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Commanders sign P Mitch Wishnowsky to practice squad
Wishnowsky, a fourth-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers in 2019, has appeared in 92 games. He has made 310 punts covering 14,142 yards with 1,042 return yards allowed. He has just 20 touchbacks in his professional career with 138 punts inside the 20-yard line.
The Athletic (paywall)
Week 2 NFL Power Rankings
2. Green Bay Packers (1-0)
Last week: 3
Sunday: Beat Lions 27-13
First impression: The defense is impressive
Parsons had barely been with the Packers a week and already made a massive impact as the defense flummoxed the Lions. Once
Parsons is comfortable, look out. As Rashan Gary told our Mike Silver, “Once he and I figure some stuff out about how each of us likes to rush, watch out. It’s gonna get spooky for sure.”
Up next: vs. Commanders, Thursday, 8:15 p.m. ET
5. Washington Commanders (1-0)
Last week: 7
Sunday: Beat Giants 21-6
First impression: Is the defense better, or were they just playing the Giants?
The Commanders knew they needed to get better defensively this offseason. Mission accomplished in Week 1, holding New York to just 3.7 yards per play. But was that legit, or just the benefit of playing Russell Wilson and the Giants’ mediocre offense? We’ll find out more about this team on Thursday.
Up next: at Packers, Thursday, 8:15 p.m. ET
Washington Post (paywall)
Green Bay is still getting to know Micah Parsons. Washington can’t say the same.
The former Cowboys star has dominated the Commanders in his career. On Thursday night at Lambeau Field, he’ll try to do it again.
Quinn knows Parsons better than most. He coached the two-time all-pro edge rusher for three seasons as the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator, then game-planned against him last year for Washington. Parsons described Quinn to reporters Tuesday as “my guy” — someone akin to a father figure or uncle who has checked in with him regularly about life outside of football. Quinn said Parsons’s talent “brings out the mad scientist in you” as a coach because he is such a quick learner and adept at multiple roles.
Asked Tuesday about their time together — and whether Parsons’s impact on a game is inevitable — Quinn paused.
“Are you asking: What would I do if I was coaching him?” he said. “Yeah, I’d sit him this week.”
In his eight games against Washington, Parsons’s Cowboys won six times, and he racked up 32 tackles, 15 quarterback hits and 10.5 sacks — including multi-sack games in both meetings last year. He has more sacks against Washington than against any other team.
Commanders.com
Practice notes | Commanders shift focus to Micah Parsons, Packers’ defense
The Commanders’ offensive line isn’t making the matchup with Parsons more than it needs to be. They know he’s a rare athlete who has the ability to disrupt a game, but they want to focus on themselves and how they can work to protect Daniels from the entire Packers’ defensive front, rather than one player.
“Obviously, there’s a ton of respect for a guy like that,” guard Brandon Coleman in the locker room after Tuesday’s practice. “But you can’t overestimate or underestimate. You gotta play your game.”
Bullock’s Film Room (subscription)
Commanders Film Review: Deebo Samuel Package
On Sunday, we got our first real look at how Kingsbury intends to use Samuel and the impact he can have on this offense. Samuel led the team with seven catches for 77 yards as a receiver and also had a 19-yard touchdown run, meaning in total he had eight touches for 96 yards and a touchdown.
It was a strong debut performance for Samuel in a Commanders uniform, but the numbers alone don’t tell the story of what he brings to the offense. Samuel is a unique weapon in that he does a lot of his best work after the catch. He’s obviously a great athlete, but he’s also incredibly physical, enabling him to break tackles and maximize yards gained every time he touches the ball. As such, Samuel is the type of player that a creative coordinator like Kliff Kingsbury finds way to manufacture touches for him.
Manufactured touches
What I mean by manufactured touches is that Kingsbury designs plays in such a way that produce simple ways to get the ball out of the quarterback’s hands quickly and into Samuel’s hands while getting him into space to let him get to work after the catch. A prime example would be things like wide receiver screens.
The Athletic (paywall)
Commanders made their plans for Deebo Samuel clear in Week 1 win: Do everything
Deebo Samuel traveled 1,171 yards in his debut with the Washington Commanders. He played 57 total snaps, had 10 touches that included two kickoff returns, and essentially played three positions while serving myriad roles, from window dressing and chip blocker to deep target and pylon-diving rusher.
