1) Adam Peters stinks

You know what sucks? When your favorite team has a decision maker who doesn't know what he's doing. It took a while, but Giants fans finally came to understand that Joe Schoen was way in over his head. A lot of Cowboys fans have conceded that they're just stuck with Jerry Jones. Somehow, Commanders fans don't yet seem to have realized that Adam Peters absolutely stinks at being an NFL GM.

You can look at Peters' drafts and pretty easily see that there are WAY more misses than hits.

2024

1) QB Jayden Daniels: Daniels had a stellar rookie season, followed by a bad / injury-plagued second season. The Commanders were obviously going to take a quarterback at No. 2 overall in a QB-rich draft, and for while it looked like they chose the right one, but it's now debatable if they should have taken Drake Maye instead.

2) iDL Jer'Zhan Newton: Rotational D-lineman, not a projected starter in 2026.

2) CB Mike Sainristil: Good rookie season, bad follow-up second season. The Commanders could have selected Cooper DeJean, but traded back with Philly and ended up with Sinristil and Ben Sinnott. The Eagles turned that trade into DeJean and Jalyx Hunt.

2) TE Ben Sinnott: 16 career catches for 142 yards and 2 TDs. He's no better than the TE3 on a roster that doesn't really even have a legit TE1.

3) OL Brandon Coleman: LT starter, then replaced by Laremy Tunsil. Began 2025 as the starting LG, but was benched. 

3) WR Luke McCaffrey: 29 career catches for 371 yards and 3 TDs.

5) LB Jordan McGee: OBLB4 and special teamer.

5) CB Dominique Hampton: Not presently on an NFL roster.

7) EDGE Javontae Jean-Baptiste: Had a role to start the 2025 season, torn pec landed him on IR.

2025

1) OT Josh Conerly: Tough rookie season. (More on that momentarily.)

2) CB Trey Amos: Appeared in 10 games as a rookie, started 8. PFF stats: 34 targets, 23 completions (67.6%), 325 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 108.1 opposing QB rating, 8 missed tackles, no forced fumbles, 6 PBUs.

4) WR Jaylin Lane: 16 catches, 225 yards, 0 TD.

6) LB Kain Medrano: 5 tackles.

7) RB Jacory Croskey-Merritt: 175 rushes, 805 yards, 8 TDs as a rookie.

So, you know, overall... not great!

But even worse than the misses in the draft is Peters' weird, non-nonsensical roster building strategies from year to year. 

For example, as we pointed out in detail in our Commanders dumpster fire post last year, Peters assembled the oldest roster in the NFL in the last decade-plus, and it was easily predictable that it would be slow and injury-prone. Some of those old guys — two of whom (Marshon Lattimore and Deebo Samuel) are already gone — were acquired via a bundle of draft picks.

This year, Peters signed much younger and more athletic players, which is an improvement over their asinine approach a year ago. I've peeked around at some sites who graded every teams' free agency, and the Commanders have mostly gotten favorable reviews, mainly because they signed a bunch of players. But that's not the name of the game. The real skill in free agency is finding good value for the players you sign, and if you have to pay a little extra for a star player who is legitimately going to help you win games, then fine.

The Commanders did neither. They added a bunch of players with a trait here or there, but obvious flaws in their games otherwise, and they got them all at bad values. What they did was spend a lot of their available money to marginally improve their roster.

The Commanders will be paying almost $70 million in cash in 2026 to five new role players who come off the field a lot in Odafe Oweh, K'Lavon Chaisson, Tim Settle, Leo Chenal, and Chig Okonkwo. Let's briefly review each signing, focusing on the defensive players.

• EDGE Odafe Oweh: Oweh was a Ravens first-round pick (31st overall) in 2021 after he absolutely crushed the Combine. His career got off to a slow-ish start for a first-round pick, as he had 13 sacks his first three seasons. He turned it on a bit in 2024 (10 sacks), followed by a 7.5-sack season in 2025. 

