The Washington Commanders’ 2025 season left a mess behind, but not everyone is ready to treat that five-win finish like the whole story. Pro Football Sports Network’s Jason Katz went on the Football Debate Club podcast and called Washington the league’s biggest sleeper, pushing back on the idea that last year’s collapse tells you what 2026 will look like.
Katz didn’t sugarcoat what happened. “There’s no debating Washington’s 2025 season,” Katz said.
“It was a disaster.” The Commanders opened 2025 by alternating wins and losses over their first five games, then dropped eight straight.
Their playoff hopes were wiped out by a Week 14 shutout in Minnesota, and they finished 5-12 in third place in the NFC East.
On paper, that kind of record usually points to a team in need of a reset. Katz argued the deeper look says otherwise.
“But were they as bad as their 5-12 record might suggest?” Katz asked.
“I say no.”
That’s the same basic read that has been discussed at Commanders Wire this offseason as well: the 2025 version of Washington was not a clean snapshot of the team’s real ceiling. Injuries played a massive role, and not just because there were so many of them.
The Commanders were hit hard by losses to Jayden Daniels, Terry McLaurin, Austin Ekeler, Dorance Armstrong, and Zach Ertz. Ertz and Ekeler are no longer on the roster, but the others are still there.
Add in the roster changes and coaching changes made this offseason, and Washington is operating with a very different look heading into 2026. Daniels and McLaurin are healthy, the defense has been revamped, and the coordinators have been replaced. That’s why the Commanders are drawing sleeper buzz now: the 2025 record was ugly, but it may not be the right lens for judging what comes next.
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Commanders May Be Down To One Familiar WR2 Gamble
The Commanders are still sorting through ways to give Terry McLaurin a reliable running mate, and the search has started to narrow toward a familiar face. With the receiver market not exactly overflowing with clean fits, Washington is at least exploring the idea of leaning on a player it already knows, one who could make sense in a broader offseason plan rather than as a quick fix.
The timing matters here, because the discussion is centered on a possible 2026 move and not an immediate answer. Nothing is official yet, and that leaves the Commanders in the same place plenty of teams find themselves this time of year: weighing familiarity, fit and availability while hoping the right option does not disappear before the roster gets a chance to take shape. [Read more 🡒]
Commanders May Finally Have A Forgotten Draft Pick Worth Watching
Kain Medrano barely got a chance to show what he could do after Washington took the linebacker in 2025, spending his rookie year on special teams without cracking into the defense. Now he enters a different kind of conversation, because Daronte Jones new scheme is built around linebackers and could finally give the athletic young defender a real opening to matter beyond kick coverage.
Medrano still has work to do, though, with Sonny Styles, Leo Chenal, Frankie Luvu, Jordan Magee and several edge rushers all in the mix for roles in the new look defense. Even so, his offseason progress has kept him on the radar, and for a player who was easy to overlook a year ago, that alone makes him one of the more interesting names to watch as Washington sorts out its front seven. [Read more 🡒]
Jayden Daniels Just Entered A Different Tier For The Commanders
Jayden Daniels has already given Washington a rare kind of hope at quarterback, and now his profile is stretching well beyond the field. The 2023 Heisman Trophy winner and 2024 Offensive Rookie of the Year has joined Gatorades athletics team, a notable endorsement move that puts him in a different category of NFL face for the brand and underscores how quickly his rise has accelerated since arriving in the league.
For the Commanders, the bigger picture is still about what Daniels means when he is healthy and on the field. He dealt with injuries in 2025, but the expectation is that he returns healthy for 2026, which is the part Washington cares about most as it tries to build on what he has already shown. The commercial spotlight is nice, but the franchises next step still hinges on whether Daniels can keep turning promise into production. [Read more 🡒]