The NFC East offers a turnaround chance for one struggling team - 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!

Even with the second-worst record in the conference, the Commanders are only two games out of first place in their division. And if the team makes the necessary adjustments over their week off , that deficit could shrink quickly.

When the Commanders return to the field, they'll play the Philadelphia Eagles at home without quarterback Jalen Hurts, who is done for the year with a scary blood clot situation.

After that, they'll play the biggest disappointment in the NFL — with the only possible exception of the team they share a stadium with — the Los Angeles Rams.

If the Commanders win both of those games, they're right back in business.

They'll face the New York Giants on the road, who they should've beaten at home . They'll host the ever-inconsistent Cincinnati Bengals. They'll visit the Arizona Cardinals and Tennessee Titans, two teams they should beat regardless of the location. Then they'll host the Houston Texans and Atlanta Falcons, both currently sub-.500 operations.

The Commanders should win at least five of those games. They can probably win all of them if they bring their best.

[U]n 2020, Washington started the season 2-7 and rallied to make the playoffs at 7-9.

This Commanders team is substantially more talented than that one was. That squad's regular-season quarterbacks were Dwayne Haskins, Kyle Allen, and a one-legged Alex Smith. Its second-leading receiver was Cam Sims.

This team has Jayden Daniels under center. Even without McLaurin, Stefon Diggs, third-round rookie Antonio Williams, and Treylon Burks are still here. And first-year linebacker Sonny Styles is putting together a Defensive Rookie of the Year-caliber campaign just as Chase Young did then .

All the Commanders need to do is stay relatively healthy the rest of the way and let the rest of the NFC East keep imploding. Once they pick up one or two wins, which they'd better be able to do with this stretch coming up, they'll have momentum and vibes on their side.

It looks bleak now. But that can change, and the bye week is the perfect time to refresh and map out the road ahead.

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[T]he reason they need to give him more looks is clear: he creates separation like no one else on the roster, and even though his snap share has stayed steady (hovering in the high 60s of late, even in London when McLaurin was out nursing a hamstring), he's criminally underused in David Blough's system.

Against San Francisco, Williams ran 35 routes but had only four targets, catching three for 50 yards. All four targets came on third down in the fourth quarter, and his three catches accounted for Washington's only successful third-down conversions of the night. In an offense looking for answers, why ignore one?

A glance over Williams' numbers above makes a major case for him to be involved earlier and more often, including plays where he's the intended first read. PFF credits him with 69 run-blocking snaps and a 51.5 run-blocking grade, leaving room for improvement if Washington expands his role in two-receiver formations.

The bye gives Blough time to make Williams a bigger part of the plan from the opening drive. Give him designed opportunities on first and second down. Washington has a lot of production to replace with McLaurin out, and Williams has already shown he can handle more of that work.

Steve Wilks has joined Washington's defensive staff to help Dan Quinn and Daronte Jones, but his role comes with an important limitation

According to NFL Insiders Mike Garafolo and Ian Rapoport, the Washington Commanders hired Steve Wilks to help the defensive staff ahead of the game against the 49ers. The decision to hire Wilks was made back in September, but he didn't start working with the team until last week. Wilks will assist with game planning and will work under Quinn and defensive coordinator Daronte Jones; he will not be with the team on game days.

It's important to stress that Wilks has no playcalling duties and is there to make the staff's job easier. The real gauge will come after the bye, when everyone will see whether any consistency changes are visible, as adding another football mind doesn't guarantee anything changes on the field.

Dan Quinn bought himself time with the fight Washington showed in San Francisco, and the Commanders have already added Steve Wilks to help the defensive staff

The defense is where Wilks comes in. Jones' unit has struggled to adjust after halftime, as we noted earlier this month , and Odafe Oweh's slow start on a $100 million deal hasn't helped. Sonny Styles, the NFL's top defensive rookie at the quarter mark, gives Wilks a young piece to build around. Daron Payne, who has 12 sacks over the four seasons since his 2022 breakout, landed third on FOX Sports' list of the best players who could be available before Nov. 10.

The offense took its own hit. Terry McLaurin tore his patellar tendon and will miss the rest of the season, Quinn said, per The Athletic's Jonathan Jones , which leaves Daniels without his top target and the front office with trade options to explore .

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The Commanders get two weeks to fix third downs, the run game and Odafe Oweh's pass rush before a 2-4 Eagles team brings Tanner McKee to Landover on Nov 1

Two weeks is a long time to sit on a 23-17 loss, and the Washington Commanders will spend their bye trying to fix the reason they keep losing close games. Monday night in Santa Clara, they converted 3 of 12 third downs against the 49ers. For the season they are 25 of 81, a 30.9% rate that ranks 31st in the NFL ahead of only Cleveland, according to NFL.com .

Washington went 0 of 4 on third down in the first half Monday, and the offense was flagged seven times for 66 yards. Holding calls on Josh Conerly Jr., Lucas Patrick and Brandon Coleman pushed drives backward, and Chris Paul's face mask erased a go-ahead 31-yard touchdown run by Jeremy McNichols. We wrote that the offensive line keeps undoing what Jayden Daniels builds, and the third-down numbers back that up.

Baun is the reason the Eagles can survive without much else. He had 12 tackles, a tackle for loss and two pass breakups in the 24-22 opener at Lincoln Financial Field. Washington targeted him six times in coverage and gained minus-2 yards, and PFF gave him a 90.6 defensive grade, per the Eagles . He and Jalen Carter stuffed a third-and-1 in the first quarter, and Baun dropped a screen for a 7-yard loss in the second. Daniels needs manageable distances, and his line has to stop handing back 10 yards at a time.

On Wednesday, PFF ranked the Commanders offensive line 20th in the league through six weeks.

"Washington's front five combined to allow 18 pressures, eight of which were either sacks or quarterback hits," wrote PFF's Gordon McGuinness . "Right tackle Josh Conerly Jr. permitted six pressures on 51 pass-blocking snaps, a mark that led the team."

Commanders writer Chad Ryan posted a chart on X that showed Daniels has had, on average, just 1.5 seconds before the pocket has collapsed on him this season. That's the shortest amount of time in the league.

Entering Week 6, the Commanders were third in offensive line combinations according to Next Gen Stats.

But Quinn was very clear Tuesday. He won't stop shuffling the offensive line until the unit plays a lot better.

Laremy Tunsil has not been on the field since he tore his triceps in training camp, but that does not mean he is absent from the Washington Commanders' facility.

Actually, the five-time Pro Bowler is around quite a bit, and it has been a benefit for the team's young offensive linemen.

"I think it's been a blessing," Josh Conerly said. "And it means a lot to us, as a group and for me personally."

Tunsil might not be able to help the Commanders protect Jayden Daniels on game days, but the veteran is still finding ways to contribute while receiving treatment for his injury. He has been offering advice to the rest of the offensive linemen in the room and providing guidance on how they can improve their skill set. To the Commanders, it is more evidence of Tunsil's leadership and how it has elevated the roster.

"I'm sick about the ending," Quinn said.

He should be. A win under these circumstances — against an unbeaten, smack-you-into-next-week team against which he trailed 23-3 in the fourth quarter — would have righted not only Quinn's own ship, but would have yanked the Commanders back into the division race, leapfrogging the 2-4 Cowboys and Eagles.

"We went out and we competed hard, but competed only gets you so far in this league," Daniels said. "We got to do whatever it takes to win the game, and we didn't win."

Pick that quote up and attribute it to any Commander from so many games over the past year-and-change. It gets them nowhere. Since the beginning of last season, according to TruMedia, only five teams have a worse point differential than Washington — Tennessee, the New York Jets, Las Vegas, Arizona and Miami.

If that seems like the dregs of the league, well, that's the company the Commanders now keep. At some point, your new house just settles into becoming part of the neighborhood.

The bye week, though, can't just be about the players. If Quinn is to survive — and that's not just for a Nov. 1 home game against Philadelphia, but into 2027 — he's going to have to do some serious self-examination. Right now, he is good — and honest — about identifying problems. He's not so good at fixing them.

The fact that a 20-point deficit didn't spiral into another embarrassment likely gives Quinn the tiniest bit of wiggle room. A schedule that opens up — the 2-4 Eagles without Jalen Hurts, the 2-4 Rams who are a mess, Arizona and Tennessee beyond — provides opportunity.