Oweh's 2025 season was with two teams. He played the first five games of the season with the Ravens, and was then traded to the Chargers for very little:

All of Oweh's 7.5 sacks in 2025 came in his 12 games with the Chargers. He was actually in on 9 sacks. Here they are (he's No. 98):

I count 6 coverage sacks, and the vast majority of the guys he beat are stiffs. Some of them include Julian Hill (TE), Walter Rouse, Dan Moore x2, Esa Pole, Chukwuebuka Godrick, Will Campbell, and Morgan Moses x2. I swear I didn't make up Esa Pole and Chukwuebuka Godrick.

The Ravens and Chargers did not often play Oweh on run downs. His snaps were limited mostly to passing downs.

The Commanders gave him a four-year deal worth $96 million. Oof.

• EDGE K'Lavon Chaisson: Like Oweh, Chaisson was a first-round pick. He went 20th overall to the Jaguars in 2020, and busted, notching just 6 sacks in 4 seasons in Jacksonville. Thereafter, he has bounced around. He signed with the Panthers in 2024, and was cut following their training camp. The Raiders picked him up, and he had 5 sacks that season. In 2025, he signed with the Patriots for $3 million (plus incentives that he reached), and had 7.5 sacks.

He's getting a big bump in pay in 2026, as the Commanders signed him for $11 million.

Also like Oweh, Chaisson is best used as a situational pass rusher. 

• iDL Tim Settle: Settle was drafted by Washington, and then played a pair of seasons each for the Bills and Texans. He had 15 tackles and 1 sack in 12 starts playing on a stacked Texans D-line in 2025. For some reason, the Commanders felt he was worth a three-year deal worth $24 million. Uh, OK.

Settle made $3 million per year on his last deal with the Texans. He did nothing in 2025, and got a $5 million per year raise. This signing reminds me a little of the Commanders' signing of Javon Kinlaw a year ago. Kinlaw got overpaid on a one-year "prove it" deal worth $8 million with the Jets in 2024, he proved nothing, and the Commanders were like, "Hey, why don't you come play here for three years, $45 million?" (Kinlaw had 0 sacks in 2025, by the way.)

• LB Leo Chenal: Chenal is big, fast, and physical, but Steve Spagnuolo didn't often ask Chenal to cover tight ends and running backs in KC, instead allowing him to attack the line of scrimmage and occasionally spy mobile quarterbacks. Over his career, PFF has Chenal down for 51 receptions allowed on 59 targets (86.4 completion percentage against him). That's not good. #Analysis.

I always felt that he was a nice situational player for the right defensive coordinator. But it's yet another guy who is not a complete defender who the Commanders are giving good money to. Three years, $24.75 million for a linebacker who has never played more than 500 snaps in any season.

So, we can all agree that the four above high-priced defensive players are probably not three-down guys? Yes? That's fair? Cool.

Well, the Commanders hired a defensive coordinator this offseason in Daronte Jones, who is a disciple of Brian Flores. The scheme that Flores has developed over time is based on aggressiveness, deception, and unpredictability. It is designed to confuse opposing quarterbacks and punish mistakes. However, for it to work, the scheme requires its players to be highly versatile.

So what did Peters do? He spent a shit ton of money for a bunch of one-dimensional players who can't play "positionless football," as Jones seemingly intends his defense to be.

For the second consecutive offseason, Peters' approach makes no sense whatsoever.

2) Jayden Daniels is fragile

Jayden Daniels was a star player as a rookie in 2024 after the Commanders selected him with the No. 2 overall pick. He led Washington to a 12-5 record, two playoffs wins, and an appearance in the NFC Championship Game. Along the way, he was named the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year. He breathed life into a fanbase that has had little reason for hope or joy over the previous quarter century under repugnant former owner Dan Snyder.

Because of Daniels' early success, there were raised expectations for the Commanders' 2025 season, and a common sentiment was that he "is only going to get better." 

However, as noted in our Commanders "dumpster fire" article last summer, rookie phenom quarterbacks tend to take a step back in their sophomore seasons. Teams around the league scrutinize strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies, and they are better prepared to game plan for these young quarterbacks.

For example, the following is a list of quarterbacks who recently won Rookie of the Year honors, showing their QBR in their rookie seasons, and their QBR in their follow-up seasons. Disclaimer: Yes, QBR is a rudimentary measure of a quarterback, but we'll use it here for snapshot purposes. (Sample size, last 20 seasons).

