NFL championship round picks: Consider Bills and Eagles this weekend
Lorenzo Reyes is back with his best bet for the AFC and NFC championship games. He also threw in a couple of bonus player prop bets for those interested.
ASHBURN, Va. – If you’ve spent any time around the Washington Commanders over the past 18 months, the sea change is readily apparent.
Since first-year head coach Dan Quinn was hired last February, the walls of the team auditorium have been adorned with slogans. “Anybody, anywhere, anytime.” And “The only fight that matters is the one we are in.”
The club is preparing for the NFC championship game for the first time in 33 years. That’s because quarterback Jayden Daniels has had perhaps the best rookie year in NFL history. Linebacker Bobby Wagner, who played for Quinn when he coordinated the Seattle Seahawks’ legendary defenses, tight end Zach Ertz, running back Austin Ekeler and rookie defensive back Mike Sainristil are among the newcomers whose impact has been undeniable, if overshadowed by Daniels. Holdovers like Brian Robinson Jr. and longtime team leader Terry McLaurin have flourished.
And that’s just what’s visible to the naked eye.
There’s also an unmistakable sense of relief – you could fairly say joy – since owner Josh Harris rescued the team from a decades-long run of disasters, embarrassments and controversies (on and off the field) under predecessor Dan Snyder. (Per an ESPN report, Snyder tried to kill the 2023 sale of the team and resents the Commanders’ newfound success.)
Players, coaches and staffers now have what had been a luxury in these parts – the ability to focus on winning football games and/or supporting that effort rather than managing or answering questions about the latest scandal or crisis none of them begat. The dissolution of the long-toxic environment allowed for an entirely new culture to fill the vacuum, one built on positivity, brotherhood, accomplishing the task at hand, constant competition and compassion.
It’s called the “Commander Standard.”
“It’s a code we live by,” McLaurin, a two-time Pro Bowl receiver, said of a motto that coalesced during offseason training sessions last spring. “No matter if you’ve been here for six years, or you just came in off of free agency or practice squad, whatever.
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME PICKS: Experts forecast Super Bowl 59 entries
SAQUON BARKLEY: Can Commanders stop Eagles star?
“When you hold that standard, and you put it in writing, you sign your name to it – you hold yourself accountable to that. And not only do you hold yourself accountable to that, but the other guys in the locker room hold you accountable to that.”
It’s meant highly competitive practice periods. Player input into game plans. Spirited card games in the locker room. Bonding in social situations away from the team’s facility. Quinn’s belief in trying to treat everyone – stars, rookies, vets, journeymen, staff – equally.
Yet his rejection of labels from the outside – like underdog or rebuild – has also shifted the perspective of a team that went 12-5 in the regular season, Washington’s most wins since the legendary 1991 squad cruised to victory in Super Bowl 26, the franchise’s last championship.
“Did we feel dismissed or put off? Yeah, of course some. I think that happened in the opening game,” Quinn said when reflecting on the club’s Week 1 loss at Tampa Bay, when expectations of the Commanders were decidedly lower despite buzz already being generated by Daniels.
“I was like, ‘Hey, (bleep) you, that’s not how it’s going to go down.’ And I was upset, but it wasn’t disrespect. It was dismissiveness, and I felt some kind of way, but it didn’t motivate me more to say that’s how they think of us. … It was, we’re going to be a lot better than what we just showed today. And eventually we’ll show that.”
Dan Quinn’s steady approach produces instant results
Eventually turned into immediately, the team going on a four-game heater while winning seven of its next eight contests after the loss to the Buccaneers, whom the Commanders recently defeated in a wild-card round rematch to spark their current run to Sunday’s NFC title tilt against the Eagles in Philadelphia. Yet it was Quinn’s steadfastness that also allowed Washington to weather adversity, like a three-game slide in November that threatened to derail the team and consign it to another lost season.
“DQ (Quinn), first and foremost, he’s a leader of men. Playing for a coach that allows you to be yourself within the culture is extremely empowering,” said McLaurin.
“When you have that type of trust within someone (coaches and teammates) that you see on a daily basis – sometimes more than your family – it’s really important when you go through the ups and downs of an NFL season.”
