Washington Commanders majority owner Josh Harris faces some difficult decisions when the 2026 season comes to an end.
His head coach, Dan Quinn, has a 6-15 record since the start of the 2025 season. His franchise quarterback is injured for the second straight season, stirring fears of a Robert Griffin III redux.
Perhaps most troubling, it is not immediately clear where the responsibility for the current calamities lies.
The year 2024 was a glorious reawakening for a proud franchise that had suffered for 25 years under one of the worst owners in modern American sports. General manager Adam Peters overhauled the entire roster, and Quinn seemed to push all the right buttons. With quarterback Jayden Daniels running the show, Washington reached the NFC title game for the first time since 1991.
As a longtime fan who doesn't particularly enjoy writing pessimistic articles about the team I love, I will take a moment to remind everyone that the Dallas Cowboys’ last trip to the conference championship came in 1995. How ‘bout them Cowboys!
To put Harris’ conundrum simply, he needs to decide whether the problems of the past two seasons are the result of poor player evaluation and strategic thinking, which would fall on the head of Peters, or the product of ineffective player development, for which Quinn and his coaches are responsible.
- How will Josh Harris evaluate the Washington Commanders' current state?
- Jer’Zhan Newton, DT
- Mike Sainristil, CB
- Ben Sinnott, TE
- Brandon Coleman, OL
- Luke McCaffrey, WR
How will Josh Harris evaluate the Washington Commanders' current state?
Maybe Harris will conclude that the failure in 2025 and the dreadful start in 2026 are simply the result of bad luck and all that is needed is a bit more patience. That would be rare in today’s NFL, where coaches are on a very short leash, and GMs are held responsible for most everything that happens on and off the field.
But Harris may wait. Jack Kent Cooke showed patience with a young coach many years ago, and it led to three Super Bowl wins.
Right now, however, not many fans are equating Peters and Quinn with Bobby Beathard and Joe Gibbs.
We will try to figure out where responsibility lies for the current mess by focusing on one particular set of players. I should note that these kinds of analyses are very hard to do from the outside. Fans like you and me only see the tip of the iceberg. Still, it is fair to draw several conclusions.
The players we will consider were a vital part of Peters’ first draft class. The new GM dealt his way to six selections in the top 100 picks of the 2024 draft. Those players would form the core of a rebuild that would theoretically sustain the Commanders for many years to come.
Peters selected Daniels (round 1, pick 2), Jer’Zhan Newton (2, 36), Mike Sainristil (2, 50), Ben Sinnott (2, 53), Brandon Coleman (3, 67), and Luke McCaffrey (3, 100).
I will leave Daniels out of this discussion.
You know his history, his talent, and his injuries. You might argue that Peters made a mistake in choosing him over Drake Maye, who went with the No. 3 pick and took the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl last year. I don’t agree.
Daniels was the right pick. Maye is exceptionally gifted, but he doesn't strike me as clearly better than Daniels, even knowing the results of 2025.
So let’s look at the other five players Peters chose in the second and third rounds of the 2024 draft.
Jer’Zhan Newton, DT
Newton was touted as a huge bargain. A first-round talent who fell due to injury. He was seen as a somewhat undersized interior lineman who made up for it with explosive quickness and tremendous positional versatility.
Peters chose him just before the mammoth tackle T’Vondre Sweat and the hybrid lineman Braden Fiske.
In his first two seasons, Newton has been a non-factor. He has started 13 games, compared to the 27 Fiske has started on a much more talented Los Angeles Rams front. Sweat was a mainstay for the Tennessee Titans before being traded to the New York Jets.
Both Sweat and Fiske have been significantly better performers than Newton thus far.
Why? Is it because of Newton’s injuries? Maybe. That’s impossible to judge from the outside. But we can say that when he's been healthy, he's shown very little of the talent he was supposed to have coming out of college.
Did Washington’s scouting department whiff? It happens.
But maybe it has to do with the way Quinn has deployed the player.
Newton and Fiske are similar athletes. Neither is a traditional tackle. Both are very quick off the ball. The Rams have varied Fiske’s alignments, balancing his snaps inside (primarily as a B-gap tackle) and outside (either over the offensive tackle or on the edge). Newton, by contrast, has lined up primarily as a standard defensive tackle. Seventy-five percent of his snaps have come inside, and he simply has not been good enough to consistently win inside.
Newton is out with a torn pectoral muscle and is probably finished for the 2026 season. The Commanders brought Tim Settle Jr. back to town this offseason, which is a pretty good indication that even had he remained healthy, his spot on the roster was iffy.
Mike Sainristil, CB
Sainristil is the most puzzling member of this cohort.
The cornerback was very good as a rookie. He was one of six players who received a first-place vote for AP Defensive Rookie of the Year. The Michigan product finished one spot ahead of fellow cornerback Kamari Lassiter in that DROY balloting.
But whereas Lassiter built on his rookie season with a trip to the Pro Bowl in 2025, Sainristil fell off the table. That fall has continued through the first four weeks of 2026.
Everything about Sainristil’s athletic profile screams slot corner. Many of the league’s most talented, play-making cornerbacks now line up in the slot where they can affect every single play. Players like Devon Witherspoon and Cooper DeJean have become standouts in the role.
But Sainristil appeared to struggle inside. He was initially forced to move to the perimeter due to injuries and ineffective play from Washington’s other corners, but he seemed to thrive there — at least initially.