Three of those quarterbacks had upticks in QBR, and now seven have had downticks. Daniels had a more severe regression than... RG3 😱.

• He was on the Commanders' injury report Week 2 with a right wrist injury.

• He missed a pair of games in Weeks 3 and 4 against the Raiders and Falcons with a knee sprain. He returned to play Week 5 against the Chargers, but remained on the injury report for three weeks.

• In Week 7 against the Cowboys, Daniels injured his hamstring in the third quarter and did not return. He missed the Commanders' Week 8 game against the Chiefs.

• Against the Seahawks Week 9, Daniels suffered a gruesome elbow injury while the Commanders were down 38-7 with 7:29 left in the game. He missed the next four games.

• In Week 14 against the Vikings, Daniels returned to the lineup, and he promptly re-injured his elbow while getting shoved to the ground after throwing an INT.

One of the major questions about Daniels as a prospect coming out of LSU was whether his skinny frame could hold up at the NFL level. He had some minor injuries as a rookie, but mostly held up. In Year 2, it caught up.

Unfortunately for Commanders fans, it's already pretty clear Daniels is a player at high risk to miss games each season.

3) Daniels has no help at the skill positions

How many teams out there have a less inspiring group of starting skill position players than the Commanders?

• RB: Jacory Croskey-Merritt
• WR: Terry McLaurin
• WR: Treylon Burks
• WR Antonio Williams
• TE: Chig Okonkwo

The Commanders are also expected to bring in Brandon Aiyuk, one way or another. In case you're unfamiliar with Aiyuk's story: 

• He tore his ACL/MCL in 2024 and missed the rest of the season.

• In 2025, he went on the PUP list as he continued to rehab his injury, and then basically went AWOL, so much so that Kyle Shanahan said that he hadn't seen Aiyuk "in forever." Aiyuk didn't play in 2025 at all, and the Niners placed him on the reserve/left team list.

• In 2026, Aiyuk posted several Instagram messages directed at the 49ers. My personal fave was when he called them dumb for paying him, lol:

"And another thing. You want to know why they really mad, though? They mad 'cause they stupid. They dumb. They mad that they paid me $50 million in eight months and then voided my guarantees for 2027. And I'm about to be on a new team in 2027. They mad at themselves for real. They acting like they mad at me, but they stupid ass mad at themselves."

That "self-own" has since been deleted, of course.

On a side note, it doesn't matter how badly a player's tenure ended in San Francisco. If they're available, Peters wants them. If Aiyuk does indeed land in Washington, he'll be yet another former Niner to join the team, following guys like Deebo Samuel, Javon Kinlaw, Jake Moody, Charles Omenihu, Ahkello Witherspoon, and Drake Jackson. And we can also probably assume Peters drafted Luke McCaffrey because he's Christian McCaffrey's little brother, right?

OK, back to the guys who are actually on the roster:

• Terry McLaurin has been a really good receiver for years, but he had a bad 2025 season, catching just 38 passes for 582 yards and 3 TDs. He "held in" during training camp while trying to get a new contract done, and missed seven games with injuries. McLaurin turns 31 in September. He's been the best offensive skill player on this team for more than a half decade, which I suppose was fine years ago... But still, at 31? 

• The new starting tight end is Chig Okonkwo, who has a cool name and can run after the catch. I feel like he's a popular player partly because of his name. Like, if his name were Mike Johnson, nobody would notice him.

Unfortunately, he's a guy who requires manufactured touches and he can't block. Okonkwo is more of a replacement for what the Commanders hoped Deebo Samuel would be for them offensively. I do not view him as a legitimate, well-rounded tight end. He's more flash than substance. And, of course, Samuel was a losing player for the Commanders last season, so I would question the wisdom in trying to find someone to replace what he did. Okonkwo signed a three-year deal worth $27 million. 😬

• Jacory Croskey-Merritt had a good rookie season, with 175 carries for 805 yards and 8 TDs, but he had 4 fumbles.

