MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
The Washington Commanders have won four games in a row for the first time in 16 years and sit in first place in the NFC East, and just about everyone who wears burgundy and gold on Sundays has noticed.
There were 59,030 roaring fans in Northwest Stadium last Sunday, a near sellout, to see the Commanders lay waste to the Cleveland Browns, 34-13, and it wasn’t so much that there were that many fans there for the game; that has happened with some semi-regularity recently, depending upon the team that happened to be in town to play the Commanders.
The difference – the big difference – was that the vast majority of those 59,000-plus fans on Sunday were there to see the Commanders play, and not only did they see them play, they played a role in how the team played, according to Commanders head coach Dan Quinn, just as the Washington fans always influenced how the team played in the day.
“The home-field advantage helped the defense play better on third down,” Quinn said after the game. “We felt that energy and support from the sideline. You could feel the energy that was brought. That’s the home-field advantage that is such a big deal.”
In Washington, and even in the early years in Landover, that was just considered to be old hat.
The Commanders are hoping it becomes the new old hat, that a packed house full of raucous Commanders fans will become a habit in the same way that Redskins fans used to consider it to be their job.
It didn’t take long, if you consider the 24 years Dan Snyder owned the team to be not long, but the Washington fans are back in, and they seem to be all the way back in once more.
The vibe is back, the enthusiasm is real, because not only does this team seem to be pretty good, this team is exciting to watch because of the play of rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, who in just five games has taken the NFL by storm with his fluid grace, his explosive play-making, his unreal release and his veteran’s poise.
He has played just five games in the NFL since being selected by the Commanders with the No. 2 pick in last summer’s draft and is already being mentioned as one of the best quarterbacks in the league as he became the first player in NFL history with 1,000-plus pass yards and 250-plus rush yards in his first five career games.
Truthfully, there hasn’t been this much excitement for the Redskins/Commanders since 2012 when Robert Griffin III took Washington and the league by storm to lead the Redskins to the East Division crown. Yet even compared to the far too short-lived RGIII phenomenon, the current wave of Daniels enthusiasm just seems different.
It seems different because it feels more legit, because everything surrounding the franchise presently is more legit, beginning with the new ownership group led by Josh Harris, which is in its second year.
Even when times were good in the Snyder era, it felt as though it was being maintained by smoke and mirrors and, in the end, it turned out that it was, which explains why there were so very few times when things were good during the Snyder era.
In fact, it was the greed and the lying of the Snyder era that helped make the RG3 experience such a short one, as it was then head coach Mike Shanahan who allowed Griffin to continue playing after taking a gruesome hit from the Baltimore Ravens’ Haloti Ngati.
Griffin continued to play on his injured knee in the win over the Ravens and played on it in the playoffs and ended up tearing multiple ligaments.
Shanahan said five times after the Ravens game that Griffin had been cleared to play by Dr. James Andrews, the team doctor, which Andrews said did not happen, which is why it was Andrews who eventually pulled Griffin from the game.
Griffin was never the same after that game and Washington wasn’t worth a plugged nickel for the remainder of the Snyder hellscape.
Those clouds have finally lifted, and through them has come a rising sun of renewal for the beleaguered fanbase of Washington football that was once the NFL’s most robust and renowned, and with that renewal has come a rookie quarterback that not only provides Washington football with hope, but with so many more possibilities.
You get the feeling that Northwest Stadium is going to be the place to be on Sundays when the Commanders are home, as none other than Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein, a Baltimore native but a prominent Washingtonian, was even in the house on Sunday.
Conversely, Washington will be in Baltimore on Sunday afternoon to play the Ravens for the eighth time, with the Ravens leading the series, 4-3.
It will be a great test for both teams, as the Commanders are still trying to find out who they are and how far they can go, while the Ravens are just trying to stop somebody from scoring every time they touch the ball.
Vegas has the Ravens a 6.5-point favorite with the over at 51.5.
Take Washington and the points, and take that over to go way over.
This one’s going to be something to see.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT