Washington’s cornerback room was already thin, and Trey Amos’ status only sharpens the concern. The Commanders set their initial 53-man roster on Sunday and carried just three cornerbacks, with Amos among them despite the fact that he’s headed to the reserve/injured list to open the 2026 season.
That means Amos will miss at least the first four games. He’s been fighting his way back since fracturing his fibula in a Week 9 game against Detroit last November, then missing the start of training camp before returning to full participation. But after just his second day back, he picked up an ankle injury and hasn’t practiced since.
The lack of clarity around his absence led plenty of fans to wonder whether Washington was downplaying the severity of the issue. General manager Adam Peters addressed it Monday and said the team chose caution over urgency.
“Yeah, obviously, not having Trey - he hasn’t played really since the mid-season last year, so we wanna take it slow with him; that’s why we put him on IR," Peters said. "And could he have come back right around, in a few weeks?
Maybe, but with the advances in sports science and understanding what it will take for him to get ready to play from not having played since mid-season last year, we wanted to take that a little bit slower. So, we’re confident he’ll be ready when it's time for him to come out.
In terms of the rest of the position, really happy that we added the guys that we did with [CB] Rasul [Douglas] and [CB] Fabian [Moreau] late in this training camp, and they’re gonna really help us early on this year. And then we’ll grab a couple other guys here on the practice squad that have played a lot of NFL ball too.
That’ll help us, but certainly will feel a lot better when Trey’s back.”
That reads like a player who was close enough to return soon, but not close enough for Washington to rush him. Given how little football Amos has played in almost 10 months, the safer route makes sense. Two short days of practice before asking him to handle Week 1 never sounded like a great plan.
The Commanders aren’t putting a firm date on his return, but Week 5 looks like the most logical target. He has roughly six weeks from now to build back up, and Washington hosts the New York Giants in Week 5.
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