Hogs Haven
Sitting at 3-8, the Washington Commanders are having the kind of season that very few people expected following their impressive playoff success in January when the team beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Detroit Lions on the road to reaching the NFC Championship game.
The magic of Jayden Daniels’ rookie season seemed to suffuse everything in the organization in 2024. By contrast, 2025 has been a year of frustration, injury and disappointment. At this point, qualification for the playoffs seems out of reach, to say nothing of the likelihood of playoff success.
That caused us, in this week’s Hogs Haven survey of readers, to turn to questions about the approach to the final 6 games of the regular season.
In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked two questions:
The first asked readers to say whether the priority this season should be on winning as many games as possible; enhancing draft position; or developing young and returning players.
The second asked whether, once he is cleared to play by doctors, Jayden Daniels should return to the field, or whether he should be be protected from potential further injury in this ‘lost’ season.
Readers who answered the survey questions offered two majority opinions; that is, that the coaching staff should focus on developing young and returning players (55%) and that Jayden should play when he’s healthy (61%).
In a sense, the attitude towards JD5 returning to play seems, for many people, to be built on the same logic as the desire to develop other players on the team. Specifically, a number of commenters mentioned that Jayden, in the games he has played this season, hasn’t looked as sharp or decisive as he did a year ago. The feeling is that the 2nd-year quarterback needs more real game experience in 2025 to restore his sharpness and build confidence heading into the offseason.
While both questions resulted in majority opinions, they were far from unanimous. I was frankly a bit surprised that nearly 4 of 10 respondents to the survey would prefer coaches to sit Jayden Daniels even if he’s medically cleared, apparently in hopes that the extra rest and recovery time will ensure that he enters the 2026 season fully healthy. Also, it seems significant to highlight that nearly 1 in 3 respondents prefers to prioritize draft position above winning or development of the current roster.
Underlying all of this, judging by the comments added to the original survey article, is a growing distrust or dissatisfaction with the coaching staff. Some fans who either expect or hope for turnover among Washington’s coaches appear to feel that better draft position and a healthy franchise quarterback should be prioritized over development driven by coaches who, anyway, may not be here next year with those players.
Coaches and GMs of perhaps a dozen NFL teams need to walk a similar tightrope in what remains of the NFL regular season. Once playoffs are off the table — either mathematically or practically — the longer term benefit to...
