From four wins to the NFC Championship Game was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent NFL history. But the Washington Commanders have suffered a hard reset since a thrilling rookie season for Jayden Daniels.
After a disastrous 2025 campaign, the team had to hope for a bounce back this season. But the summer has been far from perfect, leaving a few analysts worried about how the team will fare this year.
Commanders Aren’t a Guaranteed Success
Last season, with Daniels playing in just seven games, the team quickly fell apart, with an eight-game losing streak effectively ending their year before it even truly began. As a result, they finished with a 5-12 record.
The defense, which ranked second-to-last on PFN’s Defense Impact Metric, and the offensive line, which ranked 19th on PFN’s Team Offensive Line Impact Metrics, were among the biggest problems for the Commanders last season.
Robert Mays, appearing on “The Athletic Football Show,” is incredibly worried that the team hasn’t done enough to address those problems. As a result, the fear that this season could completely go to waste is starting to mount as Week 1 draws nearer.
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“What’s keeping me up at night, part of this is, this team just feels to me like it could be a ghost ship,” Mays said. “Like, we’re just sitting there in Week 7, and we’re just riding this thing out over the course of the year; it’s like, we’re done. We’ve played out this string; they just don’t have it.”
Going a step further, he believed that could lead to a complete teardown of the roster: “The misdrafts and the fact that there’s just not that underlying level of talent on this team, where we are just in a place where it’s time to hit the reset button. That’s what’s keeping me up at night. That doesn’t feel like a remote, far-off possibility.”
Could the Washington Commanders hit the reset button after the 2026 NFL season?@robertmays and Derrik discuss what’s keeping them up at night about the Commanders. pic.twitter.com/UTHwvEXGn9
— The Athletic Football Show (@TA_FootballShow) August 28, 2026
For a team that looked like a potential perennial contender in the NFC, the turnaround for the Commanders has been bizarre.
Figuring out a quarterback is typically the hardest part of the process for any franchise in the NFL. After what many considered the greatest rookie quarterback season of all-time, it looked like Washington had already found its guy in Daniels. Somehow, it still hasn’t been enough for the team, where fans are actively considering what the next phase of the franchise can be.
