Commanders Training Camp Round Up

Rounding up and breaking down some clips from the first few days of Commanders training camp

The Washington Commanders began their preparations for the 2026 season this week with the start of training camp. At the time of this post going out, the team has held three practice sessions, including one practice on Saturday that was open to fans. They have a day off on Sunday but on Monday they’ll have their first padded practice of the year. That’s when training camp really ramps up and we start to see some physicality as players battle for starting spots and roster spots.

As you’ll likely know, I’m not a beat reporter and I live in Europe, so I’m not at these practices. If you’re looking for a report of everything going on at each practice, I suggest following the main beat reporters like Ben Standig, John Keim, Nicki Jhabvala and J.P Finlay, among others. All I can go off of is clips that get posted on social media. Unfortunately, the Commanders are annoying strict about what gets posted and shared online. So while teams like the Ravens are live streaming their training camp practices and seemingly every play from the Cardinals training camp gets posted online, Commanders fans get very little.

But after the first few practices, I’ve finally found enough clips to put together a post that is hopefully worth reading. So here is a few breakdowns of some plays from Commanders training camp that I was able to find online.

One of the standout plays from day one of training camp undoubtedly came from wide receiver Treylon Burks. The Commanders picked up the former first round pick in the middle of last year after the Titans decided to move on from a talented but often injured receiver. Burks had some flashes last year and appears to be getting plenty of looks with the starters this year too. He opened camp with a big catch, which the Commanders posted a clip of on their official accounts.

Dan Quinn said day one would be working down in the red zone and something the Commanders lacked last year, at least until Burks arrived, was a vertical threat on the outside. Burks of course made that outstanding touchdown catch against the Broncos last year in a similar situation. This was another good one. Burks lines up outside against veteran corner Amik Robertson. Robertson is only 5-foot-9, so Burks has a huge size advantage at 6-foot-2. He makes full use of that here, running a fade on the goal line.

Jayden Daniels knows the matchup he wants to attack pre-snap and almost as soon as he catches the snap, he lines up to throw to Burks. You can see he delivers the pass before Burks has really even gotten into his route. The route running isn’t what’s important here though, it’s all about putting the ball up in the air and letting his tall, physical receiver go win a jump ball over a smaller corner. Daniels puts the ball in a perfect spot with just the right amount of air under the pass but still enough on the throw to get it there before Burks goes out of bounds. Burks gets up and makes the catch over the top of Robertson and impressively manages to get both feet down in bounds to complete the touchdown.

I wrote earlier this offseason about Burks in the battle for the second wide receiver spot behind Terry McLaurin. Plays like this will help his case, but the question about him has never really been talent, it’s always been about staying healthy. Alarm bells were raised when Dan Quinn announced Burks would miss day two of practice but he returned to the field on Saturday and looked fine. Even if he doesn’t win the battle for the second wide receiver spot, this play proves that at the very least, Burks adds value as a big, physical target down in the red zone.

Another clip that stood out on the opening day came from Washington Informer reporter Skylar Nelson.

This was just a clip from warm ups, but it was worth highlighting. Rookie receiver Antonio Williams lines up in the slot and runs what appears to be a choice out, otherwise known as a C.O. It’s a route that is designed to look like a choice route with the release and build up to the break, but the route is always designed to break outside, instead of having the actual choice to break inside or outside. Choice routes and the routes that work off of them are likely to be a significant part of this offense, so this rep is worth looking at in detail.

At the snap, Williams uses a stutter and gets square before releasing to the outside. He widens into the seam, which on a choice route is done to create the space to work either inside or outside. At the top of his route, Williams gives a hard jab step inside with the hint of a head fake too. He then drives off that jab step and breaks sharply outside towards the sideline. The throw and the catch are largely irrelevant here because it’s just a warm up rep, though Williams does make full use of the rep by practicing a toe tap at the sideline before going out of bounds. But the key points here are seeing how smooth Williams is with these types of routes.

I wrote after the draft how Williams could be in contention for the Amon-Ra St.Brown role in this offense. Being able to set up and execute choice routes and the group of routes in that tree is critical to playing that role effectively. Obviously it’d be great to see it against a defender rather than just on air, but you can see that the movement skills to run these types of routes are there.

On Saturday, the Commanders held their first practice with fans in attendance. I was hopeful that this would lead to more clips being posted online but unfortunately the Commanders are apparently very strict and stop fans from recording once it gets into team drills. Fortunately, there were one or two fans that still managed to sneak in a clip or two. Commanders fans Reedie and Zee posted a few clips from practice on Saturday, but one in particular stood out.

You should check their twitter for all the plays they posted, but I’ve zoomed in on this one to give us a better view of what’s going on. This was a trick play that the Commanders offense ran on Saturday. I can’t tell exactly who is involved for the whole play, but I can make out some of them. The Commanders work out of a trips formation with three receivers to the left and Terry McLaurin isolated to the right. Jayden Daniels takes the snap and fakes a hand off to running back Rachaad White to the right before pulling the ball and throwing a tunnel screen out to the left.

