Hogs Haven
Commanders fan confidence
I’ll be honest, following the brutal 0-31 shutout loss to the Vikings this past Sunday, I expected fan confidence expressed in our Reacts survey of Hogs Haven readers to collapse to single digits.
It didn’t.
Instead, roughly 1 in 3 respondents to our survey continue to express confidence in the direction of the team.
This isn’t really anything new, though. The three lowest points in the year for fan confidence came in Weeks 8, 11 and 15 following bad losses to Kansas City, Detroit and Minnesota.
However ugly the on-field losses were in those low points, though, roughly 30% of fans continued to express confidence.
I think this tells us that about 30% of fans consider the question about the direction of the team to depend primarily on the long-term. Getting to ‘yes’ for those survey respondents involves a belief in the most foundational elements of a team — owner, GM and quarterback. It may also indicate continuing belief in the coaching staff, which, oddly, is probably the least secure of the 4 pillars of an NFL franchise.
The roughly 70% of fans who have voted ‘no’ in those three ‘valleys’ of Weeks 8, 11 & 15 are clearly more focused on the on-field results and more prone to change their confidence in the direction of the team based on team performance and competitiveness and/or wins & losses. For those fans, the current W-L record or competitiveness in the most recent game(s) is much more meaningful to the question of the team’s direction than what might happen in the coming offseason; in the 2026 season; or what lies beyond.
The Commanders, the Giants, and the 2026 Draft
A look ahead to the 2026 offseason is embedded in this week’s second survey question, which asked:
Which team, the Commanders or the Giants, ends up with the selection closest to the #1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft?
With the two teams playing one another this week, the question invites fans to play ‘what if’, not only with the outcome of this week’s game, but with the three subsequent games to finish out the 2025 season.
As things currently stand, for Washington to have the earlier pick in the draft, New York and Washington have to finish with the same record, or Washington has to finish with fewer wins.
This is because, unlike calculating playoff seeding, the key tie-breaker for draft position is not head-to-head competition or conference W-L records; instead, it is strength of schedule (SoS).
Strength of schedule is based on the W-L records of all 17 opponents in the regular season.
Currently, the Giants have an SoS of .532 while the Commanders have an SoS of .511. In the event of identical records, the team with the lower SoS will have the earlier draft pick.
You can see this rule in action in the current list of the top-10 draft picks from Tankathon.
You can see that, while three teams have 2-11 records, the Giants...