If the Commanders’ season-opening win over the New York Giants is a guide, then their “fit” for Samuel is pretty basic: Be everywhere, do everything.
Another way of manufacturing touches in space for Samuel is to use him as a checkdown option in the flat. Receivers in the flat are often left in space as defenders sink back to protect deeper routes down the field, knowing they can quickly rally to the ball underneath. However, Deebo Samuel is a known commodity in the NFL now and thus it’s harder to just leave him unaccounted for in the flat.
Decoy
That play leads nicely into the next section on Samuel’s use. Here we’ve seen how Kingsbury manufactured some touches for him, which is smart to do because he’s proven to the NFL how much of a threat he can be with the ball in his hands after the catch. But the next layer to Samuel’s usage within the offense is to play off that threat and use him as a decoy to open up other parts of the offense. We saw it a bit on that play, where Samuel was more of a decoy to try and open up a shot to Ekeler, but Kingsbury had a lot more in mind for Samuel.
The most obvious decoy option is to use Samuel on fake jet sweeps. This has become the norm now in the NFL, but those jet sweep threats become a little more meaningful when it’s Deebo Samuel going in motion.
ESPN
Jayden Daniels, Brian Burns riff on in-game talking
“He talks a lot,” Burns said on Sunday. “Cool dude but he talks a lot. He just be talking, ‘Hey buddy.’ I don’t want to talk to you. I’ll talk to you after the game, bro.”
Daniels disputed some of what Burns said.
“I just go out there and have fun,” he said Tuesday. “I didn’t say what was said, ‘Hey buddy how you doing?’ That doesn’t sound like me, but I do like to have fun on the field.”
Daniels had plenty of fun Sunday, throwing for 233 yards and a touchdown while running for another 68 yards. He’s a primary reason Washington (1-0), which plays at Green Bay on Thursday, is viewed as an NFC contender. Daniels was also the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year last season and has been mentioned as a potential league MVP this year.
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Big Blue View
Giants’ LB Micah McFadden to miss ‘significant time’, per report
The New York Giants will be without fourth-year linebacker Micah McFadden for a significant part of the season with a foot injury.
The news comes courtesy of a report from Mike Garafolo and Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.
This is obviously a blow to the Giants’ defense. McFadden emerged as a good starting linebacker after a breakout campaign in 2024. He played well in limited action in the preseason and was active before suffering the injury early in week 1. McFadden is an athletic linebacker who offers upside in space, coming downhill to defend the run, and as a blitzer.
The good news is that McFadden’s injury doesn’t seem to be a season-ending one. As Garafolo and Rapoport report, X-rays were negative for a break, so surgery may not be necessary.
Regardless, it’s also a blow to McFadden, who is in the last year of his rookie contract.
Big Blue View
Same old Giants? They don’t have much time to prove otherwise
Just one week in, the season already feels like it might be on the brink of disaster
All of that optimism is a thing of the past. Vanished. A memory. A summer fling that was never meant to last.
The Giants have 16 more of these beatings — err, games — on their schedule. Much has been made by the media — the Giants themselves have turned a deaf ear to questions about it — of the Giants starting 0-2 or worse in six of their last eight seasons.
Daboll has only been part of four of those. Dexter Lawrence and Darius Slayton, the longest-tenured Giants, have been around for six of those. Few players have been part of more than one or two of those.
After six years with the Giants, Slayton was a free agent in the offseason. He looked tired and defeated at the end of last season, ready for a fresh start in a new place. In the end, he chose to come back and try to get it right with the only team he has ever played for.
After Sunday’s game Slayton was somber.
“Definitely wasn’t how we wanted to start the year, for sure,” he said.
Blogging the Boys
Cowboys survey Week 2: Feeling any better after the Eagles game?
[T]he team went to Philadelphia and almost pulled off the upset. If not for some very uncharacteristic drops by CeeDee Lamb, Dallas might have been sitting at 1-0 with an NFC East win over the reigning Super Bowl champions. Instead, they are 0-1 and desperately need to beat the New York Giants to avoid a major hole early in the season.
