is one of the elite, signature brand franchises, and Detroit is … well they’ve been around along time. But clearly this is for ratings. I hope the ‘Hawks beat the Rams, and then a disinterested nothing-to-play-for Lions team shits the bed and gives Aaron Rand an unwatchable blowout win that’s over by the end of the 1st.
This felt like a lose-lose situation for Washington either way. They were stuck picking between two bad quarterbacks in a must-win game and ultimately ran with potential over possible chemistry. Sure, the team was winning with Heinicke, but it wasn’t anything overwhelming and it’s not like he was the one carrying them to glory every week and I don’t think he would have fared any better than Wentz did against Cleveland.
Honestly the stuff going on with Washington as well as what happened with Zach Wilson is just further proof that simply winning isn’t enough to justify starting like it used to be.
Wentz somehow managing to hit a new low each year makes me sad.
Taylor wasn’t playing poorly against the Niners. Look at the box score.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/boxscore/_/gameId/401437926
He had a 114.6 passer rating and 2 TD, 1 int. Same as Brock Purdy!
Sure he had a fumble, but it wasn’t from unwise play, was from Bosa winning a rep on the tackle and hitting him blind. Taylor even had two hands on the ball…Bosa got it out.
And Taylor’s QBR was 82.8.
Rivera et al were anxious to justify the Wentz trade and had plans to go back to him. And blew our playoff chances.
P.s. Ron is not trying to get fired. It’s more like he’s bulletproof, given the issues with Snyder.
Comic Idea: The Centenarian Owner
Virginia Halas McCaskey, owner of Chicago Bears, turned 100 on January 5, 2023.
Portray her as evil and list some of her epic fails on the Bears (they don’t have to be 100% by her).
No NFL team owner is not evil. Not even Green Bay Packers Inc (their shareholders can be evil too).
Strictly statisticaly speaking the Packers gota have the absolute worst owners in the league. Theres so many of them theres bound to be several rapists and pedos amongst them, probably even a murderer or two. And dont even get me started on all the drug addicts and DUIs….
if we’re doing it statistically, you’d have to divide the number of murders/rapes/etc by the number of owners. Might be an interesting statistic projects, present the “Packers’ Owners” as a statistical composite, using public information. Mr. Packer is 5’10”, weighs 220 pounds etc etc
I figured I’d be more annoyed about the loss but ultimately even if Washington made the playoffs, it wouldn’t really change the fact this year was just kind of a waste of time.
Wentz was a case of how mighty have fallen, to think he was a MVP candidate in 2017.
Those first four panels reminded me of The Prisoner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IyTT-qgHOQ.