State of the Roster: Commanders Offense

Breaking down where things stand with the Commanders offense heading into the offseason

The Washington Commanders 2024 season is officially over after an incredible year. Rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels led the team to a 12-win season during the regular season and then caught fire in the playoffs, winning two games to get to the NFC Championship game, including knocking on the number one seed Detroit Lions in Detroit. It was far beyond what anyone could have expected for this team, even in their wildest dreams.

Full credit must go to Adam Peters and Dan Quinn for assembling this group and installing a culture that enabled the team to play so competitively against every team they faced. Credit should also go to coordinators Kliff Kingsbury and Joe Whitt Jr., and their respective staffs for absolutely maximizing the talent they had available to them. This was meant to be a team that struggled to six wins. They doubled that.

Finally, the players should also receive a huge portion of the credit. Veterans like Bobby Wagner, Zach Ertz and Austin Ekeler could have seen this as one last paycheck before retirement and take it easy all year. But they all saw it as an opportunity to set a standard and teach the younger players how to go about things the right way.

But with the season over, it’s already time to start looking ahead to next year. Adam Peters and his scouting staff are already traveling to the Senior Bowl to start getting a look at this year's top draft prospects. Free agency is only six weeks away. There will be a lot of turnover for the Commanders this offseason, perhaps not quite as much as there was last year, but the Commanders have a lot of their own free agents to make decisions on and have nearly $90m in cap space to spend this offseason if they want to.

Those decisions will be tough to make. The Commanders could decide to try and recapture the magic of this season by bringing back as many of their own free agents as possible, but they risk going stale by doing that, especially as everyone will be another year older and they already had quite an old roster. Alternatively, they could opt to try and move on, accepting each year is different and building a new team, but that risks losing out on the togetherness that made this team so special.

During their post-season press conference, Dan Quinn and Adam Peters suggested they’d be leaning more towards the latter. “Not every locker room is the same year to year.” Quinn explained. “Next year's team will be different from this year's team”. I think that’s a smart approach, acknowledging that this year was special for what they were able to create but that each year is its own entity and they will have to create a new team next year with plenty of new pieces.

Before getting too far ahead of ourselves by looking at free agents and draft prospects, we should first evaluate the current state of the Commanders roster. So to kick off the offseason, I’m going to go position-by-position and breakdown who is under contract, who is a free agent, who could be potential cut candidates, the state of that position going into the offseason, and the level of need at each spot this offseason. I’ll start today with the offense and break down the defense later in the week.

Quarterback

On the roster: Jayden Daniels, Sam Hartman

Free agents: Marcus Mariota, Jeff Driskel

Analysis: The best part of this season has been seeing the play of rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels and knowing that the Commanders have found their quarterback of the future. We’ve all seen how hard it is to find a young quarterback to build a team around and the Commanders had an outstanding opportunity last year to land their guy. After what was one of the best rookie seasons in NFL history, the Commanders will feel as though they have their guy. Jayden Daniels was nothing short of phenomenal and the encouraging thing is that there is so much more to come from him. The offense lacked explosive plays and got into the habit of relying a bit too much on Daniels to bail them out when things went wrong.

Going into this offseason, the Commanders will be focused on improving the protection for Daniels up front and finding him another couple of weapons to help take some of that pressure of him. That should free Daniels up so that some of those missed shots down the field don’t feel quite so wasteful, and that might just take enough pressure off for Daniels to hit them a bit more consistently too. Better protection up front needs to happen for the offense to evolve.

Daniels showed when he has time in the pocket, he can work through progressions and find the open receiver, but the Commanders were often too limited in what they could do because of the protection. The only way they could attack the intermediate parts of the field consistently were via play-action, where they would keep two tight ends or even a receiver in to chip on both sides of the line, limiting the number of receivers out running routes.

So for Daniels and the offense to continue to grow, the Commanders will need to build a much better supporting cast around him. But the good news is that they’ve done the hardest thing, which is finding the quarterback. Now they just need to continue to build the rest and trust Daniels to elevate the other guys. The only quarterback question the Commanders will have this offseason is about the back up.

Sam Hartman spent the year on the practice squad while Marcus Mariota was the primary back up and Jeff Driskel was the emergency third quarterback. Both Mariota and Driskel are free agents. Hartman’s status is unclear at this point as a practice squad player, but I assume he’ll be around. If Hartman has shown some development on the practice squad, I suspect he’ll be fine to be at least the third quarterback next year.

