EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — There was about a minute left in the game, a minute left in the meaningful portion of the Washington Commanders’ season and — who knows? — perhaps that same measly minute left in owner Josh Harris’ patience, and by extension, in Dan Quinn’s NFL head coaching career. Another loss in another winnable game would have brought all sorts of awful possibilities into play for this franchise and the people who are its face.
And then, almost out of nowhere, the ball was in the end zone, carried there by veteran wideout Stefon Diggs, at the receiving end of Jayden Daniels’ pinpoint throw, and topped off with an exaggerated, theatrical backward fall across the goal line.
A few moments later, some of them more harrowing than anyone in burgundy and gold needed, it was finally time to exhale. The Commanders had lived to see another day, their 24-21 win over the New York Giants keeping alive their still-faint playoff hopes and sparing Quinn an uncomfortable weekend trying to tune out the crescendo of voices that undoubtedly would have been calling for his job.
“Well, we needed that,” Quinn said. “We needed every bit of that.”
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In a game that Daniels had pegged as a “must-win” in the immediate aftermath of another hideous loss four days earlier, the Commanders kept their season on the rails for another week. Their 3-5-1 record may not look like much, but it’s good enough to have pulled them to within two games of the Giants in the putrid NFC East, with the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Giants in their back pocket and an easier schedule on the horizon.
“Huge, huge,” Daniels said when asked about the magnitude of Thursday night’s win. “Everything is right in front of us.”
For a change, the team imploding in spectacular fashion was not the Commanders, but the Commanders’ opponent. The Giants squandered a lead, and then the game, with a series of ill-fated plays and ill-conceived decisions. Just to put Daniels and the Commanders in position to win the game after the two-minute warning required the Giants to shank a 12-yard punt and commit a defensive pass-interference that cost them 33 yards.
There is a verb that describes precisely what the Giants did Thursday night: They Commandered the game.
“This was one that got away,” Giants coach John Harbaugh said, in a comment that could have been uttered by Quinn on any number of previous Sundays.
There was something fitting about the way Daniels closed out this win. His brilliance was the biggest reason the Commanders thought their season was still alive at this point despite all evidence to the contrary, the reason they stood pat at this week’s NFL trade deadline rather than selling off their last salvageable scraps. He was the reason, in fact, why the Commanders, despite having won just four of their previous 20 games, still had the juice to keep television executives putting their games in prime time.
In their most desperate moments, of which there have been many, both in this game and throughout the season, the Commanders’ game plan essentially can be boiled down to: Go out there and win us this game, Jayden. For an offense missing its best offensive lineman (Laremy Tunsil), its best wide receiver (Terry McLaurin) and its best running back (Jacory Croskey-Merritt), there isn’t much other choice.
It manifested most clearly Thursday night at the end of the first half, when the Commanders — bereft of any other palatable options or dependable weapons — needed three cracks, with Daniels in the shotgun and an otherwise empty backfield, to get the ball across the goal line, which he finally did with a laser of a throw to tight end Ben Sinnott (that may or may not have been intended for Diggs).
The first three Commanders drives of the fourth quarter had ended in a turnover on downs and a pair of interceptions — Daniels’ first two picks of the season, snapping a string of more than 200 attempts without one. But when the Commanders got the ball back with 1:46 left in the game, thanks in large part to an aggressive defense that has become a force over the past few weeks, there was little question — or little choice — of what they needed to do.
They had to ask Daniels to go win it. And that’s what he did.
“It’s been a long time since he threw a pick,” Quinn said. “You can get anxious when that happens, especially when it’s not something you do frequently. But I appreciate how [Daniels] just willed us back.”
“You understand the magnitude of the moment,” Daniels said. “I didn’t want to let my team down in that moment.”
And because Daniels answered the call, finding Diggs over the middle and letting the veteran receiver do the rest, the Commanders’ 2026 season, for all the misery and frustration it has caused to all who care about this team’s fate, is still alive.
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