Frankie Luvu’s season went sideways fast in Washington, and the Commanders may have finally found the fix.
What looked like a breakout profile in 2024 turned into a mess in 2025, with Luvu asked to do more and more while the pass-rush help around him thinned out. The result was a sharp drop-off for a player Washington had believed could become a force from just about anywhere on the field.
That’s where new defensive coordinator Daronte Jones comes in. The plan now appears to be a return to the kind of usage that fits Luvu’s game far better: inside, attacking gaps, and creating chaos from the linebacker level rather than trying to win like a traditional edge rusher.
The numbers from ESPN’s John Keim tell the story of how badly the old approach went. In the stretch from Weeks 7 through 18, Luvu had only four quarterback hits, 153 pass rushes, only six considered wins, and a 7.1% pass rush win rate weight win rate.
Keim also noted that after defensive end Dorance Armstrong Jr. tore his ACL in Week 7, Luvu’s role changed dramatically. In Weeks 1 through 6, 29.8% of his snaps came as an edge rush defender.
After Armstrong’s injury, that jumped to 47.2%, and Keim said the result “was not good. Like he had a 1.8% pressure rate in that role.”
That’s the part Washington has to correct.
Jones should be able to lean on ideas he picked up while working on Brian Flores’ staff with the Minnesota Vikings, where he served as pass-game coordinator and helped shape the pressure packages that made that defense so difficult to sort out. One of the more important pieces of that system was the way Minnesota used its inside linebackers as rush threats.
Keim pointed to Blake Cashman as an example, noting, “You can anticipate that from the guys inside because you look at Blake Cashman as well. Now, in 13 games he averaged eight and a half pass rushes per game. 2024 it was 10.9 pass rushes per game.”
Jones also spent time with former Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer, another coach known for bringing heat from the middle. Zimmer became one of the league’s most prominent users of the double A-gap blitz, a look built around sending inside linebackers through one or both gaps on either side of the center.
That setup makes a lot more sense for Luvu. At 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, he’s built to attack interior gaps and force problems for backs in protection. He’s not built to live on the edge, where he’s running into offensive tackles and tight ends who outweigh him by a mile.
Washington already has a glimpse of what that can look like. Luvu showed that interior burst when he collected a sack of Jalen Hurts against the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2024 NFC Championship game.
Now the Commanders have also given Jones more freedom to use Luvu the right way. The offseason additions of Odafe Oweh, K'Lavon Chaisson and Charles Omenihu mean Washington no longer needs Luvu to be a primary edge presence. Oweh, in particular, arrives with momentum after recording 10.5 sacks across 13 games, including playoffs, following a mid-season trade from the Baltimore Ravens to the Los Angeles Chargers.
With Oweh and Chaisson, plus a healthy Armstrong, expected to handle the bookend roles in Jones’ likely 3-4 hybrid front, Luvu can slide back into the kind of job that suits him best: downhill, inside, and disruptive.
There is still competition waiting there. First-round rookie Sonny Styles and free-agent addition Leo Chenal are also in the mix, and Chenal may be the biggest obstacle because he comes from a similar pressure-heavy system under Steve Spagnuolo with the Kansas City Chiefs.
That matters because Chenal is the kind of player who fits the same rotating, wave-after-wave blitz model that has defined Spagnuolo’s four Super Bowl wins as a defensive coordinator. Flores and Zimmer have used versions of that approach too, and Jones looks set to borrow from the same playbook.
So Luvu may not be headed for a full-time starring role. But he should have plenty of chances to matter again. And if Jones uses him the way this defense suggests, he could thrive in that role.
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