LANDOVER, Md. — You realize that runs like this end, right?
It will go bad for these Commanders, at some point. But it wasn’t Sunday. It wasn’t this week. This franchise, cursed for so very long, stopped by any garden variety casino cooler, is suddenly cleaning up at the table.
“What a week!” minority owner Mitchell Rales exclaimed outside Washington’s locker room after … what on earth was that, anyway?
Commanders 36, Eagles 33, Jayden Daniels 5 (both his jersey number, and the number of touchdowns he threw against Philadelphia; the last, to Jamison Crowder with six seconds left, making the Northwest Stadium crowd shriek like Swifties with backstage passes).
Also: 10 (wins this season for the Commanders, the first time the franchise has won 10 games in a season since 2012).
And, one more score: Congress, 100 (the number of senators who, somehow, unanimously approved, at the absolute last second early Saturday morning, a bill that green-lit a 99-year transfer of the RFK Stadium site to the city, allowing Washington to negotiate with the team on a potential new stadium).
Do you remember how far away winning football, and a stable organization, seemed … oh, I don’t know – 12 months ago.
“When you’re moving at the pace the way we are, the past, you can leave in the past,” Terry McLaurin said afterward. “We’re taking the necessary steps to continue moving forward. I don’t even think about the past anymore, to be honest. I’m living in the present, and looking forward to the future. It’s great to do it with a group of guys like this, and the coaches.”
For Washington to beat the Eagles, even without Jalen Hurts, lost for the game to a concussion in the first quarter, took some doing. The Commanders have competed with Philly over the last few years, but they’d still lost six of seven to the Eagles.
If you’re going to be the man, you have to beat the man. So there was much woofing along both lines of scrimmage; Marshon Lattimore and C.J. Brown barked at one another all day. Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson got tossed after a second unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
“Of course, it’s going to get chippy. It always does,” guard Sam Cosmi said. “We don’t like them, and they don’t like us. That’s how it’s always been.”
And, finally, the Commanders put a good quarter of football together — good enough to overcome a 13-point third-quarter deficit — and to bring Washington to the brink of a wild-card berth.
Seriously. A playoff appearance? Double-digit wins? In Year 1?
The word that has been the touchstone for this organization, ever since Josh Harris bought the team 17 months ago, was front and center again, both on and off the field, this week: alignment. This franchise is, finally, working in sync across the board, from top to bottom.
You do not get 100 senators to put aside their personal views, grievances and weariness after a wrenching week of negotiations — including a Continuing Resolution that had to be passed by Friday to keep the government open over Christmas — and get them all to sign off on a consent agreement such as the one that brought D.C. back into the stadium game, without having done years of work behind the scenes to know exactly who to call, and exactly who to assuage, at such a critical moment.
That required relentless lobbying — by Harris and his ownership group, to be sure. But it also required alignment with Mayor Muriel Bowser and her office, including Beverly Perry, a senior advisor to the mayor, who did yeoman work over the last year-plus on Capitol Hill getting support for the proposed measure. It required alignment with the NFL, with Commissioner Roger Goodell playing both a public and private role in keeping the possibility of resuscitating the RFK transfer after it was excised from the CR Wednesday night. It required all of those people to work all of the phones with all of the stakeholders, any one of whom could have scuttled the agreement at any moment.
You needed all 100 of ’em. Not 97. Not 98. Not 99.
And it still was up in the air until Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, presiding over the Senate at 1:14 a.m. Saturday morning, asked if there was any objection to the measure. He heard none. He asked for the “Aye” votes. New York Senator Charles Schumer, the outgoing majority leader, said “Aye.” No one else did. But, no one said “No” when asked, either.
Only then was H.R. 4984 — the D.C. Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act — a reality.
So, how hard could it be for this team to come back from 14 down against the Eagles, who hadn’t lost a game in two-plus months?
Well, it was ridiculously hard. Even though Hurts went out early, it didn’t matter for a long time, as Saquon Barkley rolled over Washington’s run defense to the tune of seven carries for 109 yards and two touchdowns, the second a 68-yard jaunt on which he was barely touched — in the first quarter. The Eagles are, as they have been for years now, the best team in the NFC East, and for much of the day, they played like it. They forced five Commanders turnovers and kept Hurts’ replacement, Kenny Pickett, clean most of the day.
“I mean, a lot of these games don’t get started until the fourth quarter,” safety Quan Martin said.
The Commanders kept plugging away. They finally got Barkley under wraps, with Daron Payne having one of his better stretches of the season in the second half. They kept overcoming their own mistakes — two fumbles by Brian Robinson and two interceptions by Daniels. The battle between Lattimore and Brown was as good as advertised. Brown drew three pass interference penalties on Lattimore (the third of which was kind of dubious), but Lattimore had some pass breakups, too, before leaving with a strained hamstring.
And Daniels kept firing, as he has since Week 1 of the season. He threw a 49-yard score to Olamide Zaccheaus with 9:06 left to bring Washington within 28-27. After Philly went back up by 2 points on a Jake Elliott field goal, things looked bleak. And after Daniels was late on a throw across the middle, and safety Reed Blankenship picked off a batted ball with 2:53 to go, the Commanders looked like they were done. But Washington got a break when Eagles wideout DeVonta Smith dropped what would have been a game-sealing first-down catch with 2:02 left, forcing the Eagles to kick a field goal rather than run out the clock.
Washington got the ball at its 43 with 1:52 left, down by five, and with a timeout. And we’ve seen how Daniels’ play has gone due north in similar situations all season. So it did, again.
First coach in franchise history to reach double digit wins in his first season@budlight | #RaiseHail pic.twitter.com/Kvc4430IjA
— Washington Commanders (@Commanders) December 22, 2024
“You feel it,” coach Dan Quinn said. “We all do, in these winning time moments, that he is really capable in those spots. We practice it a lot, but I’d love to say we practice a lot of s— a lot.”
So Daniels went four-of-four, excluding a spike to stop the clock with 10 seconds left, in driving Washington 57 yards to the winning touchdown. He scrambled for 15 more. And he planted his left foot in crunch time and threw a laser from the Eagles’ 10 to Crowder, just a couple of weeks removed from injured reserve, on a play that required time from the offensive line, and absolute confidence from the rookie quarterback in a receiver he hadn’t played with most of the season.
“I think, actually, that stuff goes to practice,” Daniels said. “Me and him, being on the same page, talking through stuff, that moment, you never know when those moments might show up. End-of-game situations, gotta have it, and I seen it. He (saw) the same thing, and I just put the ball in the area. He made the grab.”
Look: this is about the quarterback, of course. Daniels has provided hope and belief, great play, and all of the things that superstars do for their team.
But it’s not just Daniels. GM Adam Peters has added the right veterans in free agency, and his first draft here looks beyond promising. Quinn has gone way past bromides; he and his staff have been outstanding both in preparations and in-game adjustments. (You don’t hear Ben Johnson’s name around here much, anymore.) The Commanders will have $100 million in cap space this winter, a front office and coaching staff entrenched in place for the first time in what seems like forever, all of their draft picks … and a franchise quarterback.
Now, about that NIMBYism in Capitol Hill/East. …
(Top photo of Olamide Zaccheaus and Jayden Daniels celebrating their fourth-quarter touchdown pass: Timothy Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