Players and assistants repeatedly cited Quinn’s treatment of every week as a championship game as another component to their resilience and near-instant success – but also why this weekend’s game hasn’t drastically altered what’s become a routine mindset around Commanders Park.
“It’s a no-excuse mentality,” said McLaurin, a sixth-year veteran who had been the most recognizable and significant player on the roster in the years before Daniels’ arrival.
“This is a huge game, biggest game that I know I’ve played in my career – (that) a lot of us have played in our careers. But my emotions about this game is this is just what we do, this is what we’ve been doing all season. And so you don’t have to get up and get emotionally hyped or do anything different or extra this week.”
Said punter Tress Way, Washington’s longest-tenured player after 11 seasons near the Beltway: “I don’t think very many guys are lucky enough to have someone like DQ as a head coach. He has a way of addressing everything. He knows our families are texting us. He knows our friends are. None of us tell him that, but he just knows how it goes. His ability to get us locked in on Wednesday practice against Philly this week, it’s just a fun way to compete and to be in the moment, and he has a gift of that.”
The elimination of so many outside distractions, an almost perfectly targeted free-agent haul by Quinn and rookie general manager Adam Peters and a Daniels-led draft class loaded with talent and character sparked optimism in training camp that the quarter-century of futility under Snyder might soon come to an end.
Still, and neither Quinn nor his players will admit it, the results of the universal philosophical buy-in have been nothing less than extraordinary. Win Sunday, and Washington will have as many victories in these playoffs – three – as it had combined from 1992 to 2023.
“(T)he way we live here is different,” said defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. “(Y)ou have to be a little bit crazy to be here. Because the way we do things is not the normal way, and we don’t want it to be the normal way. It’s a special place and everybody – we’ve bought into, ‘Anybody, anywhere, anytime.’ It doesn’t matter. … That’s just the way we live.
“(T)here’s very few times in life that you have opportunity to be part of the change and reap the reward. Usually what happens is a team starts it, and then two years later they win it. We have the opportunity to do something a little bit different. We could be the team that started to turn, and then if we keep on staying focused and win this game, we can reap the reward at the same time and that rarely happens.”
The Jayden Daniels’ factor – and beyond
Of course, Daniels, 24, has been a one-man rarity. He set regular-season rookie quarterback records for completion percentage (69.0%) and rushing yards (891). He lofted a Hail Mary to beat the Chicago Bears, threw an overtime touchdown pass to Ertz to vanquish the Atlanta Falcons, all before engineering postseason road upsets of the Bucs and top-seeded Detroit Lions in the divisional round.
“I think you kinda see that through our play is like, hey, we’re gonna keep fighting no matter if we’re down 28, you know, we’re up 28,” said Daniels. “You know, the game is never over until the clock is zero.”
Beat the Eagles, whom he scorched for five TD passes last month (including the game-winner with 6 seconds left) and Daniels would be the first rookie QB to notch 15 wins in the regular season and playoffs combined – and, more importantly, the first to take a team to the Super Bowl.
But as superlative as Daniels has been, he couldn’t have done it without the supportive infrastructure Harris, Quinn and Peters established from the top of the organization to the bottom.
“Just being dog-ass competitors, man, I think that’s something that I love about this culture – that’s the first thing that DQ said when he got here, ‘You’re a dog-ass competitor, then this is the place for you.’ I sat up in my seat and smiled, because that’s what I’ve been itching for,” said McLaurin.
All NFL news on and off the field. Sign up for USA TODAY’s 4th and Monday newsletter.
The Eagles are six-point favorites going into Sunday, but the Commanders don’t care. Discount a close-knit team that continues to jell and defy expectations at your peril.
“We had a goal of being different and being uncommon (more) than anything this place has ever seen,” said McLaurin, scanning his surroundings when meeting with reporters Wednesday. “Anybody can come up here and see all these things. You can say, ‘Anybody, anytime, anywhere,’ but if you don’t live it, it doesn’t really mean nothing. I think we’ve got a group of people who want to live the words that we’re speaking.
“If you say you’re a dog or a competitor, you have to be that. You can’t pick and choose when you’re whatever you say you are. And so that Commander Standard is non-negotiable.
“Going forward that’s who we are.”
Contributing: Chris Bumbaca
***
Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter, @ByNateDavis.