Washington Commanders season “gets a lot easier” in second half – Daily Slop
Editor’s note: Each day, Hogs Haven compiles a collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East, the NFL and sports in general, with a sprinkling of other stuff. Enjoy! Commanders 1. Rare back-to-back road games to start the season. The Commanders have benefited from starting the season at home for the last few years. Since 2020, they have had a home opener five times and won four of them, the most recent being their 21-6 victory over the New York Giants . This season, not only will the Commanders kick things off on the road, but they’ll also be away from Northwest Stadium in Week 2 as well. It’s rare for Washington to start the season with back-to-back road matchups. It’s only happened three times in the last 43 years, with the last time coming in 2012 during Robert Griffin III ’s rookie year. The other two occasions in recent memory were in 2001 during Marty Schottenheimer’s first season as the franchise’s head coach and in 1982, when Washington won its first Super Bowl. The Commanders will face two of the better teams in the division for those matchups. They’ll open the season against the Philadelphia Eagles for the third time since 2019 and then travel to AT&T Stadium to face the Dallas Cowboys . Both teams are particularly tough to beat on the road. The Eagles have not lost a Week 1 home opener since 2010, while the Cowboys are 31-18-1 at AT&T Stadium since 2020. However, it would provide positive momentum for the Commanders if they managed to get a 2-0 start against two division rivals. Heavy.com Finding unheralded running backs who can cut it in the NFL has become a happy habit for the Washington Commanders , who “really like” a free-agent addition with the “explosive” talent to challenge last year’s late-round draft find Jacory Croskey-Merritt for carries this season. Undrafted backfield threat Robert Henry Jr. has the Commanders “intrigued,” according to ESPN’s John Keim . He explained on The John Keim Report how Henry is “going to be one to watch in training camp. To what degree? I don’t know. I know there’s some people here are intrigued by him because he had a game against Texas A&M in college where he ran for 177 yards, made guys miss. Like that stuff opens eyes. So like, hey, let’s see him here. He’s one of the undrafted guys that I think will be one to watch.” Bleeding Green Nation What an absolute dump. Know what’s worse than a dilapidated stadium in the early afternoon? A dilapidated stadium at night. The Commanders play in the middle of nowhere and it’s hard to get both into and out of the stadium grounds. A quick day trip for a game like this makes sense if you’re on one of those large fan-centric buses, but with a trip of roughly two-and-a-half hours before even taking traffic into consideration, those are much more palatable for 1 p.m. games rather than prime-time ones. Oh, yeah, Northwest Stadium has the worst sight lines of any NFL home, too. Hard pass! Blogging the Boys The Cowboys get off to a strong NFC East start by winning two games in a row in the division. The Cowboys offense at home will be too much for the Commanders defense. We’ll also get a second look at how a Christian Parker defense deals with a mobile quarterback. Who knows if this game will mean anything to either franchise at this point in the season? We might see a lot of backups. Or, it may mean everything to one or both of them. We’re taking the view the Cowboys have locked in their playoff position and rest some starters. Commanders win. Cowboys loss: 10-7 record Big Blue View One question: Will Jayden Daniels be healthy? That really is THE question for this game, and I think we have to assume that he will be. Scary Terry might finally start to slow down this year, but the duo of Luke McCaffrey and Antonio Williams (2026 3rd, Clemson) could pick up the slack. I would also expect the Dan Quinn to have his rebuilt defense playing well by this point [... truncated ...]