Unraveling the Legacy: The Washington Franchise Post-Joe Gibbs Era

Sometimes you can learn a lot about.

Your football team after it has the good years and the downfall, the down years and how you rebound from it.

Tonight's guest is going to talk about the Washington franchise in the post Joe Gibbs era.

Ed Cleese is our guest and he's coming up in just a moment to.

Tell us all about him.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And we have an interesting episode for you tonight.

We are going to go back in time, not too far back, you know, not the centuries that we go back sometimes.

We're going to go back some decades that many of us will remember and talk about some Washington franchise, NFL franchise teams, Redskins, probably a little bit into commanders, the Washington football team.

Talk a little bit about that with our guest tonight.

His name is Ed Cleese.

Ed, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Aaron, it's great to be here.

Excited.

Yeah, Ed, we are sure happy to have you.

You know, we got connected here on the Internet and, you know, traded some emails and you are a big Washington fan and we can see by the hat you're wearing that, you know, you wear your colors proud.

So how did you get connected with following the washing commanders?

Well, it's kind of funny that I always say, I like to say I was born with it and not because it was like a family thing.

It's because I literally don't remember.

So my parents were both from New York and we lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was very, very young, which would have been right around the time of the start of the first Gibbs era.

So like 82, 83.

And we had a next door neighbor who was like a grandpa to me and he was retired and he was the former athletic director and head coach at a local high school football program.

And he sort of introduced football to me and I fell in love very, very quickly.

And it was a big deal.

I was an only child.

So, like, that's something I really latched onto early.

And my only explanation for my Redskins fandom can be that I must have just jumped on the bandwagon because they were the best team at the time because I do not recall ever not being a fan.

So it's Just like it was just there.

Neither my parents.

It's not a family thing.

There's no history there.

I was just a fan.

One of my earliest memories is Super Bowl 18, which would have been January of 84.

Watching Marcus Allen run for a touchdown with a 74 yard touchdown run.

That was sort of like the moment in the blowout loss in the super bowl for the Redskins.

That was a big upset and disappointment at the time.

And so I just remember being upset about that, you know, six years old, not really understanding what's going on, but it's just almost like it's always been there inside me and I have no other explanation for it of how it started.

But you're taking me back to like calculus classes where there's.

The professor puts up a formula and I have no idea how that equates out because I'm trying to get New York City, Oklahoma, in Washington, D.C. that's the whole thing.

That's the whole.

There's.

So there is no actual explanation.

I think the only somewhat logical one is that I was so young and I decided I liked football and somebody must have either told me or I just saw that the Redskins were the best team.

So I said, oh, I guess I'll root for them.

I mean, I don't know, but I just, it's.

It's as if.

It's just I was born with it as far as, as far as I can tell.

So there's no great, you know, other story.

It's just, it's just part of me.

And that's interesting, you know.

You know, I'm a Steelers fan.

I lived in Western Pennsylvania all my life and grew up in the 70s.

And my first memory, you know, six, seven years old, is the Immaculate Reception.

And, you know, it did for the franchise that I follow.

And it's so, it's interesting, we sort of have a parallel fandom.

You know, we grew up with the team being on top and had to go through the roller coaster ride ever since.

And I think my roller coaster had a much longer dip, though.

Yes, but you might, might be riding a little.

A little bit higher than I am right now.

Maybe right now.

But I think I would, I think I would easily trade the last 30 years with you for sure.

Yeah, I wouldn't trade those years.

I've enjoyed it.

It's been, it's been fun.

So, okay, so you're in the Gibbs era.

And you're right.

I mean, that's right smack in the middle of it when that big loss.

And I think everybody can agree with you.

When Marcus Allen took off for that big touchdown, that was like the nail in the coffin.

Everybody said, okay, this super bowl is over and it's done.

You know, before that, it was a little bit in question.

You could say maybe they would come back at that, you know, before that happened.

So take us through, you know, the Gibbs era.

And, you know, I think we want.

What we want to get into is the subject matter after the Gibbs era.

Right.

But.

But the, the Gibbs, to me, the Gibbs there.

