Welcome to the Commanders Today Podcast. I'm Julie Donaldson. The Commander's rookies made their way to Ashbourne today for the start of Rookie Minicamp. I sat down with the head coach, Ron Rivera to recap the draft and take a deeper dive into the Commander's Draft class. When you go through this whole process, the planning of it, the leading up with it, the working that you have to do with your team, to making the phone calls to be able to bring the families in here, what is the best
part of the draft for you? You know, I'll tell you this year, one of the best parts of the draft was getting me Johan's parents. Okay, you know, just knowing that his mother's going through the struggle right now with her health, but just kind of getting to know them briefly, but then watching the pride in which they had when he got up there and did his press conference.
I thought was really neat. I really did. And you know, it's it's kind of you know, remind you, you know, the culmination of of of you know, Johan's dream um coupled with his parents' support was really cool. It was and it was so nice too, because we've been in COVID for so long. Oh yeah, we haven't been able to have those moments. Yes, you know, and that was precious, Yes it was and that that that made it to me and made it really special, really did. So let's
go through your picks and let's start with Johan Dotson. Um. When did you know that he was your guy and you just would want to trade back to get him or did you ever consider maybe even just reaching for the sake of making sure you had him? Um? No, we we we felt going backwards and he would be there and and you know, you try to predict it and you're hoping, and we did, um, and he was there. Here's a guy that we really do feel as a is a fit for us. We believe he is a
plug and play guy. He's versatile, he's got a tremendous catch radius. He's going to line up at the at the different wide receiver spots for us for differ circumstances, and he has some special team's value in terms of punt return. This is a draft for the wide receiver position. Was kind of like glorified a little bit, right. There's a lot of good names of folks that they thought to come out. And as you said, it's all subjective
and it's what you really needed. Why was he the guy that you're saying, Okay, he's going to help compliment Terry, He's going to be that ad to our receiver room that we need. I think he was probably one of the guys that was really I think season ready. I mean, he's a guy's going to come in, he's he's he's a pro already. He understands what he's supposed to do,
how he needs to do it. You know, we didn't bring him in on a thirty visit because we felt we knew who he was and that that was one of the things that you know, we used the thirty visit to get to know the guys we didn't have. We had a few questions on We didn't have any questions on him. You know, we had six people present at his workout at Penn State, and they did a
lot of behind the scenes stuff for us. You know, they interviewed different people, different personnel to ask them about Johan, and so we came away feeling pretty good about I kind of found that fascinating a little bit that somebody that you were taking and we talked to the Heathstone didn't have a lot of meetings with Washington. But it's because you didn't need to, right you're already confident in who he was and what he's going to be. So
we're excited to see that play out. Though we did that one time in Carolina and turned out to be a little quickly. We didn't spend an a nord town amount of time, you know, interviewing or anything like that. It's just that when when when you get to a point and you feel very comfortable, you know, we don't want to show our hand. Makes sense. Okay, let's go to the second round. Uh. Fiderian mathis really a big body. You watched the film on him. He seems to kind
of he'll just take on those double teams. We call that the dirty work. He's not afraid to do. We reached out to a couple of their coaches there and had an uportunity to talk with them, and a very selfless guy, very unselfish, willing to do the dirty work. As you put it, is not unusual this day where the sacks are glorified. Well I think they are, but you know, he's still had a good number of sack.
He had nine this last season. Didn't have total in his career, but the nine this year is a pretty substantial number for a defensive tackle, especially a guy that does the dirty work. So that's one of the things that you felt good about. But one thing he did very well was he held the point of attack. He absorbed the double teams. He allowed the linebackers to run, you know, and they had a couple of linebackers we really liked too, but he allowed them to run and
be productive. And that's one of the things that you know, I always go back to back in the day watching guys at brand well as linebackers. That's because they had people up in front of him that really knew how to absorb those blocks. Next week marks a new chapter. On Monday, May night, Commanders Today will officially become the Command Center podcast, your home for analysis and insight into
all things Washington Commanders. You can also tune into the launch of Command Center on NBC Sports Washington at five thirty pm, and while you're at it, follow at Commanders on all social media platforms for the latest the team. Thanks for listening. Mm HM