I can’t quite tell if the Commanders have two tight ends, or one tight end and one slot receiver to the left, but the important thing here is they get two blockers from the slot out in front of the tunnel screen. I believe it’s Dyami Brown as the outside receiver here, working back inside to receive the screen pass. With two guys out in front, the Commanders sell the screen well and the defense all works out quickly to the flat to try and stop it. However, that plays perfectly into the actual play.

Instead of this being a tunnel screen to Dyami Brown, it’s actually a double pass. When White faked the hand off to the right, he continued out to the flat on that side of the field. The offensive line all blocked for a run fake to that side and while the left side of the line peeled off to fake blocking the tunnel screen, center Julian Good-Jones and right guard Sam Cosmi continued out to the flat to lead the way as blockers for White. Brown receives the tunnel screen pass and fakes running the screen, but then pulls up and throws the ball back across the field to White. White catches the pass and has a ton of space and multiple offensive lineman in front of him to lead him down the sideline for a huge gain.

I wrote earlier this offseason about David Blough and his love for trick plays. If there’s one thing we can guarantee about this offense under Blough is that there will be a number of trick plays on the callsheet in each game. They might not get to every single one of them, but they’ll have options to try and bring a spark or catch the defense by surprise when they need it. This play is just confirmation of that.

One final clip to show you comes from the Commanders official accounts again. They posted two clips in one video of Jayden Daniels throwing passes to second year receiver Jaylin Lane. The first play of the clip starts too far into the play to know exactly what happened, but the second play of the clip gives us something more to go off of.

This clip comes from seven-on-seven practice so there’s no pass rush, but there’s a few interesting things of note here. First off, prior to the snap, Lane is sent in motion across the formation and the ball is snapped before he comes set. Lane works up the field for three steps before sharply breaking out to the flat. Lane breaks outside underneath tight end Ben Sinnott, who comes into frame. Turns out, Sinnott was lined up outside to the right on his own pre-snap, with safety Will Harris opposite him.

Last year, we didn’t see the Commanders use a lot of looks with a tight end isolated outside as a receiver on their own. But Blough is expected to lean more heavily on the tight end group and with athletic tight ends like Chig Okonkwo and Ben Sinnott, they have guys capable of playing out there in space. The clip doesn’t show us the end result of Sinnott’s route. It was likely either a slant or a deeper corner route, but either way it was clearly designed to clear out space in the flat by either working vertically or breaking inside.

That goal is accomplished as Lane breaks freely out to the flat. Thanks to the pre-snap motion, cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon is late to follow Lane across the field and can’t make up ground as Lane breaks out to the flat. That leaves him wide open and Daniels finds him with an easy pass which Lane then takes down the sideline for a nice gain after the catch.

It’s a play worth highlighting for a few reasons. The first is to spotlight Lane. If you’re a regular reader of mine, you’ll know by now that I’m admittedly a bigger fan of Lane than most Commanders fans/media. I think he has the quickness and route running skills to go along with the 4.3 speed to develop into a good threat at receiver. He showed flashes last year but nothing consistent. Before they drafted Williams, I thought Lane had the quickness to do some of the slot receiver role that Williams is now lined up for. This play is a good example of that quickness.

Another thing to highlight from the play is the use of Sinnott out wide. A lot has been made of the Commanders lack of wide receiver threat opposite Terry McLaurin. One way to potentially alleviate that is to lean more on the depth at tight end. As I mentioned earlier, Sinnott and Okonkwo both have the athleticism to line up outside or in the slot, so using more two tight end sets and lining up one or both outside could enable the Commanders to get by with just two receivers on the field and one of them playing in the slot.

The pre-snap motion is also worth spotlighting here. We all know Kliff Kingsbury’s offense was built around tempo, which meant he didn’t use as much pre-snap motion as most modern NFL offenses do. Reports from earlier in the offseason and training camp so far suggest Blough is looking to change that. Various reporters have said there’s far more shifts and motions in this offense with nearly every play having some sort of shift or motion pre-snap. Motions and shifts can be hugely beneficial to an offense because they change the look for the defense and force them to communicate changes quickly. It can also expose coverages and blitzes for the quarterback.

On top of all that, it can help the receiver, as we see here. Lane is a smaller receiver and at times last year, he struggled against press coverage. But by sending Lane across the field in motion and having the ball snapped while he’s in motion gives Lane a free release at the line of scrimmage because Witherspoon couldn’t keep up with the motion. Lane then had all the leverage as he broke out to the flat and Witherspoon still couldn’t make up ground, leaving Lane wide open for an easy throw and catch.

So expect to see a lot more motion from the Commanders offense this year. It will come in a variety of different ways, with just about every eligible receiver motioning at some point. It could be just a short motion of a few yards, it could be a return motion where the receiver works across the field and back to their original spot, or it could be a motion fully across the field as we just saw. Whatever motion is used, it’s important that it has a clear purpose. Some offenses just use motion for the sake of using motion. The best offenses use motion with a purpose. Ben Johnson, who Blough is expected to try and replicate, is one of the best coaches in the NFL with using motion effectively. So hopefully Blough has learned from that and will implement it as well as he did on this rep.