The Washington Commanders spent 2025 learning the hard way that a roster can look sturdier on paper than it actually is on Sundays. What started with playoff hopes and legitimate Super Bowl talk ended at 5-12, and the season finished as the worst-case scenario and then some.
Injuries carried plenty of the blame, but the deeper problem was impossible to miss: the roster general manager Adam Peters built had real cracks in it.
That’s why this offseason has looked so different. Peters has leaned younger, targeting ascending free agents like Odafe Oweh, K'Lavon Chaisson, Chig Okonkwo, Rachaad White, and Nick Cross, players who can matter beyond the immediate moment. The lone veteran exception is a player who piled up 1,000 receiving yards last season and helped his team reach the Super Bowl.
The bigger story, though, is who’s gone. Or more accurately, who nobody wants.
No team in the NFL has more unsigned free agents than Washington, with 14 players from last year’s roster still without a home as the league’s full preseason slate is set to begin this week. The Spotrac numbers put the Commanders at the top of a list that includes the Bills at 13, the Raiders and Dolphins at 11 apiece, and the Lions and Giants at 10 each.
That’s a brutal snapshot for a team that once thought it could turn veteran stopgaps into a quick fix.
The logic behind that approach made sense at the time. Washington had been left with a thin young core after Ron Rivera’s multiple years of drafting disasters, so Peters tried to speed up the rebuild by filling the room with experienced players who could change the culture. It worked some, not enough.
The 2024 season was supposed to be the bridge year, with most of those locker room additions on one-year deals. Instead, Washington won 12 games and reached the NFC Championship game, and that success only made the win-now mindset feel even more justified.
So Peters doubled down. Bobby Wagner and Zach Ertz came back.
Marshon Lattimore arrived in a trade. Von Miller was added on the edge.
The results never matched the plan.
Now Wagner, Ertz, Lattimore, and Miller are all among the experienced veterans who don’t look likely to be on an NFL field when the 2026 season opens, if they play again at all. Austin Ekeler is in that same group. Noah Brown and Preston Smith are also still unsigned.
Washington has already shifted its focus to what comes next, with hopes of getting back to at least a playoff-caliber level in 2026. But the 2025 collapse still hangs over everything, and the fact that so many of last year’s players remain without teams is a pretty sharp final verdict on how that season went.
In Other News...
Commanders May Have Found A Surprise Answer To Their Pass Rush
Washington has spent the offseason trying to add more teeth to a pass rush that needs more reliable pressure, bringing in edge rushers Odafe Oweh and KLavon Chaisson while also using the draft to add linebacker Sonny Styles. The broader idea is clear: the Commanders want more disruption off the edge and more help making life uncomfortable for opposing quarterbacks, and camp has already started to sort out who fits into that mix.
One rookie has begun to stand out in that competition, even while he is still getting comfortable in Daronte Jones defensive system. As he works through the playbook, he has shown enough in training camp to get noticed, giving Washington another possible answer at a spot where it can use all the help it can get. The command now is simple enough, even if the path there is not: keep building the rush, and let the young players keep forcing the conversation. [Read more 🡒]
Commanders Add A Familiar D.C. Name To Their Linebacker Room
The Commanders kept adding to their linebacker depth by signing Curtis Jacobs, a familiar name around the D.C. football scene after his run with the DC Defenders and his college career at Penn State. Jacobs entered the league as an undrafted free agent with Kansas City in 2024 and has spent time on practice squads with multiple teams since then, giving Washington another look at a player who has kept finding his way back onto NFL radars.
To make room, Washington also moved on from guard Sala Aumavae-Laulu and safety Rob McDaniel. The roster shuffle is the kind of spring and summer churn that often reshapes the back end of a roster, especially for a team still sorting out the right mix of depth pieces before the competition picks up in earnest. [Read more 🡒]
Jake Moody Is Putting Washingtons Kicking Decision In Real Doubt
Washingtons kicking picture has taken on an unexpectedly unsettled feel in training camp, and Jake Moody is right in the middle of it. The Commanders brought him in to stabilize a spot that can flip games in a hurry, but his accuracy has slipped in his second and third NFL seasons, leaving the staff to watch every rep a little more closely than planned.
Moody is trying to reclaim the consistency that made him a safer bet earlier in his career, yet the urgency around the job keeps growing. With his future in Washington far from settled, every practice kick now carries a little extra weight, and the Commanders are getting a reminder that even one of the least glamorous positions on the roster can become one of the most scrutinized. [Read more 🡒]