A year ago at this time, Washington was the feel-good story of the NFL — a rookie quarterback playing like a ten-year vet, a first-year head coach who looked like he’d been doing this forever, and a run to the NFC Championship Game the franchise hadn’t sniffed since 1992. Then 2025 happened, and the whole thing came apart so fast it was almost funny, if you weren’t a Commanders fan.
Now Washington enters 2026 with a rebuilt coaching staff, a nine-figure free-agency spree, and exactly one question that determines whether any of it matters: can Jayden Daniels stay on the field?
From NFC Championship to 5-12 in One Year
Let’s not undersell how bad last season actually was. The 2024 Commanders won 12 games — most since 1991 — and made it to the NFC title game behind Daniels’ historic rookie campaign. The 2025 follow-up produced a 5-12 record, third place in the NFC East, and a point differential of minus-95, the second-worst mark in the entire conference. Eleven of their 17 games went over the total, a pace exceeded by only the Cowboys — which is a polite way of saying nobody in Washington could stop anybody.
The root cause wasn’t complicated. Daniels played in just seven games, battling a combination of knee, hamstring, and elbow issues, and Washington went 2-5 in the games he missed. Terry McLaurin, the one truly reliable weapon on the roster, was limited to 10 games by a quad injury. And even when the offense had its pieces, the defense couldn’t bail anyone out — Washington finished 31st in EPA per play, 27th in success rate, and dead last in total yards allowed. A team that had won virtually every one-score game in 2024 through sheer manufactured magic simply ran out of magic in 2025.
The results were predictable enough that the front office didn’t wait around. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. were both let go after the season.
The Rebuild: Money, a Promotion, and a Gamble
General manager Adam Peters didn’t do this quietly. Washington’s offseason overhaul reportedly included $159 million in guaranteed free-agent money, aimed squarely at fixing the two things that broke last year: the offensive line and the defense.
Up front, they signed Laremy Tunsil to shore up protection for Daniels — and then, in a cruel piece of foreshadowing, lost him. Tunsil tore his triceps in a training camp pass-rush drill in early August, needed surgery, and is now expected to miss most or all of the season. Second-year lineman Brandon Coleman, who started 12 games at left tackle as a rookie in 2024, has taken over the blindside job. It’s a brutal loss for a team that just made Tunsil the highest-paid offensive lineman in football five months earlier. On defense — which needed the most work — Washington added Javon Kinlaw, Odafe Oweh, Leo Chenal, K’Lavon Chaisson, and Tim Settle to rebuild the front seven, plus Nick Cross, Rasul Douglas, and Amik Robertson in the secondary. They used the No. 7 overall pick on Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles, who’s being talked about as a future centerpiece of Dan Quinn’s defense. On offense, Stefon Diggs, tight end Chig Okonkwo, running back Rachaad White, and rookie receiver Antonio Williams all arrive to give Daniels more than just McLaurin to throw to.
The coaching changes are the more interesting bet. Instead of importing outside voices, Washington promoted from within and made a somewhat unconventional outside hire. David Blough — a journeyman backup quarterback who spent the last two seasons as Washington’s assistant quarterbacks coach — is now the offensive coordinator, installing a scheme built around more under-center snaps, zone-run concepts, and play-action, reportedly borrowing ideas from Ben Johnson, Kliff Kingsbury, and Sean McVay. Daronte Jones, who spent one season as LSU’s defensive coordinator before moving to the Vikings as a passing-game coordinator, takes over the defense with a plan built on Brian Flores’ attacking principles.
Both are first-time NFL play-callers. Both are being trusted with fixing units that, a year ago, were historically bad in Blough’s case and historically fragile in Jones’. That’s the deal Washington made this offseason: bet on continuity of belief in Daniels and Quinn, and bet on internal, unproven coordinators to get the most out of a retooled roster.
The Only Question That Actually Matters
Every projection, every storyline, every reason for optimism in Washington traces back to one sentence: Jayden Daniels has to stay upright. The 2024 Offensive Rookie of the Year proved he can be one of the best quarterbacks in football when healthy. He also proved last season that “when healthy” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Beat reporters have noted him building real chemistry in camp — a back-shoulder throw to McLaurin, a red-zone connection with Okonkwo — but chemistry doesn’t mean anything if he’s watching from the sideline in Week 9 again.
That reality is baked into how oddsmakers are treating this team. Washington’s win total opened at 7.5 in February and was still sitting there in late July — a startlingly modest number for a roster with this much talent and a quarterback with this kind of ceiling. Some bettors think that number is too low given the additions on both sides of the ball. Others point out the obvious: you can’t hand out a number of confidence you don’t have in a quarterback’s ability to stay on the field.
What Cutdown Day Confirmed
Washington finalized its 53-man roster on Sunday, and the picture that emerged only sharpens the health question hanging over this team. Daniels, McLaurin, Diggs, and White all made the roster as expected — no surprises at the skill positions the offense is built around. But the injury list is already piling up before Week 1: beyond Tunsil, defensive tackle Johnny Newton (torn pec) and edge rusher Dorance Armstrong (suspended for Week 1 following a personal conduct violation, on top of recovering from a torn ACL) will both be unavailable for the opener. Linebacker Sonny Styles made the team as expected and is projected to see real early-season snaps alongside Frankie Luvu and Leo Chenal. For a roster that was specifically retooled to survive the kind of attrition that sank 2025, losing a $30-million-a-year left tackle and two defensive contributors before a single regular-season snap is not the start anyone in Ashburn wanted.
A Schedule Nobody Can Quite Agree On
Here’s where the analysts actually split. One betting outlet has Washington’s slate as the fourth-toughest in the NFL, behind only the Cardinals, Dolphins, and Panthers. A Washington-focused beat site, looking at the same 17 games, called the overall strength of schedule “right in the middle of the pack.” Both can’t be fully right, and it’s a reminder that “schedule strength” this early in the year is more educated guess than science — projected opponent win totals shift constantly as rosters and injuries change.
What’s not in dispute is the shape of it. Washington opens on the road at Philadelphia and Dallas — as brutal a two-game start as exists in the NFC East — before a Week 3 home opener against the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks. Then it’s a trip to London to face the Colts, a Week 5 home game against the Giants, and a Week 6 date with the 49ers heading into the bye. The back half offers a mix of gettable road games and tougher home tests, but the first six weeks alone will tell you almost everything about whether this coaching overhaul is working — and whether Daniels is still standing when it matters.
So What Actually Happens?
The betting market’s answer, for now, is a team hovering around .500 — good enough to make some noise, not good enough to promise anything. A Maryland sportsbook has Washington at +6000 to win the Super Bowl, reflecting a team that’s live in the NFC East race if things break right but far from anyone’s favorite. Analysts across the board are landing in the same range: 8 wins here, 9 wins there, an outside shot at 9-8 or 8-9 if health cooperates, a slide back toward the bottom of the division if it doesn’t.
That’s probably the honest answer, even if it feels unsatisfying for a fanbase that watched this team play in a conference championship game 20 months ago. Washington didn’t get worse on paper — arguably the roster is deeper now than it was during the magical 2024 run. But this franchise learned the hard way last season that talent on paper means nothing if your quarterback is in a walking boot. Until Daniels proves he can survive a full 17-game slate behind a retooled but still unproven supporting cast, every optimistic projection about this team comes with the same asterisk: ask again in December.
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