Jay’s head coach, John Schneider, fired a player  today

The Washington Commanders’ situation with Ron Rivera is so dire that the code must be broken.

And so, via former NFL head coach Jay Gruden, it has been.

“Black Monday,” wrote Gruden on social media after yet another Commanders debacle, this time a home loss to the lowly New York Giants. “I am coming to a theatre near you. Been there. Done that.”

Gruden is, of course, coming from a place of experience, as he was once the head coach in Washington, and, well, coaches get hired to be fired, as everyone knows.

But the social media thread continued, with a hard question and with Gruden’s brutally frank answer. A fan said Rivera, overseer of the 4-7 Commanders, needs to be fired.

Gruden’s response? “Agree,” he wrote. “Problem: who do you hire?”

The former NFL head coach is then, in essence, calling for the dismissal of the Commanders’ Rivera, and with his “Black Monday” note, it’s left to assume that Gruden means that it should be done sooner rather than later.

Some might disagree with two assertions here: One, that it really matters, at this stage, “who they hire”; that is an issue for 2024, as immediately, a staffer (Eric Bieniemy or Jack Del Rio would simply step up into the big chair for the time being). And two, that even as the Commanders are reeling after this 31-19 beating, they play another game in a matter of hours, with a Thanksgiving visit to the 7-3 Dallas Cowboys, and that changing leadership in this time crunch might actually make the Thursday outcome even more painful.