An NC athlete is now in Washington.

Grant Paulson from Grant and Danny, 106.7 the fan in Washington, D.C. or thereabouts. He joins us on the Adam Gold Show. Our old football coach Ron Rivera, I love him.

He's such a solid guy. I do wonder though if he put himself in a weird spot by not knowing that they could be eliminated with a loss last week. How has that played or would we be making too much of something like that? It's played very, very, very, very poorly. Yeah.

As you'd imagine, right? I mean it happened after a game that they played at home that they had to win or else they would face potential elimination in the four o'clock window. And so I think reasonably you start to wonder, well wait a second, now they made a quarterback change going into the game and the quarterback they went to played really poorly, was intercepted twice in his first five passes and they had seven points at halftime. And I think, you know, a lot of fans wonder, would he have done anything differently? Might you have had more urgency or made a change or done something to shake things up if you knew that your season could end that day rather than definitively feeling like you would have a chance to make amends a week later.

So it hasn't been a pretty week I'll say around here for Ron Rivera. Number one, starting Carson Wentz when Heinecke had more success this year. And I think that that decision was actually correct.

I'm in the minority as just a process. The result was really bad. Wentz fell on his face and flopped. And that's not on Rivera in my opinion, but fans largely hated that decision. And then to find out after the game that he didn't even know they could be eliminated, which just seems, I mean, it's flabbergasting.

It just seems impossible. This is a, you know, this is a seven billion dollar company that you're the CEO of. And every fan in the stands knew the playoff permutations and he didn't. It's just, frankly, it's just not okay. Grant Paulson, Grant and Danny 106.7, the fan in DC joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. Here's the thing about it. Because the question was asked in the postseason, in the post game rather, about starting or playing Sam Howell, wasn't even starting Sam Howell, playing Sam Howell.

Is he in the mix? And Ron had said, you know, that they weren't going to do that until it was basically a free, basically a free card to play, if you will. And so the question was asked in that way. Then he doesn't know that they could be eliminated. But what I didn't understand, the initial move was to start Taylor Heinecke. Now, you since backtracked from that, but the initial move was to start Heinecke and then let Sam Howell finish the game. And I didn't understand why you would start the guy you benched in favor of Carson Wentz in a meaningless game when it would have been much better. And as it turns out, that's what they're doing to let Howell feel the weight of an NFL start. Because that matters, I think, to prepare as a starter all week long and go out first and start the game and get all those nerves out of the way. I just didn't understand the process there.

Yeah, so Adam, here's where you're off base is you're just being reasonable and you're just being rational. And that would have been a really easy thing to do. I think all of us kind of expected that the day after they lost in a game they had to have at home to a bad brown team with nothing on the line, that Rivera would come out and he would say, we're going to Sam Howell for the final week of this season. Remember, Carson Wentz is now gone and out from the moment that game was over.

That was pretty clear. They had to get out of jail free card on that contract. And he made it really clear in his Monday press conference that they are moving on from Carson Wentz reading between the lines. So now you have Heinecky and you have how, as far as guys that could be here next year, Taylor Heinecky is not under contract either. He's going to be due a massive raise after saving their season two years in a row. I think he's a backup. I would be shocked if almost every GM in the league didn't evaluate him as a really high end backup, a super low end starter, but spot track based on his performance the last two years is saying he might be able to get upwards of $19 million a year in this market.

I don't buy that for the record. I think he'll probably make somewhere between seven and 11 million or something per year as, as again, a QB two who might have to play at some point. But the point is he may be gone. Like he's almost certainly going to at least hit the market before he comes back. And so Sam Howell is the only guy on this team was under contract for next year. Number one, the only guy I would say that is certain to, and he may be even likely to be back number two, but he also was drafted in the sixth round.

I think he threw more passes in the preseason than anyone in the NFL certainly played more than their quarterbacks. He has been here since the off season program all season long in your meeting rooms. This is a gift now that you have this week 18 exhibition of sorts, this in-season preseason game where you get to do whatever you want with an eye towards 2023.

So it was the ultimate no brainer. The way that I think this actually played out Adam, now that I've kind of done a little talking and digging overnight with people is I get the sense maybe that they told Heineken initially that he was going to start, but not finish the game. And I don't necessarily know that it was pushed back from him, but I think he kind of said, well, if how's playing anyway, why don't you just play Sam Howell? But that's my understanding of how this may have happened is I think if, if Taylor Heineken is going to be given the game to play, he would play.

But if you're just putting me out there to start, and then you're going to bring this guy in anyway, what are we doing here? And so I, it was a mess, man. It really was. But look, they never said Heineken was going to start. It was just kind of a leak that went to the media.

It almost felt like a trial balloon. They got crushed all over town for it. And then a couple hours later, they reversed course. And Rivera even admitted in that press conference that he had planned on going with Heineken for a couple of days. And then that morning, which was yesterday, on Wednesday, he changed his mind.

All right, final thing. And look, I hope Sam Howell does well. He's, he's a super kid. We obviously watched him here at North Carolina for a few years. So hope it, hope it really works out with Washington. But this is a bigger picture question about Ron Rivera and the state of the franchise. I thought when they hired him that they were bringing in the absolute perfect person. I didn't love Rivera as a coach. I thought he was a good coach, not a great coach, but a good coach, but a great human.

And they needed great humans in that organization, as you well know. And so I don't, I'm not changing my opinion of that. But ultimately, is this going to work out for Ron or is he in danger of maybe either getting caught up on Black Monday or maybe this being his or the next year being his last year?

So I could be really wrong about this. I don't think there's any chance he gets fired at the end of this season. They're going through what we believe is an ownership change. That's not definitive either, but there's enough speculation and there's enough smoke right now to assume that they're possibly being sold that Dan Snyder's working on selling this team. And if you're about to sell a team, you're not blowing out a staff and paying them all out.

And before you leave, essentially adding a bunch of money to what you have to pay. So I think he benefits frankly, from the fact that they're in this process wherever they are in it, whether they're sold in a month or it takes closer to a year or whatever. I think he's going to get another season. And again, I could be loud wrong come Monday or Tuesday. That would tell you one of two things, by the way, if he does get fired. Number one, Snyder's not as close to selling his people think and maybe wants to hang around or that possibly they're much further along and whoever the next owner is Bezos or someone else is already pulling the strings and ready to take over.

But I just don't think either of those things is realistic. That's Grant Paulson, 106.7, the fan in Washington, DC, end result of all of it, Sam Howell gets to start a football game this weekend and all of the things that come with it, all of the lead up, all of the practice, all of the, hey, interviewing the starting quarterback, all of that. Sam Howell will get to experience for the first time in the NFL.

So good for him. Washington plays Dallas. Washington has nothing to play for.

This is a freebie for Sam Howell. Dallas can still win the division. And if enough things happen, of course, they need Arizona to beat San Francisco, which is probably not going to happen, but it might. But if Dallas wins and San Francisco loses, Dallas can still get the number one overall seed, which for whatever it's worth.

More than, I mean, who knows? Dallas could win. Philadelphia could easily lose.

I don't know that Jalen Hurts is going to play. If Jalen Hurts doesn't play, then the Eagles have to beat the Giants. Giants are back playing well. They're probably playing better now, the Giants are, than they were when they were six and one. Yeah. Right. So tough ask for Philadelphia without Jalen Hurts based on the way Gardner Minshew has played. So we'll see. Maybe Philadelphia is going to end up, because of the injury to Hurts, give it all back and end up having to go on the road three times, maybe not three times, depending on what happens in the playoffs, but more than likely on the road three times to get to a Super Bowl. There was a time where they looked by far the best team in the NFC.