The NFC East is still a mess, and Stefon Diggs knows it.
After the Washington Commanders dropped another close one, this time a heartbreaking loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Diggs took the long view on a division that has yet to produce a true front-runner. The Commanders have been unable to close games lately, but the veteran receiver didn’t sound like someone ready to wave the white flag.
“It’s still wide open,” Diggs said, via Marshall Kramsky of WUSA. “Where we are and where the league is, it’s kinda interesting.
A weird spot right now. Nobody’s kinda made it clear - that team we just played is a helluva football team.
“That’s one of those guys that’s gonna be in the running. We played a decent game; we could’ve played a lot better.
We were still in it, just like all these games we’ve been in the past couple of weeks. We’ve been in it; we just gotta find a way to pull ‘em out.”
That message fits the bigger picture in Washington. The Commanders are 1-4-1 after Week 6, and the division around them hasn’t exactly raced away. Philadelphia and Dallas are both sitting at 2-4, while the Giants are 3-2-1.
The odd part is that the NFC East made history with the division going winless in consecutive weeks for the first time since the 1970 merger. So while Washington’s record looks rough on paper, the gap in the division hasn’t turned into a runaway just yet.
What has defined the Commanders so far is the knife-edge nature of their games. They lost to Philadelphia by two points, fell to San Francisco by six, and played New York to an overtime tie. The margins have been tiny; the results have still gone the wrong way.
Diggs’ comments came after another night that showed Washington can hang with good teams, but not yet finish the job. That same theme was echoed by quarterback Jayden Daniels, who pointed to the need for the Commanders to put together four complete quarters instead of leaning on one strong half.
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Stefon Diggs still saw a division that leaves room for hope, even with Washington fighting uphill again. He pointed to the NFC East as still being very much in play, which matters because the Commanders have not completely fallen out of the race even as the margin for error keeps shrinking. The challenge now is turning that belief into a more complete performance before the schedule makes the debate any harder to sustain. [Read more 🡒]