Washington Football Newsletter Week of 6/22/26
Welcome to the Washington Football Newsletter! I'm your author Josh Upton this week on the show:
Brandon Aiyuk
The Commanders new #1 Fan: This week, Brandon Aiyuk announced himself as the world’s biggest Commanders fan, saying throughout the week that Washington is the best team, in the best league, in the best sport, and that he’s signing with them the second he’s cut. We’ll see if he ever finds his way onto the roster, but welcome to the Commandwagon, Brandon!
Aiyuk AND Diggs? On the show, we talked about the possibility of Washington adding two of the WRs who are currently available. Could they add Aiyuk AND Diggs? Diggs seems to think that Washington is a possibility, so, are they showing interest in him? We don’t know if Washington is interested in Aiyuk… of course if they haven’t shown any interest then this is kind of creepy. Diggs feels like a sure thing to be on the field if he’s signed, while Brandon Aiyuk could be anywhere from a day 1 starter to not ready to play at all week 1.
The 49ers Situation: Before Brandon Aiyuk can join the Commanders, he’ll have to be released by the 49ers. On the show, we talked about how ugly this whole thing has gotten. Right now, the focus is on the mess that Brandon Aiyuk is making, but how long until some of this mess gets on the 49ers? Aiyuk is a grown man, but they’ve turned him into this by hanging onto him this long. How did we get to this place? I’ve never been high on the idea of Aiyuk coming to Washington, and if he does, I think expectations need to be low—but I’m starting to root for him the longer this goes on.
Commanders WR Timeline: Jeremy Fowler said this week that Washington isn’t interested in signing a WR at this moment. The whole league feels like it’s shut down right now, so that’s not surprising. However, it would be interesting to see if that changes should Aiyuk become available, if not, it seems likely that no one will be added until we get to training camp.
Open Training Camp Practices
The Commanders announced 11 training camp dates that will be open to the public: 5 that will be open to anyone and 6 reserved for season ticket holders. The 5 open-to-all dates have already sold out, and there are only 5 season ticket holder dates available:
August Dates: 4th, 5th, 10th, 11th, 12th.
We’ll be counting on your updates to let us know how they’re looking out there!
Ben Johnson Taking a Lesson from Kliff Kingsbury
Could it be that the offensive genius Ben Johnson actually took something from the maligned Kliff Kingsbury?
Kliff Kingsbury stole an easy touchdown from the Bears in Week 6 when Luke McCaffrey and Jayden Daniels connected for an easy 33-yard TD. Ben Johnson remembered the play and pulled it out when the Bears needed it most. Facing a 1st and 10 on the Packers' 25-yard line, with the Bears down by 3, Caleb Williams found DJ Moore wide open for the game-winning touchdown on the exact same play the Commanders had hurt the Bears with 3 months earlier.
See for yourself:
Bill Barnwell - Top WR, TE, RB Groups in the League
This is the Bill Barnwell portion of the offseason. He is going to carry us through these next couple of months. I’m really looking forward to his article on teams most likely to ascend and descend in the 2026 season. I’m not sure if Washington will be on the ascension list, but they were on the descension list last year and that turned out to be correct.
His latest piece ranks league teams by the overall strength of their current WR, TE, and RB groups (offensive weaponry, QB aside). Washington comes in at #27.
Looking Back: A couple of things about this—last year they were 13th, which at first I scoffed at, but they did have Terry coming off of season in which he set a franchise record for TDs, Zach Ertz resurgence, maybe a healthy Noah Brown, Ekeler, and Deebo Samuel coming in. It’s easy to forget that they started the season with those players because of how they ended. In 2024, they were ranked 26th and that group was able to be pretty strong in the end.
The Reality of #27: Can’t disagree with 27th. And I think this group has a lot of potential, but there’s a lot of unknown. Even for McLaurin, Barnwell writes: "He’s turning 31, there’s a wider range of outcomes for McLaurin this upcoming season than his résumé might suggest." And if he is not a #1, then what do you have after that? We just assume Terry is going to bounce back, but Peters himself was scared of the reality of a 30+ year old McLaurin, let’s hope Terry proves him wrong.
The Potential: What we see as potential is unknown at best to others: Burks, Williams, McCaffrey, Lane, Sinnott, Yankoff, plus, the potential of adding Brandon Aiyuk. As fans of this team, it’s easy to get caught up in the potential but there isn’t much production to support this being a dangerous group of receiving threats.
Where I Disagree: What I disagree with is his take on Chig Okonkwo: "didn’t show sustained receiving ability across multiple schemes or with different quarterbacks in Tennessee." He played for 3 different coaches in 4 seasons. He played with (Titans) Malik Willis, Will Levis, Josh Dobbs, and rookie Cam Ward. Since when do we fault the TE for not being able to thrive in that situation? He may have to carry a heavy load in Washington but there’s no doubt that he’s setup better to do that.
Quick Hits
Styles & Wagner: Sonny Styles said he has already connected with Bobby Wagner. Washington got a lot of good out of Bobby Wagner the player over the last two years, the fact that he now has a chance to positively influence the hopeful future at linebacker is really cool.
Apologies to Lawrence: I apologized to DeMarcus Lawrence for saying last April that he shouldn’t say he couldn’t win a Super Bowl in Dallas as he was signing with the Seahawks. I said he wouldn’t win a Super Bowl in 3 years in Seattle... he’s 1/1 so far with two years to go. Also, did you know Dante Fowler now plays for the Seahawks?
Quarterback Season 3: The Quarterback Season 3 trailer dropped. Jayden wasn’t featured super prominently in the trailer. That’s probably for good reason, as he’ll be going to be recovering from injury the entire season so there are more interesting storylines—like Baker Mayfield starting as a MVP candidate and then missing the playoffs, Flacco getting traded, and Cam Ward a rookie. I’ll still be excited to watch, July 14th.
Jayden's Injury Timeline: In particular, I’ll be interested to see the early part of the season as he starts out to follow up his incredible rookie season, and from the Vikings game until the end of the season. What did they think of that slight re-injury? Was he a part of the conversation to shut it down for the rest of the year? When did they make that decision? We’ll find out next month.
NBA Draft: Congratulations to Otega Oweh on being drafted in the 2nd round of this week's NBA Draft.
Shows of the Week
This week there hasn't been a ton of Commanders coverage with folks heading out for vacation but I really enjoyed Ben Standig on Take Command. Ben is very locked in on things in Washington and doesn't sugar coat anything. He's critical about the questions with this team which I enjoy this time of the year. With Logan out this week, Grant also had Joe Theismann on the show. I haven't listened to that episode yet but I'm looking forward to getting to it this weekend.