Hogs Haven
The Commanders travel to Philly for the NFC championship game in which the winner advances to the Super Bowl
I want to continue the series of game previews that we began a few weeks ago.
Since the start of the ‘24 season, I’ve published a game recap within five minutes of the end of each game. Each of the more recent of these recap articles has started with a “precap”, providing a bit of pre-game context. The rest of the recap article includes a detailed summary of each quarter, along with halftime and full-game team statistics and partial box scores.
Today, this “precap” is being published on Sunday morning, with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarter summaries to be published as each quarter ends in the late afternoon, with the idea that anyone who is unable to watch or listen to the game live can at least read the quarterly summaries as they are posted to get a sense of how the game is going.
The full recap, with every section included, will be published as usual within minutes of the end of the game.
What follows here, then, is not really an ‘article’, and it likely doesn’t cover anything unfamiliar to you; it’s just the introduction to the full game recap, intended to establish the ‘context’ for the game before kickoff. It will be included in the published recap of today’s game.
Last week, the Commanders buried the top-scoring offense in the NFL in the divisional round playoff in Detroit, with the Jayden Daniels-led offense unaffected by deafening crowd noise or the ‘bigness’ of the moment.
Today, Washington goes to another tough environment, but one with which they are intimately familiar, as the Commanders travel to Philadelphia to face the league’s 2nd-ranked scoring defense and the NFL’s 2024 rushing champion, Saquon Barkley.
Like last week, the Commanders will be relying on their rookie phenom quarterback, Jayden Daniels, who threw 5 touchdown passes and led Washington to score 36-points in a victory over the Eagles just five weeks ago.
While the Eagles are the betting favorites today, that is most probably because NFL fans still haven’t figured out what this team in Washington is all about in 2024.
This is a new team, but not a young team. In fact, the Commanders roster is studded with super bowl champions like LB Bobby Wagner, LG Nick Allegretti, and the guy who caught a key TD pass in Philly’s only super bowl win, TE Zach Ertz. In putting together Washington’s 14-5 roster, GM Adam Peters clearly wanted to have key veteran leaders in every position group. Some, like S Jeremy Chinn, C Tyler Biadasz, RB Austin Ekeler, and QB Marcus Mariota, were added in free agency. Others, like WR Terry McLauri, DT Jonathan Allen, and All Pro punter Tress Way had been here a while and lived through the travails of Washington football over a number of years.
Head coach Dan Quinn never worried for a moment about that history. He...