The reason that I think Gibbs always deserves to be, you know, I'm biased, of course, but, yeah, he's certainly, I think, top five head coach of all time, and I think has an argument to be top three.

And the reason is because that there were.

There were really three incarnations of the Gibbs 1 era from 81 through 92.

They really, you know, they obviously had the.

Then they not only they sort of famously won the three Super Bowls with the three quarterbacks, but there was a lot of other changes as well.

It wasn't just the quarterbacks, and everything else stayed the same.

You know, Riggins, obviously in the Hogs were the force behind the first couple of super bowl teams.

But, you know, Riggins retired after the 85 season and the Gibbs era went on for seven, eight more.

More years.

You know, they.

They transitioned.

They had a.

So there was.

I think that's the greatness in Gibbs is that the three Super bowl teams in 82, 87 and 91 were all really quite different.

Even though there were a few staples he was able to reinvent, more so than some of the other dynasty teams of the.

Of that time.

And that made it a lot of fun to follow, for sure.

Yeah, I always found it amazing what Gibbs did, having successful teams in such a short period of time with multiple different quarterbacks.

And none of them were like, you know, it wasn't like he had Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady or Joe Namath or Unitis.

You know, he had these quarterbacks that were better than average, but he got the most out of these guys and really took them to the top.

Yeah, and he had a.

He had an ability to, you know, he's sort of almost like a baseball manager.

He kind of like knew when to go to the bullpen, you know, like in 86, actually right after.

So Theisman snaps his leg in the Monday night game in 85 against the Giants, and then Jay Schrader comes in and actually for the next season and a half, Schrader was great.

Schrader had one of the best seasons in team history at the position at 86.

Statistically, I threw for like 4,200 yards, which was a big number at the time, and he was awesome.

And it kind of looked like, oh, he's going to be the next thing.

And then he comes out in 87 and he's not very effective.

He's not very good.

He gets hurt a little bit.

And then so Gibbs kind of goes to this old veteran that they had.

They had just recently signed Doug Williams.

And, you know, Doug Williams winds up becoming this legend.

But what's really interesting to me is that people are always really shocked.

You know, Doug Williams is sort of a legend for the Redskins and is.

He's in the ring of honor there.

But his record as a starter for The Redskins was 5 and 9.

So he won five regular season games in his career as, as the Redskins quarterback.

But Gibbs knew when to make that call.

And in that postseason of 87, you know, Williams got hot.

They beat the Bears, they beat the Vikings.

And then he has this just transcendent game and half against the Broncos in January of 88, where they scored the 35 points in the second quarter.

And he can't miss.

He's just on fire.

And then, you know, it.

The ring lasts forever after that.

So the 5 and 9 record really doesn't matter.

It's.

It's the moment that he had.

And then they got us over the hump and that Gibbs kind of knew when to pull that trigger from Schrader to Williams.

And then the next year kind of knew to get off of Williams and they started to make the transition to Mark Ripon.

So he just kind of, he was bold.

He was.

He had that sort of instinct, that instinct of.

Of knowing his team and what the next thing was always going to be.

So he was able to just continually reinvent the offense a little bit.

And three Super Bowls later, I think he goes down as, you know, top three coach of all time.

Yeah, he definitely deserves that because like I said, and you know, Doug Williams, you know, I can remember him from the 70s, you know, Tampa Bay drafting him.

They were, you know, their first three seasons, it's all over the place because their 50th anniversary this year, but they were a laughingstock.

You know, this.

It wasn't like the, the expansion teams that come in today.

Seattle and Tampa Bay really were up against it to try to get.

Get players and you know, they got everything.

They went from what, oh, and 26 to the.

Starting in 76 to the NFC championship game in 79.

Six, three years later.

Right, exactly.

Big improvement.

But, you know, but Doug Williams still, I mean, he sort of got a bad rap because he was on a bad team, but the guy could throw a football under football through a brick wall.

You know, he was that strong.

Speaking of Oklahoma, in between that Tampa Bay and Washington stint, he was.

He was a quarterback for the Oklahoma Outlaws in the usfl.

So, yeah, okay.

Yeah, so he did.

He.

He wound up completely out of the league, kind of discarded, and then made his way back to Washington where he put the stamp on his career.

