OPINION:
Commanders veterans are scheduled to report for training camp Tuesday in Ashburn, Virginia, with the first workouts set to take place Wednesday.
Will Brandon Aiyuk be standing there on Coach Gibbs Drive to greet them? Hold his own press conference? Try to sneak in for the workout? Or will 100-mph Brandon — seemingly obsessed with playing for Washington according to his bizarre social media posts — be greeted with open arms by his old friend from San Francisco, Commanders general manager Adam Peters?
The former All-Pro wide receiver has been the most unavoidable story for the Commanders leading up to the opening of camp — even though he is still a 49er, embroiled in a contract-salary-workout dispute over his knee surgery rehabilitation that has cost Aiyuk at least $30 million and counting.
The 49ers, though, don’t want to talk about him.
“Brandon is on a left squad designation,” San Francisco general manager John Lynch told reporters. “As such, he’s not on our 90-man roster. And I’m personally, and we as an organization, are going to focus on the players we have here. And so, I don’t have anything to say on that, anything to add to that. We wish him well. We wish his family well.”
Lovely sentiment from a team holding the controversial receiver hostage.
Peters and Washington coach Dan Quinn won’t want to talk about him, either. But since he is still a 49er, they can’t talk about him. Still, they could be quizzed on the frustration of watching all the attention being paid to a player not even on their team, when there is plenty to talk about with the roster Peters put together — a revamped defense that added eight new players costing over $200 million.
Then again, the Aiyuk distraction might be welcome, given the news that broke Monday morning that Washington fired tight ends coach Ben Steele, nearly five months after they hired him.
“We are parting ways with tight ends coach Ben Steele,” the team said in a statement. “The team will have no further comment at this time.”
We’re running out of things to talk about.
Steele was charged with DWI and obstruction/resist without force on June 7 in Loudoun County. His arrival and quick departure is evidence of the coaching upheaval that followed last season’s disappointing 5-12 season — following a trip to the NFC title game the year before — that led to the firing of offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr.
Now that’s something to talk about as training camp begins — the new offensive and defensive coordinators.
David Blough, who will turn 31 on Friday, is the new offensive play-caller. He has taken on a Sean McVay-like aura The chosen one. A former NFL backup quarterback who has been rushing up the coaching ladder since he arrived in Washington in 2024, from assistant quarterbacks coach to interim quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator. The narrative is that he is already heading for a head coaching job somewhere.
Daronte Jones, 47, is the new defensive boss. He has a traveling salesman resume — calling or helping defenses at Lenior-Rhyne, Nicholls State, Franklin High School, Jeanerette High School, Bowie State, UCLA, Montreal, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Miami, Cincinnati and Minnesota.
Needless to say, Jones has not been the chosen one.
When Quinn made the introductions of his new lieutenants in February — and the reasons for the changes — he spoke about doing what is best for the team.
“Yeah, changes are hard,” Quinn said. “As you’re going through, you build these relationships that are strong with people and players. And so, when there’s time for change, those are difficult conversations, discussions, but at the end, you just keep going back, what’s the best thing for the team moving forward? What’s the best thing for them? And so, if I put it into those spaces, what do we need to do moving forward? What things need to change and how would we go about that? Then you look at it from that lens and that’s certainly what I had to do because it’s a difficult part of it. You build bonds with coaches and with players, and so when you move on from them it’s challenging. But that’s also, I recognize the seat that I’m in that puts us in the very best spot that we can do.”
The temperature of the seat under Quinn will be regulated by getting these hires right after apparently getting them wrong the first time around.
The truth is Washington is hoping that a lot of Ben Johnson, the Chicago Bears coach Blough played under in Detroit when Johnson was offensive coordinator, rubbed off on Blough. And that a lot of Brian Flores, the Viking defensive coordinator Jones worked under for four seasons in Minnesota, rubbed off on Jones. Johnson.
All of it — drama, coaching, free agents, hires and fires — depends on the health and performance of third-year quarterback Jayden Daniels. He remains the sun around which all Commanders planets revolve.
Look at that. Buried the lead.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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