It was a day of the greatest hits on Grant & Danny, Commanders 2024 edition – the show opened with talk about Jayden Daniels and ended with Fred Smoot trying to convince Danny to come out to a game in Landover, which might be harder than trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube.
In between, though, we got maybe THE greatest hit: someone Tweeted to Grant saying they don’t think RFK is the optimal site for the next Commanders stadium, and giving the reasons they believe this is so – namely, bad traffic and no tailgating space and a hate for the Metro being close as a selling point – and since ‘it’s not 1985, let’s move on.’
“When I hear that argument, just RFK is overrated, it’s not that much better than the others, I would dismiss it outright – yell this guy out of the bar, so to speak,” Grant said. “But then you hear his points, and there are some decent ones in here, and we can agree and disagree with different things.”
So about those issues, Grant first addressed traffic:
“Traffic's gonna stink pretty much anywhere. The worst it could possibly be is if they put it at that Woodbridge-ish location that came up in ’95, but it's not like it's gonna be a cupcake over there on that 295 corridor over by RFK,” GP said. “I would say that would be a every bit as bad a traffic spot as the current stadium, if not worse, if nothing’s done.”
“Yeah, if nothing's done thoughtfully to build around that and make traffic patterns infinitely better than they are right now, then, yeah, it'll be just as much, if not worse of a snarl,” Danny replied.
As for tailgating, that is ‘irrefutable,’ even if there’s space to build.
“There will never, in any plan, be a ton of parking lots there, because if there's enough space to do their little town center where you can go to the bars and the restaurants an that footprint is big enough, what you can't convince me of there's enough room to do both of those things and a big parking lot,” GP said. “And the priority is not a parking lot, the priority is the other stuff. So football, which has a tailgating culture, you are giving up on that, which is the highlight of the experience for a lot of fans. Now, ideally when they move there and they're playing and they're good, that would not be the highlight anymore, but right now, that’s a big part, and it will be very, very minimally a part of an RFK experience.”
So that’s the easiest to confirm, and the next one, ‘bad area,’ was tough for Grant to decipher – but the one Grant actually loved was the Tweeter saying ‘the Metro is close is a fine argument if people were going to weeknight games after work.’
“I’m gonna speak out of both sides of my mouth and get the pro-city part out first – even for football on the weekends, like the Audi Field experience with the Defenders, it is awesome to be in the city, going to Walter’s, and walking over to Audi Field,” GP said. “Is it great because it's in DC or is it great just because I'm at a bar and then I'm walking to a stadium? Probably more B than A, because there's nothing overly DC about the Navy Yard, so I don’t think that’s better or worse wherever it is, but it is always awesome to be in the city.”
On the other part, though…
“His point is true about this: you can’t have a Nats ballpark without Metro in my opinion. It’s an everyday thing, there are weeknight games constantly, so it’s a necessity, same for the Wizards and Caps,” GP said. “This is a work and a traffic thing – 95% of the games that will ever be played at an NFL stadium in the city are going to take place on Sunday morning. Now, there is gameday traffic, but in the same way that the tailgate culture for football is way bigger and better and more expansive than it is for anything else, it’s also an all-day endeavor, where others aren’t. It’s so different.”
“I think you’re discounting that a lot of people don’t do the all-day thing, take the Metro and walk that mile and get there at noon for a 1 p.m. game,” Danny said, trying to play Devil’s Advocate before Grant rebutted by saying it’s a majority in his bucket, not Danny’s. “I think there’s maybe a larger percentage than you’re acknowledging of folks that don’t do it. I think if you did it at the RFK spot and built it up, a lot of those fans could go, ‘oh, I can just take the Metro and go grab a sandwich at the bar right before kickoff, and that’s just as good.’”
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