The Washington Commanders were the talk of the football world last season. First-year head coach Dan Quinn and his amazing rookie quarterback, Jayden Daniels, rose from the cellar in the NFC East to the playoffs and gathered two postseason wins.
The crescendo of the Commanders campaign hit an apex when they eliminated the team with the best record in the National Football League, the Detroit Lions, on the loser's home field, 45-31. Their success had the majority of the bettors, more than 65%, leaping at the seemingly generous point spread in the NFC Championship Game. The books, meanwhile, moved the opening line up from the homesteading Philadelphia Eagles favored by 4½ points to 6.
The books, and no doubt wise guy money, knew what they were doing. While the public spent the early part of the NFC Champion Game celebrating a long Commanders drive that resulted in a field goal, the eventual Super Bowl winning Eagles opened their offensive explosion with running back Saquon Barkley breaking loose and taking it to the house for an opening play touchdown run.
The Eagles were never challenged after that. The Commander fans watched their miracle season burn in hell. The Eagles won the game, 55-23, and the Commanders began preparation for Daniels to continue his mastery over NFL defenses in his second pro season.
As brilliant as Daniels was last season, and as bright of a kid the Washington quarterback is, backing up a rookie season like he enjoyed in 2024 with equal success is not likely. History shows that teams that rise from the depths of their division race, like the Commanders did last season, have problems in the following season’s sequel.
The reasons are both physical and mental.