Bullock's Film Room

The Washington Commanders pulled off a stunning win over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. The Commanders took on the defending Super Bowl champions without a number of key starters including star quarterback Jayden Daniels, yet back up quarterback Marcus Mariota managed to lead the team to a potentially season-saving victory. The Commanders entered the weekend with a 0-2 record and staring down the barrel of a possible, or perhaps even quite likely 0-3 record.

It’s game day! Unfortunately, it looks like it will be a tough one for the Commanders. They’re hosting the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks today, and they’re doing so without a number of key players. Quarterback Jayden Daniels won’t be out as long as initially feared, but he will miss this game, meaning Marcus Mariota will start. Right guard Sam Cosmi is also out of this one with a concussion suffered late on in the Cowboys game.

One of the bright spots in the Commanders 0-2 start to the season has been rookie receiver Antonio Williams. Williams was drafted in the third round and immediately drew comparisons to Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Lions. With new offensive coordinator David Blough expecting to build his offense around the 2023 Lions attack that he was a part of, Williams looked like someone that could fill that slot receiver role that St. Brown plays so well.

There’s understandably a lot of negativity around the Commanders after star quarterback Jayden Daniels injured his elbow against the Cowboys on Sunday, a game that the team then lost and fell to 0-2. Given the history of this team, it’s very easy to fall into the old habit of thinking the season is done and the team needs to fire everyone and start all over again. That’s the nature of the NFL when seasons are only 17 games long, people overreact to every single thing that happens.

The nightmare scenario happened for the Washington Commanders in their loss to the Cowboys on Sunday. Star quarterback Jayden Daniels dislocated his left elbow, the same injury he suffered last year. He’s already been ruled out of this week’s game against the Seahawks and will likely miss at least a few more games after that. The team are sourcing opinions of multiple specialists to see if Daniels could return to the field as he did last year with the same injury, or if surgery may be needed.

Subscribe to Bullock's Film Room to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

It’s game day! Commanders are on the road again this week, travelling to Dallas to take on the Cowboys. Another big divisional game and another big opportunity for this team to make an early statement about what they can be this year. The Cowboys offense provides a completely different test to the Eagles so it should be interesting to see how the revamped Commanders defense holds up. Hopefully the Commanders offense can start a bit quicker than they did last week too. Should be another fun one.

Hey everyone! It’s been a busy opening week. I remember asking you all for your thoughts about The District Film Room videos and you guys gave some great feedback. I decided rather than posting each video as it went out on YouTube, I would do a weekly round up post on Friday or Saturday and post a link to each video there.

We finally got our first look at the new offense being run by first-time offensive coordinator David Blough. Blough’s rise to offensive coordinator has been a quick one. In 2023, he was a quarterback and on the Detroit Lions practice squad. For the past two years, he was the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Commanders. Now he jumps from an assistant coach with very little experience into arguably the most important job in football, the offensive play-caller.

One of the biggest positives from the Commanders opening game of the season was the overall performance of the defense. We’ve speculated all offseason just how well new defensive coordinator Daronte Jones would be able to replicate the success he had in Minnesota under Brian Flores. Coaching under Flores and being able to install his defense is one thing, but calling a game and being as aggressive as the most aggressive defensive minded coach in the NFL is another story.