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This Commanders season was magical, but what comes next is more important, and it has to be even better

This Commanders season was magical, but what comes next is more important, and it has to be even better

ASHBURN, Va. — Down came the “Ball Is Life” towels, one of the many mantras the Commanders adopted this year. Down came the jersey collections, with Jayden Daniels‘ and Bobby Wagner’s among the most impressive. Around came helmets and footballs to be signed, teammates commemorating their season together with strokes of a Sharpie. Into boxes, instead of onto bodies like usual, went shoes and gloves and other gear as players made decisions on what to keep and what to donate.

Handshakes and hugs and smiles. End-of-season check-ins and checkouts.

And then off they went, the 2024 Commanders. All locker room cleanouts look similar, but they can feel very different.

“It feels the same in that you lost and you fell short of your goal, but it feels different in … what we accomplished this year,” Terry McLaurin said. “There was really no expectations going into this season, and to be a part of something where you literally build something from the ground up, it’s extremely humbling to be a part of, and it just makes football great. I really had a joy playing in this season.”

Perhaps that’s the word that fit this team best: joy. The joy of finding a franchise quarterback. The joy of the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2020, first playoff win since 2005 and first NFC Championship appearance since 1991. The joy of a brotherhood formed in a matter of weeks despite an overhauled roster.

“I love that locker room,” Daniels said during his first NFL locker-room cleanout.Β 

“Just the sheer team aspect of how it was this year, of how everybody loved one another and fed off one another, how much fun it was, the highs, the lows,” said Tress Way amid his 11th, all spent with Washington.

“A lot of guys coming in, we don’t know each other that much … and then automatically, the moment we walk in the building, that was something special that you don’t see around a lot of teams where I’ve been at,” Frankie Luvu said during his seventh cleanout but first with Washington. “But we’ve got something special, and I think that’s the biggest accomplishment.”

With Daniels, head coach Dan Quinn and general manager Adam Peters in place, it has the chance to be more than a one-year accomplishment. And while Peters deserves enormous credit for all of the calls he made this offseason — Daniels the most important, but veterans like Wagner, Zach Ertz and Dante FowlerΒ absolutely crucial, too — it’s Quinn who laid down a legitimate culture the organization badly needed. Players follow in the image of their coach, and Quinn was the perfect leader.

“The whole group believes in him and believes in what he’s saying,” Wagner said. “You can feel how authentic it is. Like, that’s him. When you have someone that believes in what they do and practices what they do, you see he lives it, and it’s easy to follow someone who is living what they’re saying.”

Quinn also had many of the players he needed, too.

One may think Washington is a young team because Daniels was the star. In reality, Washington was one of the oldest teams in the NFL and the oldest in the postseason. The Commanders got outstanding seasons from Ertz and Wagner, both 34. Quinn admitted he initially expected “third down, red zone, some two-minute things” from Ertz. Instead he got 84 catches, 809 yards and eight touchdowns (including playoffs), all Ertz’s bests in over half a decade. Wagner was a second-team All-Pro, his 11th consecutive time making the first or second team. Fowler, 30, had 10.5 sacks, the second-most of his career. The list goes on.

All of these players were brought in for a variety of reasons. They established immediate levels of legitimacy and competency on the field. They had familiarity with the system, with Wagner having played under Quinn and linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr., Fowler under Quinn, Ertz under offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and Austin Ekeler under run game coordinator/running backs coach Anthony Lynn. But they were also brought in as leaders, guys who could nurture a large draft class that featured five top-100 picks. In many cases, they not only nurtured those youngsters, but they kept them off the field by playing so well.

So the Commanders produced a season few could have expected. Way knew things were different when the Commanders won three straight games after losing their season opener but Quinn’s messaging stayed the same: winning was the new status quo. This Washington team may be best remembered for its dramatic finishes, with Daniels throwing an NFL-record five touchdown passes in the final 30 seconds of regulation or in overtime, but it also won four games by 20-plus points, its most since 1991.

As exciting as the rises in the NFL can be, the valleys are often even more pronounced — and accelerated, not just for individuals but for teams as a whole. In early 2023, Joe Burrow proclaimed the BengalsSuper Bowl window was open “[his] whole career.”Β Cincinnati hasn’t made the playoffs since. Justin Herbert, Burrow’s 2020 draft classmates and the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year that season, hasn’t won a playoff game.

There are a bevy of reasons those teams have diverted from the routes of, say, the Chiefs and 49ers, Peters’ former team. There are the small margins, of course, the breaks that go for one team and against the other. But Kansas City and San Francisco, crucially, have excelled in their player acquisitions.

The Chiefs had 19 players start at least 10 games this regular season. Of those 19, 16 have spent their entire careers with the franchise. That includes cornerstones Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones of course, but also All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie, All-Pro center Creed Humphrey, Pro-Bowl guard Trey Smith and others.

The 49ers, similarly, landed All-Pros Fred Warner, George Kittle, Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk and Talanoa Hufanga in the draft. Unlike Kansas City, San Francisco did it with two different quarterbacks, transitioning from Jimmy Garoppolo to Brock Purdy despite whiffing on No. 3 overall pick Trey Lance. Of course, finding a historically efficient quarterback at Mr. Irrelevant is an outlier, but they all count. And it was no coincidence that the 49ers fell off this season as several of the aforementioned players struggled. Now, even they face major questions going forward, a representation of how quickly things can change.

Because they hit on picks, they could add veterans: Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams in San Francisco and Joe Thuney and Justin Reid in Kansas City, for example. You can add in the Eagles, who added Saquon Barkley to a core built through shrewd drafting and free agency and are heading to their third Super Bowl in eight years.

