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Jayden Daniels’ health is critical to any possibility of a bounceback season for the Commanders. Stephanie Scarbrough \/ AP Photo<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Athletic Football Show\u201d is previewing all 32 teams ahead of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show\u2019s preview of the Washington Commanders. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full NFC East preview wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n
Dave Helman on what about the Commanders most excites him: Two years is an eternity in the NFL, but a healthy Jayden Daniels has proven he can make chicken salad out of chicken s\u2014 before. And he did it in 2024 without Laremy Tunsil, so the fact that Tunsil\u2019s out for the year, it definitely sucks. But Jayden\u2019s made do with less before. And I\u2019m hoping he can stay healthy long enough to do it again. It\u2019s an older duo than you would prefer, but Terry McLaurin and Stefon Diggs \u2014 if Diggs looks remotely like the guy from last year \u2014 I could talk myself into that.<\/p>\n
Robert Mays on what he\u2019s watching the first month of the season: I\u2019m curious what David Blough is going to get from this offense that Kliff Kingsbury couldn\u2019t. If you look at the numbers, Kliff was middle of the pack last year with Jayden missing a huge chunk of the season. And they were really good in \u201924. Kliff Kingsbury did a really good job as the offensive coordinator for the Commanders. The argument is: Can we be harder to play against?<\/p>\n
Every run concept is on the table if we\u2019re under center. If we\u2019re using more play action, if we\u2019re doing all these different things, can we just be harder to play against? I think that is the goal on both sides of the ball. On defense, you can get me there pretty easily. On offense, it\u2019s one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for sort of things.<\/p>\n
Derrik Klassen on what\u2019s keeping him up at night: What if it just doesn\u2019t really all make sense together, and what if the offensive line is not able to do some of the stuff they want to do? What if they don\u2019t really have the personnel to do some of the stuff they want to do? It still, to me, feels like a personnel group that should be more gun and spread.<\/p>\n
When Stefon Diggs and Terry McLaurin are your two best receivers, and the guy you draft is like a slot only, you should be a little bit more gun open. Chig Okonkwo being your leading tight end, you should be a little bit more spread and gun open. Your running backs being Jacory Croskey-Merritt and Rachaad White \u2014 you should have the flexibility of having him in gun where he can be out in the route or out in protection for you a little bit easier. I wonder how they make that work with what is supposed to be a more under-center approach.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to \u201cThe Athletic<\/a> Football Show\u201d on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n Aug 28, 2026<\/p>\n Connections: Sports Edition<\/p>\n Spot the pattern. Connect the terms<\/p>\n Find the hidden link between sports terms<\/p>\n Play today’s puzzle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jayden Daniels’ health is critical to any possibility of a bounceback season for the Commanders. Stephanie Scarbrough \/…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85,1272],"class_list":["post-871636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-washington-commanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n