That has not lasted. Sainristil’s fall has been spectacular. Based on Pro Football Focus grades, he went from a middle-of-the-pack corner as a rookie to one of the worst in the league in his second season. Through four weeks of the 2026 campaign, he ranks dead last among all cornerbacks.
Washington tried him in the slot in 2025, but he struggled. For his career, he has played almost 75% of his snaps on the perimeter. Should Quinn and his coaches have kept Sainristil in the slot, hoping he would improve? It’s hard to imagine things would have gone worse for him if they had.
Adding a layer of intrigue to the Sainristil situation is the fate of a couple of cornerbacks Quinn threw away.
Emmanuel Forbes Jr. and Benjamin St-Juste were both high draft picks under the previous Commanders regime and played for Quinn in 2024. Neither was very good. Forbes was too slight and was released. St-Juste finished the year and was not re-signed.
Both found new homes and increased success. I should make clear that neither turned into a star. But both went to teams that seemed to understand how to get more out of them. Forbes actually started quite a few games for a playoff team, and St-Juste was a productive reserve for a different playoff team.
Neither is above average. But both can play, which didn’t seem to be the case in Washington.
Ben Sinnott, TE
Adam Peters saw Sinnott as a versatile H-back in the mold of San Francisco’s Kyle Juszczyk when he took him with the No. 53 pick. In two-plus years, the tight end has done almost nothing.
Ja’Tavion Sanders and Theo Johnson — tight ends chosen after Sinnott in the 2024 draft — have more catches and yards in any individual season than Sinnott has in his entire career. And the former has been a healthy scratch for the Carolina Panthers all season.
This has been an epic fail.
Sinnott did not have a flash, as Sainristil did in his rookie year. His struggles cannot be explained by injuries, as you might be able to do with Newton. Sinnott simply cannot get on the field.
He is a decent blocker, but the Commanders already have that base covered with John Bates. First, Zach Ertz and now Chig Okonkwo have been chosen as the flex tight end option Sinnott should have been.
This one seems entirely on Peters.
Even if he still has faith in Sinnott, re-signing Ertz in 2025 and then Okonkwo this year ensured he wouldn't get much of a chance to develop. Sinnott could grow into a moderate in-line blocking tight end. He may even supplant Bates eventually. But that is not why he was chosen in the second round.
Brandon Coleman, OL
Of all the players Peters chose in the second and third round in 2024, Coleman has the most promising future. He is also a clear example of a front-office miscalculation.
Coleman was arguably the smartest pick Peters made in his first year. Washington needed a left tackle, but many of the best ones were off the board by the time Washington’s second-round pick came up. They waited until the third round to take Coleman, then platooned him with veteran Cornelius Lucas until he gained some NFL experience.
By the second half of the season, it looked as if the Commanders had a solid young tackle to develop.
But Peters wanted to take advantage of Jayden Daniels’ cheap rookie contract. He pushed all his chips into the middle of the table to win now. That included trading several draft picks to acquire an elite veteran left tackle in Laremy Tunsil.
It’s hard to fault the logic. But the results have been a disaster.
Tunsil played very well, but he is now hurt. Meanwhile, the acquisition built a wall in front of Coleman’s progress.
In the past year, several of those tackles who the GM passed over in round two have developed into reliable starters. That includes players like Patrick Paul and Roger Rosengarten, both of whom Coleman looked better than in 2024.
Now that he is back at left tackle in place of the injured Tunsil, Coleman is playing well again. But it’s not a stretch to believe he’d be even better had he played last season.
Peters’ decision to move him out of the left tackle spot left Washington older and with fewer draft picks. It also has delayed Coleman’s development. He has one more year on his rookie deal and then, by the time he is consistently playing at an above-average level, he could be gone.
Luke McCaffrey, WR
McCaffrey was a gamble. He is a plus athlete who recently transitioned from quarterback to wide receiver. Not a bad gamble, really, considering all the other young players the Commanders were bringing in.
Injuries have slowed his development, but it now seems McCaffrey simply isn't going to develop into a receiver commensurate with his athletic gifts. He may stick around as an effective kick returner, but right now, that appears to be his ceiling.
Except for Terry McLaurin, a standout with the club since 2019, the Commanders have failed to develop any other receivers under the current regime. The team has relied on veterans — from Curtis Samuel to Olamide Zaccheaus to Deebo Samuel Sr. — to complement McLaurin. All of them have been perfectly mediocre for the Commanders.
Is that the fault of wide receivers coach Bobby Engram? That doesn’t seem likely, though again, it is impossible to judge from the outside.
Engram was one of the few holdovers Quinn retained from Ron Rivera’s staff, and he had a good run coaching both receivers and tight ends in Baltimore before coming to Washington.
Still, the results haven’t been there.
The Commanders whiffed on Jahan Dotson, and now both McCaffrey and Jaylin Lane seem stuck in neutral. There is a lot of excitement around rookie Antonio Williams right now, and perhaps he will be the one to break the recent futility.
But McCaffrey does not appear likely to contribute, at least not anytime soon.
So that’s five players in their third seasons, all drafted in the top 100. Two have minimal presence — Newton and McCaffrey. Two get on the field but have not been especially good — Sainristil and Sinnott. Coleman looks to be a serviceable starter.
I said earlier that you can’t fault a general manager for missing on a Day 2 pick. It happens. But you cannot miss on four out of five Day 2 picks in the same draft.
That is what it currently looks like for Peters in 2024.
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