And I think Gibbs loves to take those guys, those sort of reclamation projects, you know, because Riggins, you just talked about earlier, he had.

He was good with the jets, but people don't remember him as a New York Jet.

They remember him as a Washington Redskin.

Exactly.

And.

And even his first couple years with the Redskins under the previous coaching staffs, they had Riggins lined up at fullback a lot, and he was like a lead blocker.

And then eventually, I think Gibbs, you know, I know Riggins gave Gibbs a lot of headaches, but eventually, I think Gibbs decided, no, this is.

This is the cow that we need.

You know, this is the guy that we need to cash in on.

So.

So they.

That was that.

Those early 80s teams were pretty much all predicated on that O line and Riggins and.

And that 82 run was incredible.

Who had ever thought that somebody can make hogs sexy?

But, yeah, no kidding.

Yes, that was a great offensive line and, you know, great offense, you know, in general.

But the defense wasn't too shabby for the Redskins under Gibbs either.

No.

Petty Bone.

Richie Pettibone was the defensive coordinator through the entirety of the Gibbs run.

Of course, he actually wound up replacing Gibbs.

But Petty Bone was always really good.

They always.

The defenses, I don't think any other than maybe 91.

The defense was never maybe what you would call elite or, you know, just historically good or anything like that, but they were always certainly good enough.

And then there were in the pockets certain years when they were really.

They could.

They could be dominant.

They had good pass rushers.

They did have one of the best corners of all time with Daryl Green.

Yeah, the defense was always.

The defense was always good.

Plenty good enough.

Yeah.

All right.

So we finally.

We come to a sort of a milestone point, a tipping point where Gibbs leaves the Redskins for.

For the first time.

What happened in that moment?

Well, in terms of what happened, I think that, you know, I think he was, you know, he.

Gibbs was sort of infamous for not having any life whatsoever outside of football, sleeping at the office, and I think he had reached a total burnout point where he just couldn't do it.

And as we saw, you know, he spent very brief amount of time in media right when he first retired, but then he went right into Gibbs Racing, which I think he also dedicated to.

But I think that was something that he could involve his family in a lot more.

So I think that's kind of the why.

And unfortunately for the franchise, it also coincided with that team getting very old very fast and free agency, literally that same off season.

So he retired after the 92 season, and free agency arrived prior to the 93 season, and no team was.

Was more poorly equipped to handle that than the Redskins.

And they handled it very poorly those first few years.

They.

They lost some veterans.

They didn't know what they were doing in terms of replacing them.

They tried to sign a bunch of veterans to replace the veterans they were losing, and then those veterans were washed up.

So it was.

It got ugly very quickly because they had not prepare organizationally for the changing landscape of how you needed to build a roster.

Do you think maybe, you know, Coach Gibbs sort of was catching wind of that?

You know, that, you know, not only is burnout, but maybe, hey, I got.

My.

My team's aging.

I don't, you know, I don't have replacements coming in that are going to be.

Keep us at the same height that we're at.

Maybe it's time to get off the ship before, you know, I've always wondered.

That the 92 season in particular was a complete grind.

It was actually a lot of fun because that was a team that was doing everything they could to try to repeat, and they were really scratching and clawing.

They had terrible injuries.

Every.

Every week was just a grind.

It was, you know, 16 to 13, 20 to 17.

Just.

It was so hard.

And I'm sure that really wore on him.

And I like to think that kind of take him at his word, that he was literally just burned out and tired.

But maybe you get more burned out and tired when you see the writing on the wall that, you know, it looks like we might need to take a dip here before we can go back up again.

And I just don't have it in me.

I barely have it in me to do it if we were good.

And there's.

Maybe he just didn't have the stomach to try to, you Know, do the whole rebuild thing.

Yeah, it's very possible.

Yeah.

Good, good points, good points.

Okay, so what happened next?

They're sort of in this free fall State.

The NFL's changing landscape.

You know, the CBAs are starting to go through.

What's going on with the Reds.

Well, I think that.

So there was a lot happening.

So then they did.

I thought it pretty good.

They went to Pettibone in the 93 season.