Check out the top photos of the Washington Commanders during their Week 6 matchup with the San Francisco 49ers

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni has been fined $250,000 for his conduct toward game officials, according to Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer , though the financial penalty reportedly includes an option to avoid payment. Breer reported that Sirianni, Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and Jets coach Aaron Glenn each received $250,000 fines. The penalties are in abeyance, meaning they are on hold and could be rescinded for good behavior.

The discipline surfaced as league officials addressed tensions involving coaches, players, and officials during this week's owners meetings. Available reporting did not identify the specific incident or pattern of behavior that prompted Sirianni's fine. For Sirianni, the development adds another issue during a difficult stretch for Philadelphia. The Eagles have lost four straight after a 2-0 start and enter Monday night's matchup against Dallas looking for an offensive turnaround.

[I]ts conditional status matters. The penalty serves as a warning with potential financial consequences as the NFL tries to improve interactions with its officials.

First off, the Cowboys are still very much in the playoff race due to the poor state of the NFC East division. For the second week in a row, all four teams in the NFC East failed to win, leaving the division up for grabs.

As much as many of us would like to see Schottenheimer replaced after his many coaching gaffs, that seems highly unlikely given the state of the NFC East division and the possibility of the Cowboys coming out on top. After all, who would step in to replace him?

It's up to them to start executing and playing better. For the sake for mental health, all of us are probably hoping they can do so.

At 2-4, the Cowboys still have time to turn things around. The NFC East is not out of reach, and there are enough talented players on this roster to make a run if the team can finally put together a complete performance. Writing off the season in October would be premature.

But it is fair to ask what this team is building toward if the same problems keep showing up every week. If Dallas cannot establish a clear identity, clean up its mistakes or get consistent performances from its coaching staff and leaders, then talk about the draft will become more prominent.

Dallas does not need to panic after six games, but it does need to be honest about what it is seeing. The Cowboys have talent, and they've shown flashes of progress on both sides of the ball. What they have not shown is the ability to put it all together for four quarters, consistently.

Right now, the Cowboys do not look like a team that is one adjustment away from contention. They look like a team searching for answers — and running out of time to find them.

[T]he Cowboys [can't be excused] from not properly accounting for if Schotty could keep the offense consistently performing while they went "all in" on a defensive makeover, and now the organization is paying the cost of having more holes in the boat than patches – seeing the defense, offense, and special teams all have a hand in ugly losses.

More simply put, the Cowboys "run it back" approach to hyping up all 11 starters returning on offense as a huge positive is not working, and this is another thing we've seen before as fans. Whenever proper attention isn't given to any one position group or facet of the game at large in the offseason, they regress to the point of being a problem.

The low hanging fruit of a take on the job he did in these areas in 2025 was that everything offensively was under too much fire because of the horrid defense, so all things considered because of that he did alright.

Last time out, the Cowboys defense held the Packers to six points in the second half, and the Cowboys still abandoned the run game and didn't make much noise in a comeback attempt.

The Cowboys offense banked on experience to be dominant in 2026, but they're paying an ultimate cost right now for an underperforming head coach and play-caller dragging the entire ceiling this team has down in a division that's never, ever been more winnable.

It feels like the move to McCarthy was inevitable since the Giants surrendered a fifth-round draft pick to acquire him. In an ideal world, Harbaugh might have waited until after the BYE week to make this move. Then again, the Giants have not been living in an ideal world since the moment Jaxson Dart was lost for the season.

Fact is, the Giants have been in survival mode. They are going to be in survival mode all season, doing the best they can with backup quarterbacks they did not plan on playing.

McCarthy is not Dart. He does, though, give the Giants the opportunity to be the offense they want to be rather than the offense they have to be with Winston. There is more upside there, though nobody knows if McCarthy will be better or worse than Winston has been.

The Giants went 2-1-1 in four games with Winston starting after Jaxson Dart was lost for the season with a knee injury, McCarthy, though, closer approximates Dart's skill set than the immobile, 32-year-old Winston. The Giants spent the offseason building an offense that would incorporate Dart's running ability. That was lost with Winston. McCarthy, 23, is not the runner Dart is, but does give offensive coordinator Matt Nagy the ability to access that portion of the playbook.

Harbaugh is not worried about how much of the offense McCarthy can run.

