A year ago at this time, Washington was coming off a run to the NFC Championship Game and looked like a team on the rise. Twelve months later, our team is trying to explain how that group turned into a 5-12 club that missed the playoffs entirely — which makes 2026 as much about restoring trust as it is about wins.
2025 Season Recap
The Commanders opened 2025 at 3-2 and looked ready to build on their 2024 breakthrough. Instead, Washington dropped eight straight games through the middle of the season and finished 5-12, well outside the playoff picture a year after reaching the NFC title game. The stretch included some genuinely ugly losses — at one point Washington lost four straight games by at least 20 points for the first time since 1954 — and a Week 14 shutout loss to Minnesota officially ended any playoff hope.
Health was a big part of the story. Quarterback Jayden Daniels dislocated his left elbow in Week 9 and missed time before returning, only to re-aggravate the injury against the Vikings; Washington ultimately shut him down for the final three games of the season. Tight end Zach Ertz (torn ACL) and running back Austin Ekeler (season-ending Achilles injury) were among the other key injuries that hit a roster that had entered the year with real championship expectations.
Offseason Moves
Head coach Dan Quinn is back for a third season, but he rebuilt his coaching staff after the collapse. Both coordinators from 2025 are gone — offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. parted ways with the team, with Kingsbury later landing on the Rams’ staff. In their place, Washington promoted David Blough from assistant quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator and hired Daronte Jones away from Minnesota to run the defense, both first-time playcallers in those roles for this roster.
The biggest single investment came up front, where left tackle Laremy Tunsil signed a two-year extension reported at $60.2 million to keep anchoring the protection in front of Daniels. On the other side of the ball, our team sees the pass-rush addition as the headline move: Washington signed edge rusher Odafe Oweh to a four-year, $100 million contract with $68 million guaranteed, one of the richer deals given to an edge defender this offseason, and added rotational pieces in Tim Settle, Leo Chenal and K’Lavon Chaisson. In the draft, Washington used its first-round pick — seventh overall — on Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles, a highly productive, versatile piece for the front seven.
Washington also reshaped its skill-position groups and its backfield. Receivers Dyami Brown (reuniting with Daniels) and Van Jefferson, tight end Chig Okonkwo and running back Rachaad White all arrived as complementary additions, while Brian Robinson Jr. was traded to San Francisco for a sixth-round pick. On the way out, the team released center Tyler Biadasz and cornerback Marshon Lattimore as part of a broader roster turnover along the line and in the secondary.
2026 Season Outlook
Washington’s 2026 schedule is one of the tougher slates in the league — around the eighth-most difficult by projected opponent win totals — and it’s front-loaded with real tests. The Commanders open on a nationally televised game at Philadelphia, host defending Super Bowl champion Seattle in a Week 3 home opener, travel to London in Week 4 to face Indianapolis, and then host the Giants in Week 5 with no bye week in between to recover. Washington does get an early breather with a Week 7 bye — its earliest since 2018 — sandwiched between a Monday night trip to San Francisco and a Sunday Night Football rematch with Philadelphia in Week 8. The regular season closes back at home in Week 17 against Dallas, the fourth time in five years these NFC East rivals have met in the final stretch of the season.
Our Team’s Projection
We’re projecting Washington to go 8-9 in 2026 — a step back toward respectability without quite reaching the playoff level this team hit in 2024.
The Commanders’ current season win total sits at 7.5, and our projection leans toward the over. The case for it starts with health: Daniels says he’s fully recovered from the elbow injury, and simply getting a full season out of a quarterback of his caliber changes this roster’s ceiling more than any single addition could. Layer on a genuinely aggressive investment in the pass rush with Oweh and the continued security of Tunsil up front, and this looks like a more talented team than its 5-12 finish suggested. The case for the under is just as real, though — a brutal opening month against Philadelphia, Seattle and a London trip to face the Colts could put Washington in an early hole, and both coordinators are calling plays in their first year in those roles, which tends to come with some early-season inconsistency before it smooths out.
Win totals like this one live and die on exactly this kind of health-and-schedule reasoning — our team broke down how these numbers actually get built and how to bet them in Bet Smarter: How Season Win Totals Actually Work.