That was a total disaster.

It was bad.

They went 4 and 12 and then they immediately got rid of them one year and done so that they probably figured that out pretty quick.

And then so all happened kind of at once.

They hired Norv Turner, who the.

The Norv years, which would have been 94.

I think we could do a whole pod on those.

Those seasons.

Those were torturous teams because they, you know, they had a team that started 7 and 1 and missed the playoffs.

They had a.

They had these late season collapses.

They would beat good teams and then lose to bad teams and they were just always close, but no cigar.

And that didn't make the playoffs until 99.

So the first five years of the, of the NORV era, they didn't even make the playoffs.

And it also coincided with the ownership upheaval.

So Jack Can't Cook was getting very old and, you know, without boring all the listeners about everything, it basically came down to, for a variety of reasons, he made it very difficult for his family to inherit the team.

And it's been a big source of controversy and topics for, for the organization for a long time.

Why did he do that?

I wish he wouldn't have done that.

But anyway, it wound up basically putting the team up for sale in the, in the late 90s.

But throughout the mid-90s, it was all, it was all uncertain.

And they also lost RFK and moved out to Landover.

So there was these major, major organizational shifts, right?

The new stadium, new owner, things like that.

And then they were also swinging and missing badly in the draft.

So, you know, you draft Heath Jeweler, number four overall.

Three overall, sorry, total bust the next year.

Michael Westbrook.

Not a total bust, but certainly not what you would have wanted from a top five pick.

And then, then it's maybe some kind of like semi hits, but you know, they, they weren't able to ever find that next Daryl Green.

They weren't able to find the next Art Monk.

You know, there weren't any of those guys coming in.

And so GM issues.

It's just sort of funny.

I Don't think any of us realized at the time exactly how much The Bobby Beathard plus Joe Gibbs combination throughout the 80s really was the organization.

And, you know, I think we all thought that maybe, you know, hey, we're just the Redskins.

We'll always be good or we'll bounce back.

And once those guys were gone, it was gone.

Yeah, it fell apart fast.

And look what Beathard went into out to San Diego, and they instantly became good in the next couple of years.

Beathard was great.

He's probably underrated.

Bethard was awesome.

And what a great combo he was with Gibbs.

That, that, that very, that very firm line chain of command of the general manager.

They had the owner, the strong owner that let the general manager do his thing and the general manager let the head coach do his thing.

And it was a great setup that we were unwilling and unable to try to replicate for the next 30 years with, you know, the few years there before Snider and then certainly during the Dan Snyder years when we never, ever could get that organizational structure anywhere close to correct.

Yeah, it was kind of interesting.

So it was almost within probably five years of each other when, you know, the Cowboys and I know Redskins and Commanders, fans don't want to be compared to the Cowboys, but as an NFL fan and observing it, you had, you know, the Joneses sort of doing what they do, you know, high profile owner, just throwing money, getting players they want, trying to build a team.

And, you know, Jones, Jones hits a jackpot, you know, and gets Jimmy Johnson and puts that whole team together.

And I think Daniel Snyder was sort of in that same mold, not, not as eccentric, probably as Mr. Jones is, but trying to throw money at trying to build a team by just buying a bunch of mercenaries, but really not having a cohesive team, you know, that, that unites together, but you have all the talent.

You have an all pro talent on, on your team.

Right?

I mean, we could, we could spend the next, you know, four days podcasting about all of the mistakes that Dan Snyder made.

And ultimately to me, probably with him, it goes beyond mistakes and to the point where just.

He just wasn't equipped at all to, to be a successful NFL owner because beyond, you know, overpaying for players and getting Gaga eyes over guys that, you know, like Albert Haynesworth, that the, the rest of the league, you know, saw the red flags and were like, hey, you know, we're going to kind of back off this guy.

And meanwhile, we're throwing the Brinks truck at him, you know, when they didn't even have to, because, you know, the ownership just has, you know, fallen in love with him.

You know, beyond all that, it was just his either.

I don't know if it was an inability or just a refusal to understand that, you know, the owner role has to be a line in the sand difference from the other parts of the organization.

And so there was.

There was just no leadership there.

