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Washington Commanders

Division: NFC East (2nd)

Record: 12-5 (4-2 in division)

Playoffs: NFC Wild Card - 6th seed

• Wild Card round: @ Tampa - W 23-20
• Divisional round: @ Detroit - W 45-31
• NFC Championship Game: @ Philadelphia - L 23-55

Season Awards/Honors

• Jayden Daniels, QB: NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, Pro Bowl
• Terry McLaurin, WR: Pro Bowl, All-Pro (2nd team)
• Bobby Wagner, LB: All-Pro (2nd team)
• Frankie Luvu, LB: All-Pro (2nd team)
• Austin Ekeler, RB: All-Pro (2nd team) as kick returner

Season Overview - “There’s a kid in Washington…”

This was, by every conceivable measure, the best season of football in Washington since the last Super Bowl run in 1991. And if you ask most fans, it was also the most exciting, eclipsing even the late fall run to the playoffs in 2012 with RGIII. The most shocking part: It was completely unexpected. We all knew there would be improvement with the addition of a sparkly new QB and near-complete turnover of the front office, coaching staff, and even roster.

But we all thought this team would develop its young QB, build the foundation for later years, and show good progress to maybe get above .500. We were wrong.

This team was electric, exciting, and downright nasty on offense. They moved the ball at will and seemed to never give it up. Tress Way punted with 11:15 left in the first game on Sept. 8 and wouldn’t punt again until Sept. 29! This was a Top 5 offense being run by a rookie with a supporting cast of Terry McLaurin, a few “washed” vets, and a long list of “who’s that?” dudes. How did this happen? How was there such a huge improvement from a 4-13 barf-fest of a 2023 season to an appearance in the NFC Championship Game?

Short answer: Jayden Daniels. Picking up 3rd/4th downs with his legs, throwing open receivers, reading blitzes and immediately making the right decision, deep balls, short screens, laser slants across the middle, fades, curls, hitches…he did it all.

The longer answer is that our new GM with his new staff and our new HC with his new staff brought in a ton of veterans who were supposed to incrementally increase the overall talent level of a roster that had suffered through years of draft misses and free agent mistakes. Then, they hit on QB and a few other players in the draft, the entire roster bought in to a new cultural philosophy, and the on-field result wasn’t just incremental improvement:

Team Stats

Massive improvements across the board on offense. The funniest stat here is actually the small improvement in pass yards per game. Why is that funny? Because in 2023, Sam Howell attempted 612 passes; Jayden Daniels had 480 attempts in 2024!

The newness of the 2024 Commanders cannot be overstated. They basically created a new team almost entirely from scratch.

A New Franchise

From ownership all the way down to the practice squad, the vast majority of Commanders were entirely new. Let’s start at the top, which happens to be a good place to start the 2024 timeline:

Ownership

The sale of the Washington Commanders was finalized on July 20, 2023, just in time to pin the abysmal 4-13 2023 campaign on new ownership without giving them any time to do anything before camp started. Thanks, Dan!

The ownership group was led by Josh Harris, private equity billionaire and noted NBA/NHL ownership terrorist, and included Mitchell Rales (private equity), Magic Johnson (of Magic Johnson fame), Mark Ein (venture capital), and a lot of other people. They all said the right things at the time and vowed to focus on recreating a football powerhouse.

And it wasn’t just talk. In addition to committing money to upgrade the practice facility and literal poop-water stadium, they started making substantive roster moves in 2023 to prepare for 2024. There were several smaller moves, but the two biggest came in mid-season. On Oct. 31, 2023, they traded DE Montez Sweat to the Bears for a 2024 second-round pick. The next day, they traded DE Chase Young to the 49ers for a 2024 third-round pick. It was the beginning of the end for the all-first round defensive line that was a source of mild pride in Washington. But it was also the beginning of an obvious strategy to hoard draft picks and really transform the team.

The season ended and the 4-13 Commanders were awarded the second overall pick in 2024.

On Jan. 8, 2024, Ron Rivera was fired after four seasons. Almost everyone on his staff and in the front office was also let go. The same day as the firings, Josh Harris announced a “rapid but thorough” search for a new GM. After years of HC/GMs or GMs that didn’t really do football, he was committing to a traditional NFL organizational structure that would begin with, in his words, the most important move he could make as owner.

General Manager

The GM search, as promised, was thorough and certainly rapid. Harris and ownership partners Rales and Magic led the search, assisted by former Golden State Warriors president and GM Bob Myers and former Minnesota Vikings GM Rick Speilman as advisors. They interviewed about a half-dozen active assistant GMs and narrowed it down to two: Ian Cunningham of the Bears and Adam Peters of the 49ers.

On Jan. 12, 2024, Adam Peters was hired as the new Commanders GM. While young for a GM (44), Peters is highly respected in the league as assistant GM in San Francisco with substantial experience in Denver and New England, both places his teams won Super Bowls.

Peters’ hire was universally applauded by fans, the media, and the league at large, all of whom saw him as a rising star in front office circles. The only shocking aspect of the hire was that Washington had made the obvious right move. That seemed out of character. But as Harris had promised, things were going to be different.

Peters knew that his roster work would be Herculean, potentially Sisyphean given the franchise’s history, but he waited to fill out his personnel staff. When he was hired, he said that his initial focus would be on creating a winning culture, and for that, he knew he and Harris had to hit on Head Coach.

Head Coach and Culture

With new ownership and a respectable GM, the franchise now seemed attractive to head coaching candidates, especially with the #2 overall pick in hand. Harris, Peters, and crew interviewed everyone it seemed: Anthony Weaver, Mike Macdonald, Aaron Glenn, Bobby Slowik, Raheem Morris, Eric Bieniemy (lol), Dan Quinn, and Ben Johnson.

A clear favorite emerged: Ben Johnson, the belle of the ball.

On Jan. 30, 2024, Johnson informed the team that he would be staying in Detroit as OC. Official reporting said that Johnson backed out of an in-person interview while the Commanders were on a flight to Detroit. The team found out through social media first. Johnson changed his mind because he wanted another crack at a Super Bowl in Detroit.

Things got a little ugly. Reporting indicated that Johnson was turned off by the “basketball guys” in Washington (Magic, Myers, and Harris, one assumes). The Commanders countered that Johnson was a horrible interview anyway. Regardless, it wasn’t the right fit, there was bad blood, and it was the first real setback for the new Washington Commanders franchise. Worse yet, many teams had chosen their coaches (the Commanders had to wait on Johnson because the Lions were in the NFCCG) and it looked like Washington would have to settle again.

On Feb. 1, 2024, the Commanders hired Dan Quinn as Head Coach. He was most recently the DC in Dallas, where his teams went 12-5 in each of his three seasons. He had a head coaching record above .500 in Atlanta and coached the Falcons to a Super Bowl appearance. And he was the DC during Seattle’s Legion of Boom era with two consecutive Super Bowl appearances and one win.

None of that mattered to fans, of course. All we saw was Ron Rivera 2.0, and 28-3, of course. “Same old 'Skins,” we lamented.

Then Quinn started talking. Sure, he said all the “right things” in his initial appearances. But he also began to articulate the foundation for a new organizational philosophy and culture. He started talking about his and Peters’ personnel philosophy. The main traits they were looking for in players are aggression, work ethic, and character. Talent was no longer the sole determinant.

Talent is massively important in the NFL, of course. But you have to understand how this organization weaponized talent for decades. Dan Sny…

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