Hogs Haven
Even more insights into how the Commanders’ new front office thinks about the draft
Last year, newly hired GM, Adam Peters, took the Commanders’ fanbase by surprise with what struck many as an unorthodox approach in his first draft in Washington. While everyone expected what was coming at the second overall pick – if not the player, the position – that wasn’t the case after the draft got underway.
The Commanders opened the second round by picking a player at the most stacked position on the roster, then traded back with the division rival Eagles to pick an undersized slot corner followed by a TE that media pundits had projected to the fourth round. And the biggest surprise of all was having to wait until the third round, in a stacked offensive tackle class, for the team to pick a player to address what was widely regarded as the most glaring roster hole.
What became apparent, when Peters and Assistant GM Lance Newmark explained the teams choices was that the Commanders’ first draft under new management was really a continuation of the approach that Peters and John Lynch had used to build one of the league’s most competitive rosters in San Francisco. After years of wandering the wilderness, the Commanders were finally brought into line with the practices of some of the best drafting teams, from which Peters drew his staff, including the Lions and Ravens.
The abrupt change came as a surprise to fans who had become accustomed to seeing the team telegraph its picks weeks in advance and reach for players at positions of need, while letting elite talents fall to teams picking later, like the Lions and Ravens.
Peters’ philosophy views the draft as the primary mechanism to raise the team’s talent level. He draws on diverse skills of a multidisciplinary team to construct a draft board of players who fit the coaching staff’s requirements and the new team culture. Once the draft is underway, he sticks to the board, picking the best available players and making trades to maximize the return from the team’s draft capital.
The 2025 draft was more of the same, with a few new wrinkles and surprises. In the first part of this two-part recap we saw Peters once again pass up players at the position everyone expected to instead select the highest rated players on his board who had aced the scouting process with strong support from the coaching staff and analytics department. This time around he passed up trade offers in the first and second rounds because the top rated players on his board were too highly rated to pass up.
While Peters’ selections in the draft prioritized long term impact over immediate gains, more or less the opposite was true of his use of draft capital to trade for veteran players before the draft.
In the second part, we pick up where the first one left off, with a look at another of Peters’ trades, then revisit his draft...