There was no structure.

It took me a very.

I used to make excuses for him for a really long time.

I thought maybe he was just kind of socially awkward.

I thought maybe all it took was, you know, he just needs to get somebody in the building with him that knows what they're doing and then he'll.

He'll kind of back off.

But every time he did that, it still went sideways.

You know, Gibbs came back.

But during that Gibbs era, we had a kind of.

There was really no, no real general manager.

So there was no real liaison between Snyder and Gibbs.

And yes, I think Snyder adored Gibbs and didn't really interfere with Gibbs, but Gibbs wasn't necessarily ready to be a gm, you know, make those kind of personnel decisions like, like he didn't do the first time around with Beathard.

And so they didn't get that.

Right.

And then they, they do get Shanahan in.

Right.

So they get, they get the Shanahan's in.

But that goes sideways really quickly because Snyder, you know, cozy's up to Robert Griffin instead of the coaching staff.

And then you have like, literally the owner taking sides against the coaching staff and with a player and, you know, it became apparent that, you know, this is just never going to work with this guy.

And then you start to layer in some of the off the field shenanigans and even, you know, accusations and things like that and the toxic workplace and all of the, all those things.

It just almost gone.

Just.

Just rocked and, and gone.

That's how, that's how bad it got with Snyder.

People just gave up.

Yeah.

You know, it's.

You made me think of something.

I just thought about recently from the, the recent draft and people are sort of down on the.

The Cleveland Browns for taking two of probably the top 10 quarterbacks by the moguls that the Draft, Knicks out there, you know, the kid from Oregon and Mr. Sanders from Colorado.

And.

But I can sit there.

And I remember when Washington did it, they also got bashed in that draft, taking RG3.

And in the third round, I think they took Cousins.

You know, why are you taking two quarterbacks?

You know, don't you know the old saying, John Madden said if you have two quarterbacks, you have none.

And, but really it was brilliant what Washington did.

And I mean, you look great at first that Cousins gonna sit on the bench and RG3 is, you know, doing everything, and then he gets.

Takes that late season injury and it just sort of took the whole wind out of his sales for his career.

And then Cousins sort of took off from there and now he's on his third team making mega bucks.

Yeah.

And of course we wound up completely screwing that up as well.

You know, you know, they.

They had an opportunity to.

At that point, Bruce Allen was the general manager who was, you know, sort of a proxy to.

To Snyder.

And, you know, they.

They had an opportunity to resign Kirk Cousins and didn't off.

Didn't make an.

Didn't make a competitive offer.

He winds up going to the franchise tag for two years.

They allegedly, or rumor has it that the 49ers were willing to give up a top five pick for Cousins, but because the Redskins brass at that point had such vitriol and hatred of the Shanahans in San Francisco, they wouldn't even make the deal.

And now they wind up with literally losing him for absolutely nothing.

Because after you can only franchise a guy twice and then he winds up, you know, walking in free agency and they get nothing in return.

Not only do they get nothing in return, but now they have no quarterback, so they overpay into trade to get Alex Smith.

So that was the story for the entirety of the 25 years of the Snyder era.

Anything good that happened, they were gonna screw it up, they were gonna turn it to mush one way or another.

Nothing would last.

Nothing.

And everybody started to be able to see that.

And that's.

And that's how we go from the glory years of the first dibs to just a dead franchise prior to him finally miraculously being forced to sell.

Yeah, yeah, there was a one.

The ones was a one or two seasons where they hired Steve Spurrier.

They took him away from a very successful Florida Gators program.

You know, he's on top of the college world.

And it.

It was.

It was kind of an interesting decision.

There I was.

I think a lot of people in the NFL.

The fans were sort of watching that to see how that would go.

What is your take on the whole.

I will give, I will give Snyder this, especially maybe for the first, let's say 15 years of his ownership.

He was pretty good at providing some off season hope.

They, they always kind of won March for sure.

You know, they, they were, they were sort of the March and April champions of the NFL.

Don't forget, they also went from norv.

One year of Marty Schottenheimer screwed that up.

Of course, Snyder got crossed with Schottenheimer.

They wind up firing Schottenheimer after one relatively successful season.

