LOVERRO: Rivera’s ballyhooed ‘roster building’ meant zilch to new brain trust

Dan Quinn and Adam Peters really didn’t think much of Ron Rivera’s roster building.

I mean, the Washington Commanders coach and his boss, the general manager, took that roster apart like a butcher slicing up Bambi.

Speaking of a deer in headlights, when they got to the heart of Rivera’s Commanders championship construction — his prize quarterback acquisition, Sam Howell — they sent him packing.

Remember this Rivera quote about Josh Harris? “If we go 8-8-1 this year and he fires me, and next year they win the division with 40 of the 53 players we drafted, and it’s the same quarterback, I’m vindicated,” he told ESPN in September. “Send me my Super Bowl ring.”

I’m betting they’ve lost Rivera’s forwarding address.

I think at last count the new Commanders regime brought in 16 new players and counting since free agency began. Will they be any better than the Rivera players they are replacing? No one knows yet.

Remember this headline a few years ago from The Athletic: “Washington free-agency report card: Ron Rivera gets high marks for addition.”    

That’s that grade inflation we hear about, perhaps.

Now here we are again, raising the team’s off-season championship banner yet again in 2024.

The difference, of course, is that the flagpole is no longer owned by Dan Snyder. It’s Josh Harris’ now, and it’s not unreasonable to believe that the chances of getting the personnel decisions right have never been greater in this century.

There’s a lot to like — perhaps the most being the departure of Howell, the 2022 fifth-round draft choice from North Carolina who was thrust into the starting quarterback spot last year when Rivera sought cover from his previous disastrous quarterback decision, Carson Wentz.

Howell seems like a very nice young man with skills who deserved better than being victimized by a warped Eric Bieniemy offense. He will have a chance to prove that now in Seattle, where he was traded.

Washington sent Howell, plus a fourth-round pick (No. 109) and a sixth-round selection (No. 179) to the Seahawks in exchange for a third-round pick (No. 78) and a fifth-round pick (No. 152).

That’s a better deal than the Chicago Bears squeezed out of the Pittsburgh Steelers for highly touted quarterback Justin Fields. The Bears got a 2025 sixth-rounder that could become a fourth-rounder, based on playing time — which may not be very much this season if Fields is playing behind Russell Wilson as planned.

Fields led the Bears to a 40-20 victory over the Commanders in October for Chicago’s first win of the season. He threw four touchdowns and completed 15 of 29 passes for 282 yards and no interceptions. Howell completed 37 of 51 passes for 388 yards, five sacks, two touchdowns and one interception.

What kind of odds do you think you wouldn’t have gotten that Oct. 5 Thursday night at the field formerly known as FedEx if you suggested Howell would bring a better return than Fields in a trade?

Peters pulled off a trade deserving of optimism.

The free agent deals? The newcomers seem to share some special qualities.

Center Tyler Biadasz is from Dallas, where Quinn was the defensive coordinator. He said the new Washington coach was “all about grit and tenacity and winning.”

Linebacker Frankie Luvu told reporters he will add “energy, tenacity and grit” to the team.

“They’ve got pride, they’ve got grit,” Ron Rivera said

Sorry, got my grit quotes from last year confused.

Luvu’s fellow linebacker, Bobby Wagner, brings legacy with him. He was a 10-time All-Pro — the best of the best — and made the NFL 2010s All-Decade team.

Wagner will be 34 when the season starts. Remarkably, he was on the field in Landover when Robert Griffin III went down with his devastating knee injury in Seattle’s 24-14 win over Washington in the wild-card game on Jan. 6, 2013 — seemingly another lifetime ago. But he is coming off one of his best seasons in his return to Seattle last year.

What’s more important, though, is that he and Luvu are actual linebackers, better than anything Rivera and his defensive coordinator, Jack Del Rio put on the field during their four years here. Strangely, though both played linebacker in the NFL, Rivera and Del Rio seemed either disinterested in the position, or based on the disappointing selection of linebacker Jamin Davis in the first round of the 2021 draft, incapable of picking talent for the role.

Even stranger, two of the top personnel decision-makers who were here with Rivera during their era of disinterest remain with the organization. The two Martys, Mayhew and Hurney, are still with the team and watched as the roster they helped put together has gotten butchered.

The fun is just beginning. The Commanders still have their pockets full of free agent money to spend if they choose and have six picks in the top 100 in the upcoming NFL draft — one of them the No. 2 selection in the draft.

Keep that flag flying. 

• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.