[Note from BiB: The Cowboys held the lead in this game that they “almost” won for just 5min & 54sec — in the 1st quarter.]
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NFL.com
Packers WR Christian Watson signing one-year, $13.25M extension through 2026 season
Watson is signing a one-year, $13.25 million extension with the Packers, NFL Network Insider Tom Pelissero reported on Tuesday evening.
Watson is currently on the physically unable to perform list whilst on the mend from a torn ACL suffered last season. However, the 2022 second-round pick is amid the final year of his rookie contract, so Green Bay had a decision to make regarding the explosive yet oft-injured talent.
Now, Watson is on the books for the Packers through 2026.
Watsons suffered a torn ACL in a Week 18 loss to the Chicago Bears during the 2024 season.
NFL.com
Lions’ Dan Campbell on facing Bears, Ben Johnson after loss: ‘We’re going to win this game. We have to’
The Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears are each coming off different, but equally disappointing losses to open the season. Detroit got dismantled by the Green Bay Packers, while the Bears collapsed in depressing fashion at home versus the Minnesota Vikings.
The bad losses to open the season put even more pressure on each club for Sunday’s showdown in Detroit, as the Lions welcome former offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to town as a foe.
“Ben’s my friend. He’s always going to be my friend. But nothing about that’s going to change,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said this week, via the Detroit News. “We’re going in, getting ready to play Chicago. We’re going to win this game. We have to.”
Both clubs enter the week with that same mentality.
Neither the Lions nor Johnson looked great without one another in Week 1.
The Lions had a top-five total and scoring offense each season with Johnson as OC. In Week 1, the club averaged 3.8 yards per play in Green Bay, the fewest yards/play for Detroit in a game since Week 6, 2021, versus Cincinnati (3.7), prior to Johnson’s tenure as play-caller
Meanwhile, Chicago flopped at home, allowing an 11-point fourth-quarter lead to slip away in Johnson’s first game in the big chair. The coach had some game-management issues, starting with a wasted challenge and ending with a kickoff that failed to keep the Vikings from burning the two-minute warning. The first-time head coach found out there is more than just calling a good game when you’ve got the head gig.
Pro Football Talk
Ben Johnson takes blame for Bears not kicking out of bounds late in game
If the Bears had kicked out of bounds, they would have saved about 47 seconds and had the ball back with about 56 seconds left: The kickoff return took seven seconds off the clock, and not having the two-minute warning allowed the Vikings to take about another 40 seconds off the clock.
The only advantage to kicking the ball out of the end zone rather than out of bounds is five yards: A touchback is spotted on the 35-yard line, while a kickoff out of bounds is spotted on the 40 yard line. At that point in the game, five yards didn’t matter nearly as much as the precious time the Bears wasted.
ESPN
Source: Jets cutting Xavier Gipson after kickoff fumble
The New York Jets are cutting Xavier Gipson after his costly kick return fumble during Sunday’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, a source confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday.
After the Steelers had cut the Jets’ lead to 26-24 in the fourth quarter, Kenneth Gainwell forced Gipson to fumble the kickoff — the game’s first turnover. Aaron Rodgers took advantage two plays later, throwing an 18-yard touchdown pass to Calvin Austin III to put the Steelers up 31-26 with 14:07 left.
The Steelers ultimately won 34-32 on a 60-yard Chris Boswell field goal.
“Man, we can’t have turnovers,” Jets coach Aaron Glenn said Sunday. “We can’t do it. We have to be a more disciplined team. … That’s something that will be addressed. You will not be on the field with this team if you’re going to cause us to lose games.”
Discussion topics
The Athletic (paywall)
The Eagles spend money unlike any other team. Are they the new NFL model, or an anomaly?
Their contracts endure, accounting for most of the $81.4 million in “dead money” against the Eagles’ cap this season. That’s nearly 30 percent of the $279.2 million cap allotment for each team in 2025, third-most in the league and five times the total 2025 dead money for the defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs, who face the Eagles in Week 2.
Some in the NFL consider the Eagles a “house of cards” that is perpetually on the verge of collapse, but has, to the team’s credit, thrived through a combination of outstanding evaluation, solid drafting, aggressive roster management, good injury luck and, critically, owner Jeffrey Lurie’s willingness to spend.