And then they, but.

And then everybody's like, oh, my God, what's the Snyder guy doing?

And then, then he kind of like, well, he brings in Spurrier and everybody kind of gets excited about that.

And I will admit I was very excited about that at the time.

And then, you know, halfway through the first season, you're like, oh, man, Spurrier is not.

He just.

To me, it was never been more obvious.

The guy was not engaged.

He was just.

I don't think he ever wanted to really put in the work that an NFL coach does.

I think in some interviews and stuff, he sort of almost admitted that, like, look, I'm not a burn the midnight oil.

You know, I'm not there till 3am I'm.

Yeah, he just kind of wanted to drop some plays and throw the, throw the, throw the football around a little bit.

And I think when he got to the NFL and found it to be such a grind, probably also working for a guy like Snyder, that I think Spurrier very quickly was like, you know, peace out, you know, I'm done here.

You know.

And it wasn't.

It was.

There's some funny stories from that, from the air.

I think there was one about.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it was in training camp and Marvin Lewis was their defensive coordinator his first year there, which was a really good get as well.

So not only did he bring in Spurger, but they brought in Marvin Lewis.

And there was a story that I guess it was raining at training camp and they said that Spurrier was looking out the window and he said something akin to, well, I guess we're not practicing today.

And Marvin Lewis kind of looked at him and said, coach, it's the NFL.

We practice even if it's raining.

So there was a lot of stuff like that, but he was probably a Little bit.

The two years of Spurrier were probably.

At least there was some charm to it.

There was some lovable loser part to those couple of years, I guess.

Yeah.

Now I had.

I have some friends that are Washington fans, and one brought up to me a couple years ago, an interesting point, which I guess I never really thought about.

He said if they would have kept Spurrier a little bit longer and Spurrier changed the logo back to the old.

What was the.

The spearhead.

Yes.

Logo from.

Was it from the 60s?

Correct.

And sort of reminiscent of his.

His foe in college, you know, that Florida State.

Uh, but if he had done that and Washington had kept that, they might still be the Redskins to this day.

Um, I don't know about that.

Um, because I. I think that that one.

The.

The reason that the name changed.

Well, we'll.

Gosh, talk about another rabbit hole.

Yeah, I give you a lot of rabbit holes.

We're trying.

Yeah, that.

That's a major rabbit hole.

But, yeah, you know what?

Ultimately, the best way to just to.

To answer that would be Snyder would have screwed it up one way or the other anyway.

You know, whether.

You know it.

There was nothing.

There's no what ifs about the Snyder era that would have turned out positively none.

Maybe a couple things here or there that, you know, you know, for a season or two, it could have been better or, you know, maybe this one year could have been a little better, but it.

There was.

It was not going to work as long as he was there, ever.

And then that.

That.

That's my bottom line on that.

It was just never going to work.

All right, well, you're in a new era now, so.

New era.

Your new quarterback last year, new coach.

You know, the ownership's changed up.

You know, what.

What is the feeling for the.

I will say this, and it's.

I guess you kind of.

You dive into some life stuff, too, because now I have kids that are old enough to experience it.

I will say this.

It was.

It really was.

It was.

It was that.

It was truly that much fun because even though it feels like a new era and a lot of different.

Different name and things like that, it felt like.

It felt like when I was a kid again, in a lot of ways.

Meaning there wasn't that dark cloud hanging over where you're like, well, even if we win this game or win these next couple of weeks, well, he's still the owner and we're still going to mess this up now because now the wins felt so hopeful.

Like, hey, we won this game, we can win another, we can make the playoffs.

There's nothing holding us back now.

You know, we're just a normal NFL franchise again where anything is possible, good or bad.

But the hope was back.

It was so fun.

I got to go to a couple games last year, including the game at home against Philly right before Christmas where Daniels let him down and last second touchdown.

That was joyful.

It really was.

And to see the fan base get to experience that and to be with my kids and family and to be like, oh my gosh, it's okay to be a Washington fan again.

We don't have to be embarrassed anymore, was just really, really fun.

And you know, it's very exciting and just honestly, it's just a relief.

