By halftime of Monday night’s game at Levi’s Stadium, the Washington Commanders, for whatever else they were lacking, at least had established an identity. After an embarrassing, noncompetitive first half against the San Francisco 49ers, on top of five earlier games’ worth of incriminating evidence, they were now 30 minutes of football away from their bye week, and they were pretty much cooked.
Their season looked to be a washout. Their embattled coach seemed destined to be fired. They were nearing blow-it-up-and-start-over territory. For Commanders fans, that wasn’t much comfort. But at least there was now a sense of clarity. You could turn off your television at halftime, spare yourself the agony of whatever humiliation the second half had in store, and sleep peacefully with the hope that heads might soon start rolling on Coach Gibbs Drive.
But now, after a furious second-half comeback that saw the Commanders — with an astonishing, out-of-nowhere mixture of might and fight — put themselves in position to win a seemingly unwinnable game twice in the final six minutes, even that sense of clarity is gone. What in heaven’s name is the Commanders’ identity now?
Nothing that happened in Monday night’s second half has materially changed the trajectory of their season. They still lost, 23-17. They’re still a one-win team through six weeks. Their franchise quarterback, Jayden Daniels, is still winless in his four starts in 2026. They still make too many critical, boneheaded mistakes to be taken seriously. Oh, and on top of everything else, it looks as if they will be without the soul of their locker room, veteran wideout Terry McLaurin, for a long while following his first-quarter knee injury.
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There are no moral victories in the NFL, right? Right?
And yet, it feels as if that second half changed everything.
The way Daniels carved up the 49ers’ defense on that fourth-quarter touchdown drive to make it a one-score game. … The way the Commanders’ defense forced San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy and mates into a pair of late three-and-outs. … The heart the entire team displayed in rallying from 20 points down on the road to put a serious scare into one of the best teams in the NFL, when the natural inclination may have been to pack it in at halftime. … Those 30 minutes of football may have just saved the Commanders’ season, not to mention coach Dan Quinn’s job.
At the very least, the Commanders’ true identity remains to be established. And that’s a good thing, right? Right?
Nobody is going to sit here and tell you this is a great team, or even a pretty good one. It also remains to be seen whether Quinn is the right coach for this moment, particularly after another massive mental breakdown in Monday night’s second quarter when, after Daniels inexplicably threw away a fourth-down pass attempt, Quinn appeared to have lost track of what down it was. (He would later say he knew the Commanders had turned the ball over on downs and was not calling for the field-goal unit, as internet lip-readers claimed.)
But one thing is certain: the NFC East is an historically bad division — one in which, for the first time in NFL history, the entire division just went winless in back-to-back weeks in which all four teams played. For all their problems, the Commanders (1-4-1) are just two games back of the division-leading New York Giants (3-2-1).
Ask yourself this: who is the most dangerous team in the NFC East right now? The first-place Giants (whom the Commanders should have beaten last week except for their inexplicable time-management meltdown on the final play of overtime) lost starting quarterback Jaxson Dart for the rest of the season in Week 2, and the Philadelphia Eagles (2-4) just lost theirs, Jalen Hurts, also for the season. The Dallas Cowboys (2-4) have the 31st-ranked rushing offense and 32nd-ranked rushing defense in the NFL.
“We see the way the division is right now, the way things are going,” Sonny Styles, the Commanders’ rookie linebacker, told reporters Monday night. “We still have a chance. We’ve just got to keep fighting. [But] you’ve got to find a way to win at the end of the game.”
Anybody who studied the Commanders’ 2026 schedule when it first dropped in May understood the first half of it was going to be a gauntlet, with five of their first eight games coming against 2025 playoff teams. Through Week 6, it has been something close to a worst-case scenario. But their next two opponents — the Eagles (Nov. 1) and Los Angeles Rams (Nov. 8), both at home — are nowhere as scary as they looked last season, and the schedule eases considerably over the final two months.
There is, in other words, an argument to be made that the Commanders, so long as Daniels can stay on the field, are the most dangerous team in their division — an admittedly remarkable thing to say about a franchise that has won just three of its last 18 games dating to last October, with eight of those losses coming by double digits — or, at the very least, are as good as anyone else.
If Monday night’s second half accomplished nothing else, it may have bought them the opportunity to go out and prove it.
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