There’s no doubt that, viewed through the constraints of just the 2025 season, the Commanders are headed in the wrong direction. The team is losing; injuries have piled up; the coaches don’t appear to
have answers. The team appears to be flailing in its search for solutions to the many current problems.
But NFL teams are more than just beasts of the moment. They have lives that extend from one year to the next and across decades. That means that short term highs like the 2024 season, and short term lows like the 2025 season are woven into a greater pattern of success and failure that can influence how the franchise is perceived by a generation of fans.
That’s why fan confidence can be on the rise for a fan base like that of the NY Giants in a tough year like this one because they feel good about the future with rookies QB Jaxson Dart and RB Cam Skattebo, and 2nd year WR Malik Nabers — even though two of those players are lost to injury for the rest of the ‘25 season. Even as Giants fans feel good about their young core players, they have deep doubts about the coaching staff, and maybe even about the GM responsible for it all.
This week’s Hogs Haven Reacts survey stretched questions about this tangled skein of confidence out as widely as we could over three aspects of the Washington Commanders franchise, looking at confidence in individual coaches, the General Manager, and the direction of the team overall.
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Franchise direction
When it comes to team direction, the confidence of fans has fallen 10 points to 42%, with many questioning the roster construction, player selection and development, pointing at both the GM and the coaching staff. The season low of 27% was recorded after the loss to the Cowboys in Week 7.
Of course, the fact that more than 4 in 10 survey respondents still have confidence in the midst of a bad 4-game losing streak (which would destroy the confidence numbers of most other NFL fan bases — all of whom have polled weekly by SB Nation for years now) says a great deal about the credit built up by the franchise in the short time that Josh Harris and his partners have owned it.
GM Adam Peters
The confidence in Adam Peters has definitely slipped with Commanders fans since the end of his honeymoon period, with 68% of respondents in this week’s survey describing themselves as being ‘pretty sure’ about Peters or having ‘some doubts’ about him at this point. Only 13% expressed ‘total faith’.
This contrasts rather sharply with the view of Peters throughout most of his first year in the role. Many critics point to the performance of his first draft class, especially the perceived regression of Mikey Sainristil and Brandon Coleman combined with unspectacular production from DT Johnny Newton, TE Ben Sinnott and WR Luke McCaffrey, all of whom were selected in the first three rounds of the ‘24 draft. On the other hand, the only clear miss among the 9 picks in Peters’ inaugural draft was 5th round S/LB Dominique Hampton — a selection that was widely praised at the time it was made.
Perhaps more criticism is leveled at Peters for his approach to the acquisition of veterans via trade and free agency. Many fans have been unhappy to see draft picks traded for three players — Marshon Lattimore, Laremy Tunsil and Deebo Samuel. The fact that the Lattimore trade has so clearly failed to produce the desired results adds strength to this criticism. Others focus on the use of veteran free agency and the fact that Adam Peters constructed the NFL’s oldest roster. These critics point out that the resulting slow and increasingly injured roster can’t be a surprise.
Still, Adam Peters’ weighted average score of 3.4 out of 5 indicates plenty of support for him, especially given the disaster that the 2025 season has turned into in the past month.
Coaching staff
The results from the confidence question about the coaches holds few surprises for me personally. Since we asked respondents to tick the box on as many coaches as they wanted to in order to indicated LOST CONFIDENCE, the higher the number, the worse the feeling about that coach.
Defensive coordinator Joe Whitt has been the target of fan dissatisfaction since last season — dissatisfaction that has only grown in intensity, along with the volume and frequency of the fan criticism, as this season has progressed. The issues with the defense have been exacerbated by injuries to key players, but the problems have been too consistent for too long for injuries to be the sole cause of what we’ve witnessed. More than 9 out of 10 respondents in our survey say that they have lost confidence in Joe Whitt — a staggering proportion of Commanders fans!
Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury comes in for his share of criticism from fans, but probably no more than the OC of most NFL teams. His 45% lack of support strike me as unsurprising, especially given the offensive regression we’ve seen in 2025 despite several upgrades to the offensive personnel.
The fact that only about a third of respondents expressed loss of confidence in head coach Dan Quinn is mildly surprising given the season circumstances. He clearly has a lot of banked goodwill from his 2024 season. Much of the dissatisfaction with Quinn actually seems to be related to his ongoing support for the deeply unpopular Joe Whitt, with undertones of dissatisfaction about his over-reliance on older players to the detriment of the development of younger players, though there is no clear consensus — and often some strong pushback — about that aspect of his coaching.
The result that surprised me was the 9% of fans who expressed loss of confidence in special teams coordinator Larry Izzo. I’m personally stumped about what more he could have done to inspire confidence in fans. By most measures, the Commanders have been among the elite special teams this season, and they were very good last year, Izzo’s first in Washington. Unless one blames him for picking the kickers on Washington’s roster, I’m not sure what he could have done better.
Weekly game predictions
National Poll
Each week, SB Nation polls fans of all 32 fan bases by email; in that survey, NFL fans from across the breadth of the league predict winners and losers.
That email fan poll, for the third week in a row, correctly predicted the outcome of the Thursday night game — this week in which the Broncos struggled to a win against the division rival Raiders in a game that I didn’t watch, but which has been widely commented on as one of the worst of the season.
NFC East projections
Disappointingly, fans predict an Eagles victory on Monday night over the Packers in Green Bay, while projecting the Giants to lose to the Bears in Chicago and the Commanders to drop their 5th-straight game to the visiting Lions late Sunday afternoon. The Cowboys are on a bye this week.
FanDuel currently lists the Lions as 8.5-point favorites (which seems low to me) with an over/under mark of 48.5 points. The game kicks off at 4:25 pm at Northwest Stadium in Landover.
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