"He's got the gameplan down," Harbaugh said. "I think he had it down last week pretty fully, even more so this week. It has been tailored a little more toward his direction, probably. He'll be ready to go."

Harbaugh would not commit to McCarthy being the starter for the remainder of the season.

"Life is day-to-day, minute-to-minute. There's really no guarantees," Harbaugh said. "I would never say that anything is permanent in football or life. That's the plan going forward."

The "NFC Least" bit was funny last week. Now it's just sort of sad. For the second straight week, the entire division failed to muster a win, despite every team playing. It's the first time in NFL history that's happened, and it speaks to what kind of year it's been for a division that's been ravaged by injuries and decorated in disappointment. At the moment, the 3-2-1 Giants are pacing this lackluster race, but they can't even decide on a starting quarterback (or a running back). The Cowboys and Eagles follow at 2-4, with Philly trying to figure out what to do next at QB after placing Jalen Hurts on injured reserve, while Dallas is simply trying to find any momentum on either side of the ball. Finally, there's the 1-4-1 Commanders, who have actually looked plucky since Jayden Daniels' return, yet continue to make all the wrong kinds of headlines.

What person in this division is facing the most heat?

There is a strong case to say Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni is facing the most heat — both deserved and undeserved. He spent Monday afternoon repeating that he was not a medical expert when reporters asked him how the Eagles managed Hurts' blood clots . Indeed, he is not the authority on the medical situation. But it was an organizational misstep not to make those with authority on the situation available (the team's medical staff reports to general manager Howie Roseman), or to at the very least brief Sirianni with necessary information. Meanwhile, the on-field product on offense is miserable.

The Commanders coach was eight days out from a nearly unforgivable game-management situation against the Giants when he introduced the possibility that he didn't know what down it was. Quinn's answer for that fourth-down play Monday night in San Francisco — that he absolutely knew what down it was, and that someone asked him if the Commanders could kick a field goal — is being scrutinized in the aftermath. It's not an indication he's making something up. It's an indication that his every action — every timeout, every fourth-down, every personnel deployment — is under the microscope . That's what happens when you win only four times in your last 18 tries.

Will the team you cover be a buyer before the deadline? Should they be?

There's just no way. The Commanders shouldn't be. They won't be. And that's even if they win their next two games against the 2-4 Eagles and the 2-4 Rams. (Is everyone out there 2-4?) It's not just that their big "buy" move in the 2024 season, cornerback Marshon Lattimore, flopped. It's that they have seven picks in the 2027 draft, and they clearly need as many of those to hit to rebuild a roster that, three years into the reign of general manager Adam Peters, needs both high-end talent and quality depth. If the Commanders make this a win-now year, it'll be because they methodically stack wins against a slightly easier schedule filled with opponents who are dealing with serious injuries and other issues. It won't be because they make a splashy move for a veteran player, sacrificing precious draft capital in the process.

The hidden world of technology, chaos, and split-second conversations behind every play

[ Bill-in-Bangkok : I read this entire (and very long) article. If you have any interest in the topic, you might well find this deep dive fascinating. I only provided the intro paragraphs in this excerpt because it was too hard to mine a single nugget out of this article ]

The hidden world inside NFL headsets is as complex and strategic as it is chaotic: a textured audio landscape of intense competition, stress, dramatically shifting emotions, unwritten rules and even absurdity.

From moment to moment, anything can happen.

Batteries die, communications get fuzzy (especially at certain stadiums) and paranoia flows. One coach demands silence as he calls a play, racing the play clock while his quarterback waits anxiously. Another flips channels to share praise or strategy, or to curse at someone.

A desperate assistant sneaks to a urinal midgame, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fans, headset still over his ears — his relief disrupted by the voice of his furious boss looking for him on the sideline. Headsets erupt with joy after a touchdown or sack. A play call fails, and it's swearing or worse: awkward silence.

"In the moment, it can be like, 'Holy s—, what the f— are we doing? How is this a billion-dollar industry?'" Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Drew Petzing said. "And then there are other moments where you're like, 'Wow, that was so impressive.'"

We talked to more than two dozen current and former coaches, players, analysts, equipment managers and other experts about the relationships, technology and split-second decision-making that they see and hear every week but fans never do.

We take you inside the headset, from how the system works to what actually happens during every game.