The Patriots and the Commanders were in pretty similar spots after the dust settled on the 2023 NFL season.
Both New England and Washington fired their head coaches after a string of unsuccessful campaigns. And immense struggles last year led to both franchises landing top-three draft picks, which figured to be used on quarterbacks.
Those expectations became reality, as the Commanders drafted Jayden Daniels at No. 2 overall and the Patriots took Drake Maye one pick later this past April. While New England started to show some promise after starting the Maye era in Week 6, the situation in the nation’s capital is far more favorable.
Washington entered Week 9 tied for the third-best winning percentage in all of football and Daniels was among the betting favorites for the MVP Award. There’s a lot to like about these Commanders — so much that players have “privately stated or told their agents that they want to be traded” to Washington, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
The significance of Schefter’s report can’t be understated. Washington has been a laughing stock in the NFL for the bulk of this century, although that billing largely was due to the prior nightmarish ownership under Dan Snyder. And the remarkable turnaround of the organization’s outlook can mostly be credited to Daniels, an electrifying signal-caller who looks like he’ll be a perennial Pro Bowler.
But let’s not forget about the other great decisions Washington recently made. New owner Josh Harris made the right call replacing Ron Rivera with Dan Quinn, a brilliant defensive mind who previously led an offensively gifted team to a Super Bowl. And Harris also appears to have also knocked it out of the park by giving the football operations to Adam Peters, who learned about building a winner from seven seasons in San Francisco’s front office.
The Patriots, meanwhile, are still far away from completing a rebuild. Maye has shown franchise QB potential, but there already is chatter about Jerod Mayo lasting only one season at the helm in New England. Eliot Wolf also needs to be criticized for his underwhelming first offseason leading football ops, as the Patriots failed to address pressing needs and weren’t able to sway stars to Foxboro, Mass., despite a wealth of available salary cap space.
To be fair, Washington’s roster was in better shape than New England’s coming out of last season. But the Commanders arguably weren’t just a great quarterback away from becoming a very competitive team. Daniels has exceeded expectations, but his incredible rookie season probably wouldn’t have happened without other great choices made by Washington’s brass.
As such, Patriots fans should feel a bit uneasy about what’s going on with the Commanders. It doesn’t seem like any players are itching to take their talents to New England, and it remains to be seen when that will change.
