Due to not being "the same guy that he was", Garcia is benched. Brian Griese, you're up. After that, Gruden, can I have a shot?

Well, it seems that Garcia, suffering from a possible ankle injury, is being benched for the week in favor of one time starter Brian Griese. I feel a few ways about this, but more importantly, I wonder how this change will impact the team.

If you listen at all to the local AM radio stations like 620 or 1250, the only message tearing through their microphones is speculation on whether the relationship between Garcia and Gruden is damaged, destroyed, or totally demolished. To me, someone who is turning more and more against Gruden as the time goes on, I think that we have to do what it takes to win, especially since the NFC South is looking to not be the cupcake it was last season. Besides, the connection between Gruden and any player always eventually come to a bitter end. Maybe Garcia's time has come.

The way I see it, if it takes a week off to get Garcia back in shape, than it's worth it. The only concern I have is that if Griese wins handily this Sunday, I think Gruden will have a hard time sitting him on the bench and giving Garcia the start again, even if he is healthy. Gruden has been here 7 years and we have never really had a franchise starting QB yet. In fact, I don't think we have ever had one. Which leads me to my point.

The fact that Brian Griese left here and went to Chicago for two years and couldn't beat out Rex Grossman or Kyle Orton for the starting job is a little concerning. In Chicago, he's a benchwarmer. In Tampa, he's a starter. Hmmm...

We are a national joke at QB. We fell all over ourselves in a half baked attempt to get Brett Favre only to not only lose out on signing him, but also made our starting QB remark that he was a "dead man walking". Nice. We release Chris Simms and retain Luke McCown to complete a lineup of first place losers. With the exception of rookie Josh Johnson, everyone of our QBs have started and then been sat in favor of someone else. Beautiful.

Don't get me wrong, I like Garcia as much as the next guy. He lead Philadelphia to the playoffs, only to lose. And then he lead us to the playoffs, only to lose. This is coming from the same team that benches our Superbowl QB Brad Johnson the next year after he wasn't playing up to Gruden's snuff. I don't know. A lot of other teams have great franchise QBs:  Tom Brady, Ben Rothelisberger, Jay Cutler, Donovan Mcnabb, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Phillip Rivers, Matt Hassellbeck, Jamarcus Russell.... okay, that last one was a joke.

Anywho, we can't seem to get one to save our life. If this teams hopes to do anything of significance down the road, we have to change a lot of things. Most notably, our head coach. Gruden is poisonous to every player he gets a hold of. No free agents want to come here. No rookies want to start here. Gruden not only screws our chances of building a dynasty, he stops us from building a better team. If we fired him today I'm sure he wouldn't be able to get a head coaching job anywhere else. That says a lot.