The question is can they rely on him as the primary back up? I would be surprised if they are at that point yet. The staff praised Mariota all season for how he’s helped Daniels develop and show him the ropes. He also filled in pretty well when Daniels went down injured. Unless a team is willing to offer Mariota a chance to start, which is possible but I think ultimately unlikely, I’d imagine the Commanders will want him back and he’d also want to be back in this system that seems to work well for him. If he does leave, Driskel could be retained or perhaps another veteran free agent could be brought in. But when the quarterback question is about the back up rather than the start, you’re in a good position.

Level of need: Low

Running Back

On the roster: Brian Robinson, Austin Ekeler

Free agents: Jeremy McNichols, Chris Rodriguez

Cut candidates: Austin Ekeler ($1.5m dead cap, $3.46m saved), Brian Robinson ($212k dead cap, $3.3m saved)

Analysis: Calling either Robinson or Ekeler cut candidates is probably a bit extreme. I think at least one if not probably both will be back next year. But just looking at the contract situation, both can save the team over $3m in cap space if they were to be cut with minimal dead cap hits. Saquon Barkley showed this season the value of a great running back, but there’s only a few of those guys around. Anyone less than great is replaceable at a cheaper rookie contract rate. Robinson and Ekeler are both good running backs, but neither are in that great category.

That being said, I’m not sure running back will be a priority position for the Commanders this offseason. I think we saw Brian Robinson can be successful in this system early in the year, but the Commanders struggled to execute blocks up front down the stretch and that slowed Robinson down. He’s not going to be a Barkley type that can break through four tackles and then explode down the field for a 60-yard touchdown, almost nobody is. But he was very valuable to their early season success.

His ability to break through the first tackle and fight back to the line, or fall forward and turn a two-yard run into a four-yard run was big in keeping that extremely efficient offense ahead of the chains at the start of the season. The fumbles against the Eagles certainly didn’t help, but I think Robinson is a good back that can do the job if they improve the offensive line, which will be a priority anyway.

Ekeler is a different situation. He made some key plays as both a runner and receiver and the Commanders offense always looked more of a threat with him on the field compared to him on the sidelines. But he is 29 and will be 30 in May. He’s had a lot of hits over the years and spoke during the season after he suffered a concussion that his wife wanted him to stop playing football because of the repeated concussions. So he may well have a retirement decision to make that could take this decision out of the Commanders hands. I’m sure his veteran presence and playmaking ability would be valued by the coaching staff, but they might prefer someone a bit young with a bit more explosiveness in that role.

Both Jeremy McNichols and Chris Rodriguez are free agents this offseason. I never would have thought McNichols would have played as big of a role as he did this year, but he did a very good job, especially in pass protection. At 29, McNichols is another veteran that the Commanders might want to move on and get younger, but if Ekeler retires or is cut, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Commanders try to bring McNichols back. He’s unlikely to be all that expensive and a reliable pass protector at running back that has experience in this system and trust with Jayden Daniels has value. I doubt it will be a priority for them and if Ekeler stays for another season I could easily see them moving on from McNichols, knowing he’d likely be available to them in training camp or at the start of the season if they were to suffer an injury and need another back.

Chris Rodriguez is an interesting one. He’s much younger at 24 and has far less wear on his body. Given how effusive Dan Quinn was with Rodriguez at times this season, I would think they’d like to have him back. Quinn praised his work ethic to battle through being a back up that got cut and then called up from the practice squad and still showed development and production when he saw the field. He’s a much more natural zone runner than Brian Robinson, so if the Commanders opt to lean more into zone running schemes, he’d be a good fit. But while he offers some thump, he doesn’t have the explosiveness that the Commanders are likely looking for in a second option to pair with Robinson. So like McNichols, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was brought back on a cheap deal but I could just as easily see them moving on from him.

Overall the running back position is in a bit of a weird spot. Robinson and Ekeler are likely a good enough one-two punch if the offensive line improves the way it should this offseason. But neither are going to put the team over the top. To find the guy that can would likely require a high draft pick, which is of course possible but the Commanders have so many other needs that they might have to be content with the state of their current running back position and focus those resources elsewhere. I think the likelihood here is that Robinson and Ekeler are both back (assuming Ekeler doesn’t retire) and the Commanders look to add a third or fourth running back on the third day of the draft to develop behind them.

Level of need: Low/Medium

Wide Receiver