It’s this last part, the spending component, that invites a broader discussion on best practices. Should more teams push the way the forward-spending Eagles push? Led by Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman, the Eagles have consistently, more than other teams, spent more cash in the short term at the expense of future salary-cap space, getting what Roseman has called an “interest-free loan” as growing league revenues fuel massive increases in the cap each year.
The broader league is trending this way, but the Eagles have been way out front for more than a decade.
“Most teams are run by personnel guys, not finance people,” one team exec said. “The finance guys understand time value of money. A dollar today is less expensive than a dollar down the road when you are spending in advance.”
Roseman, whose first full-time NFL job was in the financial realm as counsel to the Eagles’ salary-cap staff, has compared Philadelphia’s tactics to financing a home when interest rates are low. The strategy keeps more resources available in the short term than if the buyer had paid for the home in full up front.
That is how the top 10 average annual salaries on the Eagles’ roster are worth a combined $240.6 million in annual average, while counting just $112.4 million against their cap in 2025. The gap between those numbers ($128.2 million) is the largest in the league and more than double the league average.
I created a Weighted Wins metric measuring combined success in the regular season and playoffs. Weighted Wins gives teams one point for each regular-season win; two for a wild-card win or first-round playoff bye; three points for a divisional-round win; four for a conference championship; and five for a Super Bowl win.
The top 10 teams in cash-over-cap spending from 2020-24 averaged 57.4 weighted wins. The bottom 10 teams in cash-over-cap spending averaged 39.0 weighted wins. The gap closes when we compare the top 16 spending teams (50.2 weighted wins) to the bottom 16 spending teams (46.3).
Over three- or five-year windows, there is frequently correlation between spending and winning. This makes sense because teams typically push harder when they think they are close to contending. Also, better players tend to cost more. San Francisco, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Tampa Bay (with Brady, but less so since) and Baltimore (since paying Lamar Jackson) have spent more over the past five years while succeeding. Some other high-priced rosters (Cleveland, New Orleans) have flopped, while others (Miami) have disappointed.
There is generally less correlation between spending and winning in any single year or over long periods of time, as spending tends to even out (and teams roll unused cap room into future years). The Eagles, for example, rank 20th in cash over cap rate (3.6 percent, as of Tuesday) in 2025, after moving on from five Super Bowl starters this offseason.
“It gets skewed because teams who suck dump a bunch of money in free agency,” a team exec said. “The NFL is different from every league because the best players never get to free agency, so that is where the spending does not equal winning.”
The league’s requirement that teams place a portion of fully guaranteed salaries and bonuses into escrow is another big dividing line. For example, the Browns’ decision to sign Deshaun Watson to a fully guaranteed $230 million deal required owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to set aside roughly $185 million in escrow. Not even Philly has gone to that extreme, but the Eagles’ willingness to fund guarantees is notable. Many family-owned teams with varying degrees of success over the years (the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals, Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals, for example) are less willing to set aside these big checks.
“The Eagles don’t care about funding money,” a cap manager from another team said. “That is a big deal versus a Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, whose structures are different based on funding alone. Philly does not care. Howie has given big deals to quarterbacks, doesn’t work out, cut bait and move on.”
Broadcast ratings
Front Office Sports
Networks Set NFL Ratings Records As New Measurements Begin
The impact of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel audience measurement system is now fully coming forth, as CBS Sports reported record-setting viewership for the NFL’s Week 1.
CBS Sports…said late Tuesday that it averaged 20.38 million viewers for its overall coverage of the NFL’s opening Sunday, and 23.89 million viewers in particular for its national-level broadcast of Lions-Packers in the late-afternoon window. Both are the highest Week 1 measures since CBS regained NFL rights in 1998, and the overall figure is a 15% lift from last year.
Fox Sports, meanwhile, had a similarly robust total from its singleheader, early-afternoon Sunday coverage of Week 1.
The network said it averaged 17.9 million viewers for that window, led in part by a Giants-Commanders game, representing the best Week 1 NFL singleheader figure on any network since 2015.
NBC then said that its Sunday Night Football coverage of the Ravens-Bills thriller averaged 24.7 million viewers, its best Sunday opener in three years.