4) There are only two good players on the offensive line

The Commanders' offensive line looks like this:

Tunsil is one of the best LTs in football, and Cosmi is an above average starting RG.

The other three spots are problems.

• At LG, Brandon Coleman and Chris Paul are competing for a starting job. Coleman began the season in 2025 as the starting LG, but was benched and replaced by Paul, who was fine. Paul entered free agency, didn't find lucrative offers on the open market, and returned on a one-year deal worth $3 million. I can't claim to have watched a lot of Chris Paul tape, but it says something when there are so many OL-desperate teams out there and he didn't get any real attention.

• At C, the Commanders cut Tyler Biadasz, who certainly wasn't a world-beater but was a solid enough starting center. The Commanders are gambling bigtime by moving Allegretti to center, full-time. Allegretti wasn't really even a good guard, and now the Commanders are putting more responsibility on his plate.

• And finally, at RT, there's 2025 first-round pick Josh Conerly, who had a tough rookie season. Per PFF, he allowed 8 sacks and 43 pressures, and he committed 13 penalties (7 for holding, 6 false starts), which tied him for fourth most in the NFL. Here are those 8 sacks:

Those 👆 aren't cheapies. Conerly was getting beaten cleanly. My concern with Conerly coming out of college was that he was going to struggle anchoring against power. And certainly he did at times as a rookie. What I did not expect was that he'd get beaten by speed like his feet were in cinderblocks.

5) The run defense still sucks

The Commanders allowed 141.5 rushing yards per game last season, third-worst in the NFL.

So what did Peters do? He paid over $40 million in cash in 2026 to a couple of guys in Odafe Oweh and K'Lavon Chaisson who should really only be playing on obvious passing downs, lol.

The Commanders also did not bring back Bobby Wagner, which is understandable as he became a liability in coverage, but he was at least still a good run defender and he had a deep understanding of what opposing offenses were trying to do.

Meanwhile, Javon Kinlaw stinks, DaRon Payne is on the downside of his career, and fake tough Frankie Luvu is a situational pass rusher who has been masquerading as a three-down linebacker. (It seems the Commanders finally figured out that Luvu isn't that guy, by the way, based on their acquisitions of Leo Chenal in free agency and Sonny Styles in the draft.)

Meanwhile, I don't think I've seen a worse tackling secondary than what the Commanders were last season.

And they basically did nothing to get better.

6) The pass defense still sucks, too

The Commanders' projected starting secondary in 2026 will be Mike Sainristil, Trey Amos, Amik Robertson, Will Harris, and Nick Cross. We'll also throw in Quan Martin, as he'll have some kind of role as well. Here were their coverage stats last season, via PFF:

I legit lol'd at Quan Martin's opposing passer rating while researching this.

7) Run defense bad + pass defense bad + no turnovers = Bad defense

OK, so we established that the Commanders have a bad run defense, and an atrocious pass defense. Maybe they just gambled a lot, and at least produced a lot of turnovers? Nope! They had 10 takeaways on the season, only ahead of the Jets, who infamously had 0 INTs in 2025.

The Commanders' defensive stats:

In other words, they couldn't stop the run, they couldn't stop the pass, and they didn't produce turnovers. When we published the Cowboys' dumpster fire on Monday, I felt pretty comfortable saying that they were the worst defense in the NFL last season. But maybe the Commanders were even worse?

And again, what did they do to get better? Oweh and Chaisson will help if the Commanders can get opposing offenses in long downs and distances, but how often is that going to happen when they can't stop the run?

8) Who are the "great" players on this team?

The spirit of this "dumpster fire" series is to point out the flaws of each team. We don't really mention the good things each team has going for them. In the case of the Commanders, I'm not even sure what there is to mention that's appealing.

Like, how many players on this roster are in the top five at their respective positions?

Laremy Tunsil? Is that it? 

Beyond Tunsil, how many are even top 10?

I don't think anyone can reasonably put Jayden Daniels in there after last season. Maybe Sam Cosmi? Maybe the punter?

A couple months ago, we came up with preseason All-NFC East teams, on offense and on defense. Obviously, that's a subjective exercise, but for what it's worth, here were the total tabulations:

Very simply, this team just doesn't have great players.