But they needed more than players. They needed the foundation Washington is building.

“When a head coach trusts himself and trusts his plan and has conviction in it, it helps a ton,” said Nick Allegretti, who won three Super Bowls with the Chiefs before joining the Commanders. “I think that was something that I noticed real quickly when I got to Kansas City, that it was like, ‘This is what we do. This is how we do it.’ And that’s something we did this year. We set that up.”

There is a long way for Washington to go. Sunday’s loss to the Eagles highlighted several season-long issues — the inabilities to stop the run, create turnovers or get the running game going outside Daniels — but also two teams in different developmental phases.

“Our team has a lot going for it,” Quinn said. “We have brotherhood and toughness and work ethic, and there’s just one thing we didn’t have, and we just got it last night, and those are scars. You can’t get ’em when you first huddle up, and you gotta earn ’em, and you sure as hell don’t want to, but you do need ’em to grow. And you truly don’t know who you are until you get your ass knocked down and see how you get back up. And if I know anything about our team, they will absolutely get up swinging.”

They have the chance to do that, first and foremost, because of Daniels. He was magnificent — a singular force. A rising tide lifts all ships, and he was just that, lifting a roster that didn’t suggest “NFC Championship-bound.” Washington was drafting second overall just nine months ago, after all.

There are plenty more roster holes to be filled, potentially in both trenches, the defensive secondary and the weapons around Daniels. Washington has 31 pending free agents, with key contributors on one-year deals such as Ertz, Wagner, Fowler and Jeremy Chinn among them. To maximize Daniels, the roster churn must also feature roster upgrade, not just retainment.

Daniels was the sixth rookie quarterback drafted in the top five to start a playoff game since 2000. The previous five provide cautionary tales that NFL simultaneously stands for “National Football League” and “Not For Long.”

C.J. Stroud and the Texans had a letdown in his second season, losing in the same round of the playoffs this year as they did last year and learning they have significant holes to fill to become a bonafide contender. One year after looking like one of the profession’s top young offensive coordinators, Bobby Slowik got fired. While the future for the Stroud and the team is still bright, optimism has been somewhat tempered — or at least momentarily put on hold.

Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in 2012, respectively, saw their bodies betray them. Luck abruptly retired from the NFL at 29 in 2019, saying, “I haven’t been able to live the life I want to live,” stuck in a brutal cycle of injuries and recoveries. Griffin won nine games as a rookie. He won just seven the rest of his career. Neither reached the heights their rookie seasons indicated.

Mark Sanchez made Championship Sunday in both of his first two seasons, buoyed by a dominant defense, and never played in another playoff game. Matt Ryan made a Super Bowl, coincidentally under Quinn, but never won one.

But Washington now has the chance to avoid that fate, to continue to build a winner and a culture that supports winning.Β 

“That’s the hardest part,” Marcus Mariota said, the knowing smile of a sage veteran spreading on his face. “And it’s going to take a collective group that all aim for the same goal but understand that it’s more than just he X’s and the O’s. It’s more than just showing up on Sundays. It’s the little things that you guys do as a group throughout the week, and I think there’s a core group of young players that were around it, that have seen it, that I think will be able to springboard it forward.”

Daniels, 24, will head those efforts. So, too, will Mike Sainristil and Quan Martin, both 24. Luvu, 28, and McLaurin, 29, are older but still cogs for the long haul. Marshon Lattimore, 28, was a midseason acquisition who had a hamstring injury and struggled on the field, but Peters envisions him as an important piece, too. Daniels’ simple presence will be a boon to Washington’s free agency pitch, a rarity in the NFL. Ertz said he wishes he was just starting his career with Daniels. It’s not hard to envision others feeling the same way.

Many have said Washington arrived early, but this season can’t be a destination. Ideally, it’s a pitstop on the path to something more, fueled by the acquisitions and the culture development to come.

“It’ll be a really important thing now, and 20 years we’ll look back and say, ‘Ok in 2024 that began. How did it grow stronger?,'” Quinn said. “It will grow stronger, because it’s the people who live it. If it’s just a sign on the wall, then you don’t really have one. You have to live it.”

The roster won’t be the same. Peters wouldn’t be doing his job if it is. That’s a hard pill for the players, as human beings, to swallow, but it’s the business of trying to build a champion. Getting the right fits as players and people will be the challenge. You can’t have one without the other.

“Something that, when we talked with a lot of guys today, really resonated with both of us is bringing in the right people and bringing in guys who we see as Commanders,” Peters said.Β 

For the first time in years, the football team brought joy to the nation’s capital. There’s that word again. Display panels on D.C.’s public transportation buses alternated between its route and “GO COMMANDERS.” The team’s marching band, which played on in earnest in front of half-empty stadiums for so many lost seasons, joyfully blared through the district’s downtown streets Saturday. Burgundy and gold dotted D.C. this season at rates it hadn’t in years, some fans old enough to remember the glory days, others too young to fully understand why this season meant so much.

Before the season, Quinn was adamant that Washington wasn’t rebuilding. Six months later, Washington is definitively building. The quarterback — that elusive position — is in place. The culture — that intangible word — is in place.

“You’re starting from ground zero because it’s a new team, but at the same time, when there’s a standard that’s been set, that’s the expectation going in,” McLaurin said. “So I think everybody coming into the building, whoever it is, you know that’s the expectation.”

That, at long last, is a positive thing for Washington.

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Author: Zachary Pereles
January 27, 2025 | 8:05 pm

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