Editor’s note: After posting some insightful stories in The Feed, Hogs Haven’s ShogunofHarlem93 has put together his first story for the main site. He breaks down why this Commanders season is so important for Jayden Daniels, new coordinators David Blough and Daronte Jones (and those that hired them).
Every season, I try to set realistic expectations for this Washington Commanders team. In 2024, my only hope was that Jayden Daniels would prove to be Washington’s franchise quarterback. And boy, did
he deliver, leading the Commanders all the way to the NFC championship game. After an offseason of adding talent to a barebones roster, I had incredibly high hopes for 2025. Instead, the season was completely gutted. Injuries, poor decision making and uncompetitive games dragged Washington down to a massive low point, erasing a decade’s worth of renewed optimism. It made last year incredibly hard to stomach.
Head coach Dan Quinn saw the writing on the wall and let both of his coordinators go. While most head coaches in his position would hire experienced retreads to save their own skins, Quinn took a massive gamble. He brought in two newcomers: Daronte Jones and David Blough. We have absolutely no clue how this will translate when the games actually matter. The stakes are incredibly high, and every single storyline this year feels like an unprecedented gamble.
Will the real Jayden Daniels stand up
Jayden Daniels entered the league with a clear mission statement: prove he was the best quarterback in the 2024 NFL draft class. He shattered records and dragged this franchise somewhere it hadn’t been in over 30 years — the NFC Championship Game. Even though they were ultimately handled by a dominant Philly team that went on to win the Super Bowl, the foundation seemed set. Yet, despite the optimism surrounding his progression, the “sophomore slump” narrative still loomed. I blindly dismissed it at the time, firmly believing a slump was impossible because his rookie year was a tale of two entirely different Jaydens.
Early in 2024, then-offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury relied heavily on first-down screens, RPOs and vertical concepts. At one point, Washington ran an absurd 35% of their first-down plays as screens to protect a highly suspect offensive line. The faster Jayden got the ball out, the better.
But in Week 11, the Eagles completely exposed the game plan. Philly squeezed the offense’s lateral spacing and dared Daniels to attack the intermediate middle of the field. While most rookie quarterbacks could’ve hit a wall and coordinators could’ve waited until the offseason to adjust, Washington adapted immediately. Over the following weeks, they challenged the toughest part of the field — the 6-to-10-yard intermediate middle. Their screen frequency plummeted from 35% to 21%, the vertical deep shots were scaled back and they completely rebuilt the offense on the fly without losing momentum. It is impossible to overstate how impressive it was for a rookie to handle that mental adjustment.
That mid-season pivot is exactly what made 2025 so incredibly frustrating. We can talk about the injuries and the lackluster supporting cast — points that have been discussed ad nauseam — but when he was on the field, the performance simply wasn’t there. His completion percentage tanked by an alarming 9%. There were costly underthrows, balls skipped into the dirt and while the playmakers around him offered little help, the regression from his rookie brilliance was surreal.
To put a 9% completion percentage drop into historical perspective, look at how similar drop-offs impacted other notable quarterbacks:
Daniels faces an uphill battle, but history shows a recovery isn’t impossible — especially when you look at guys like Joe Burrow or Kurt Warner who weathered the storm. What makes his current situation so fascinating is that he is learning a brand-new offense simultaneously. Transitioning to a true pro-style system after years in spread and RPO-heavy schemes is a massive hurdle, but the buzz out of training camp has been incredibly positive regarding his mental processing. He took over 500 snaps in camp, an intensive workload designed to fast-track his comfort level. Whether that practice volume translates to wins remains to be seen, but the foundation is there.
If JD5 can bounce back and replicate or surpass his rookie efficiency, watch out: he’ll vault right back into the top-10, if not the top-5 quarterback conversation.
Defense? DEFENSE!!
I can join the crowd and rag on former defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. all day, but let’s be real — he wasn’t the sole reason this defense was completely awful. When your best pass rusher is a nearly 40-year-old Von Miller, you have fundamental problems. The personnel was a total mess.
An old, slow defense will get absolutely ripped to shreds in today’s NFL. Even when Quinn took over the defensive play-calling duties they were still getting dismantled, proving a massive overhaul was needed. To Quinn’s credit, he recognized his own limitations, stepped back and brought in a defensive coordinator whose system is a complete departure from the scheme Quinn ran his entire career.
Enter Daronte Jones. Outside of his brief stint calling plays at LSU, he’s a first-time NFL coordinator tasked with bringing a chaotic, Brian Flores-style scheme to Washington. To give him a fighting chance, management went all-in, injecting $165.8 million into that side of the ball — the sixth-highest defensive spend in the league. They completely reshaped the roster by signing Odafe Oweh, Tim Settle, K’Lavon Chaisson, Nick Cross and Leo Chenal, while using the draft to secure young talent like Sonny Styles and Joshua Josephs.
With up to eight new starters, this unit simply has to outperform the disasters of the past three defensive seasons. Everything will live and die with the defensive line. For the last two years, this team was hellbent on blitzing heavy on first and second down to force third-and-long situations. The fatal flaw? They kept giving up first downs anyway, not to mention working with a completely awful run defense. The new additions must restore order in the trenches and finally unlock the underperforming duo of Daron Payne and Javon Kinlaw. With a brand-new scheme and a completely reconstructed starting lineup, this defense is one of the biggest mysteries in the league.
New-ish Sheriff in Town
When Kliff Kingsbury was initially hired, I wasn’t a fan. I believed his offense was inherently predictable and destined to hit a proverbial wall every season. While his explosive 2024 campaign proved me wrong, he unfortunately reverted to those same stubborn play-calling habits in 2025. His firing wasn’t a shock, though I did assume he’d get one final year to redeem himself. Instead, Quinn opted for a total philosophical shift. Despite the established offensive minds available on the market, Quinn took a massive gamble by appointing rookie offensive coordinator David Blough. As a former journeyman quarterback, Blough played under the likes of Kingsbury, Kevin O’Connell and Ben Johnson, giving him a fascinating blend of modern offensive influences.
Still, Blough remains the team’s biggest wild card. He is being thrown directly into the fire with zero prior experience building a weekly NFL game plan.
Making matters even more precarious, Washington hired Darnell Stapleton, a coach with no previous experience leading an NFL offensive line room. Given this infrastructure, the offense is bound to experience severe growing pains as the new staff figures out how to establish a baseline rhythm.
Training camp reports have been a mixed bag, particularly regarding the line’s consistency. However, the upgraded weaponry around Jayden Daniels provides genuine reason for optimism. Stefon Diggs and Chig Okonkwo completely reshape the passing game alongside Terry McLaurin, while dynamic pieces like Antonio Williams offer an intriguing mismatch chess piece. The ceiling for this group is incredibly exciting, but the season ultimately hinges on whether this unproven coaching staff can get the offensive line to perform consistently.
I am not, and will not, put a concrete record prediction on file, but this season is undeniably pivotal for the Adam Peters and Dan Quinn regime. Both of their seats are getting hot. They need a playoff appearance or heads will roll once again. For Daniels, this season has to serve as a definitive reminder of the elite player he proved he could be during his historic rookie campaign. If everything clicks, this roster absolutely has the talent to be a playoff team. But if the cracks begin to show again, fans will be forced to endure yet another painful reboot in a never-ending cycle of heartbreak. To borrow a phrase from De La Soul, the stakes are indeed high.