It's just a relief because I wondered for a long time I was like, maybe this is just something that's kind of in my past and it's just gone forever in a lot of ways.

But it feels back now.

It had to be a high point for you.

What was it?

The Chicago game with the last second.

That was just to say I was home for that one.

We have a nice little setup on our back patio and the neighbors were calling to check on us based on what I did once they.

Once that Hail Mary hit, the noises I made and the jumping up and down, we had a couple neighbors check on us wondering if everything was okay.

So, yes, that was super fun.

And for the next.

I probably watched the replay of that and on the various Twitter links and all the different angles and radio calls and the Spanish call and I probably watched it 250 times that.

That next week.

Yeah, that.

That's the fun.

Plays like that.

You only get them once in a lifetime sometimes and it was awesome.

It was fun to watch.

Not being a fan of either team.

You know, it was great.

Football never, ever, ever happens to us.

So that was really fun.

Yes.

Well, I definitely did there.

So.

Yep.

All right.

So what are your expectations for this year?

Okay.

Because you really went into last year probably weren't expecting.

What do you expect?

Maybe 500.

I think that's what I probably.

At best.

Yeah.

At best, I would say going in.

Yeah.

So last year was a huge surprise.

Pleasant.

Of course.

I would say this year I'm slightly tempered just because the one thing that I won't.

You can't ignore was they won their last five games of the regular season and four of them came on Literally the last play of the game.

The last four in the row were on the last play of the game.

And then their first playoff game against Tampa also was a game they won on the last play of the game.

So they won five games in a row on the last possible play, which is kind of crazy.

Get your heart thumping a little bit.

A little bit.

Man, that was like a month.

That was like a five week window or you add the Detroit playoff game.

So for about six weeks it was just total tension and.

But boy, that was, that was, man, talking about fun.

So you probably have to factor in a little bit of regression in that regard, I think.

So I would say that my prediction will be that they come in under the 12 wins from last year, but I think they might be just as dangerous or maybe even a little more so because I, I am a. I don't think the sophomore slump is coming for Daniels.

I do think we could regress in some other areas, but I think he's the real deal and I think he will be just as good, if not better this year.

The offensive line is, should be vastly improved.

So I would say, you know, I'm thinking somewhere between 10 and 11 wins and back in the playoffs again.

And I think it's going to be kind of the deal or hopefully moving forward.

Whereas if you've got number five, you're, you're live, you know what I mean?

Like any, any, any game.

So that's sort of.

My expectation is maybe a slight regression, but still a playoff team.

Yeah, I, I think that's a great expectation for any team to, to want to do.

Just got to make the dance at the end of the year and then everybody's got the same record going in, you know.

Yeah.

And the hard, the hard thing is we all know it as NFL fans.

You know, you have 14 teams that make the playoffs every year and, you know, probably, you know, six of them or so on average won't the next year and.

Yeah, of course, you know, so you're.

Which, which six is it going to be this year and which are the new six and you know, so there's no guarantees.

We know how things go, especially with injuries and such.

But I'd like to think now that, you know, as we've seen in the league, if you've got the guy under center, then you're, you're in good shape and I think, I think we got that right.

Definitely important piece to having a winning team, that's for sure.

Yes, sir.

Ed, you know, it has been great to talk to you and having you share, you know, some of your recollections, this history of the franchise that you support and watch every Sunday in the fall and early winter.

And we really appreciate you coming on here and helping preserve that history.

Well, I love it.

Thanks, Darren.

I appreciate it very much.

Yeah.

And I guess before we let you go, you have some social media projects that you do that you post quite a bit on your team and how can people.

Yeah, I've got, I've got my.

I've got a Twitter handle that's Washington football memories.

So we just, I just go in there usually in this during the season daily, kind of bringing up things from the past, do little countdowns, things like that.

So you can find that at just Washington football memories.

And then my personal Twitter account is just me, Ed Cleese, and I talk about a lot of sports on there because I'm also a big baseball and basketball fan.

So that's more general.

But the Washington football memories on.

On X is, is probably where you can get if you're, if you're looking for more Washington history and posts and things like that, that's where you find it.

All right, sir, we appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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