9) The Commanders' two new coordinators are big gambles, and the Dan Quinn experience in Atlanta seems to be repeating in Washington

The Commanders hired new offensive and defensive coordinators this offseason. They are David Blough, and as noted above, Daronte Jones.

• New offensive coordinator: David Blough: This offseason, five teams hired offensive coordinators who are 33 years of age or younger. Blough was one of them:

Blough is not only making a major jump from assistant quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator, but he's also doing it on a team that has a defensive-minded head coach. It'll be his offense. He'll be installing a new scheme, calling plays, and trying to revive Daniels, who is coming off his aforementioned nightmare season, who oh by the way was reportedly "disappointed" with the firing of Kliff Kingsbury. That is a lot of responsibility for an untested coach, and a huge gamble by Dan Quinn and the Commanders.

• New defensive coordinator: Daronte Jones: As noted above, the Commanders' defense was atrocious in 2025, so it was no surprise that the team fired former defensive coordinator Joe Whitt, even if the defense is ultimately Quinn's responsibility. Jones has defensive coordinator experience in college (LSU), and he was the defensive backs coach in Minnesota under a great DC in Flores. So, on the surface, this probably feels like an upgrade to Commanders fans.

However, the one year that Jones was a defensive coordinator at LSU, his defense ranked 70th in points allowed, 66th in yards allowed, LSU went 6-7, and Jones was not retained for the 2022 season. And it's not as if he didn't have talent to work with there. There are double-digit players who were on that 2021 LSU defensive roster who are currently collecting paychecks in the NFL.

We should probably also mention Quinn, a player's coach who brought good energy to the team his first season in Washington in 2024. That seems to have worn out, kind of like his great start in Atlanta before it all fell apart.

10) Josh Harris sucks

Josh Harris owns the Philadelphia 76ers, the New Jersey Devils, and the Washington Commanders. For Harris, that's two franchises too many. 

Most Sixers fans would prefer if Harris sold the team. He has only paid a luxury tax twice during his tenure as the Sixers' owner, despite the team having made the playoffs eight times in the last nine seasons. The most recent example of Harris ducking the tax was a trade of Jared McCain to the Oklahoma City Thunder for 50 cents on the dollar at the 2026 trade deadline. McCain quickly became a significant contributor with OKC, who were one game from the NBA Finals, while the Sixers were swept by the Knicks, with one glaring flaw being a lack of depth.

Harris has no discernable plan. He hired Sam Hinkie and co-signed on "The Process," a multi-year tanking initiative. When Adam Silver and the NBA's other owners tired of the Sixers' tanking efforts, Harris weakly succumbed to pressure to replace Hinkie with the Colangelos. After the Colangelos failed, Harris went back to the analytical nerd route when he hired Daryl Morey, and when Morey was fired a month ago Harris went back to #BasketballGuys. It's reactive, non-innovative management.

He doesn't spend on the Sixers, and he doesn't seem to care, at least relative to his earlier years as the team's owner.

OK, so, this is an article about the Commanders. Why are we talking about the Sixers? Well, while partner David Blitzer is known to handle the day-to-day issues, Harris is said to focus on the biggest thing and put all of his enthusiasm behind that. That thing right now is the Commanders' efforts to build a new stadium. It sure as hell isn't the Sixers, whose fans have begun chanting "Sell the team" during games. They're not fun right now. The new football stadium is.

And really that's the issue with one person or group owning three teams, beyond just the "ick" factor of rival sports cities having this weird, incestuous ownership link. One team is almost always going to get more attention than the others, and the teams that are being put on the back burner are going to have irate fans. Hell, even if an owner could successfully divide their energy equally, they are still going to be spread too thin.

For now, the Commanders have his attention. But at some point, efforts to build the new stadium will settle down, and Harris will be distracted by the next thing that grabs his attention, especially if the Commanders suck again in 2026 and beyond, which they likely will.

Oh, and he's in the Epstein files (nothing salacious yet, really), and he had a weird handshake with Joe Buck that made Troy Aikman laugh.