As the NFL season begins to take shape, the league office has a growing body of evidence to inform potential flex decisions. And one game has emerged as a candidate to be the first to exit its current prime-time slot.
Via Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the NFL is considering moving the Week 8 game between the Eagles and Commanders out of the Sunday night window.
Plenty of factors influence the NFL’s decision-making process. One obvious factor becomes the game that would replace it.
In Week 8, it may not be easy to find a game that would attract a larger audience, even if the Commanders lose to the 49ers on Monday night and fall to 1-4-1 and if the Eagles lose to the Panthers on Sunday and slump to 2-4.
Given the apparent rule that at least one game in each division rivalry must be televised in a Sunday afternoon window, Vikings-Lions, Browns-Steelers, and Chiefs-Broncos would seem to be off limits. Steelers-Browns (Week 4) and Broncos-Chiefs (Week 1) previously were televised in prime time, and the Vikings are scheduled to host the Lions on Sunday night in Week 15.
Of course, the league could decide to take the earlier Vikings-Lions game, with a flex of the Week 15 game in Minneapolis into an afternoon window.
Ravens-Bills becomes a possibility, but the Ravens also play the following Thursday night. The league may not want to give the Ravens seven fewer hours or so between games on a short week.
Colts-Jaguars is a possibility; the Jaguars are 4-1 and the Colts should move to 3-3 this weekend with a home game against the 0-5 Titans. The league would need to consider whether Eagles-Commanders would carry extra national sizzle than Colts-Jaguars even if both Philadelphia and Washington lose this weekend.
Ultimately, the outcomes of this weekend’s games will influence the final decision. For now, the Inquirer reports that the possibility of an Eagles-Commanders flex is on the radar screen. The deadline arrives on Tuesday, October 20 — the day after Week 6 ends with the Commanders facing the 49ers in Santa Clara.
Commanders Clips
In seven of the NFL’s eight divisions, the team that is currently in first place is also currently the betting favorite to win the division. The NFC East is the exception.
At 3-1-1, the Giants are in first place in the NFC East by 1.5 games. But they’re a distant third in the betting odds to win the division.
The betting odds currently list the 2-3 Eagles as the favorites at +170, followed closely by the 2-3 Cowboys at +180. The Giants are third at +320, and the 1-3-1 Commanders are last at +750.
It’s not hard to understand why the bettors aren’t sold on the Giants: Despite managing to win three games, they haven’t looked particularly good while doing so, on either offense or defense. (Their special teams are playing well.) Starting quarterback Jaxson Dart is out for the season and there are doubts about how long they can keep winning with Jameis Winston. And their schedule has been easy; all five teams they’ve played currently have losing records.
The schedule stays easy this week, with a home game against the 1-4 Saints. The Giants are 1.5-point underdogs, which underscores how little faith the bettors have in them. If the Giants manage to win on Sunday, their odds to win the division may improve a little. But it won’t be until November 8, when they travel to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles, when the Giants can make a statement that they really are the best team in the NFC East. Unless the Giants keep winning through that game, they’re going to stay long shots to win the division.
The 49ers won’t have linebacker Dre Greenlaw for Monday night’s game against the Commanders.
The NFL has announced that hearing officer James Thrash, a former NFL receiver, has upheld the one-game suspension imposed Monday on Greenlaw.
During the second quarter of Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Seahawks, Greenlaw applied a head butt to Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV. Greenlaw was wearing a helmet; Jones was not.
Greenlaw was ejected. It was his third ejection since 2022. Last year, he was suspended for one game for his behavior toward referee Brad Allen after a game between the Giants and Broncos, Greenlaw’s team in 2025.
Greenlaw will forfeit $136,388 in base salary for the game. He’ll also lose a $23,529 active roster bonus. The 49ers could be able to seek partial repayment of his $2.5 million signing bonus, too.
The lost reps also will make it harder for Greenlaw to earn a $750,000 incentive based on 75-percent playing time for the season. If earned, the amount doubles if the 49ers make the playoffs.
Micah Parsons still isn’t ready to play after last year’s knee injury, but he still knows how to mix things up.
Parsons recently said on his podcast, The Edge with Micah Parsons, that quarterback Jayden Daniels is to blame for the game-clock clusterfudge at the end of overtime in the Giants-Commanders game.
“Jayden Daniels probably cost my man Dan Quinn his job, to be honest with you,” Parsons said, via Nicki Jhabvala of The Athletic. “To be honest with you. And, like, I’m a big Jayden Daniels fan. But the reality is, he probably cost a lot of people their jobs this past weekend. . . .
“All respectfully, we get coached so much on these situations that, like, I’m a defensive player, and this shit’s programmed to me. I even know what to do in those situations. There’s no way I’m taking a sack with 14 seconds left and no timeouts. . . . And, mind you, it’d be different if Jayden Daniels was a rookie. This is your third year. This is your third year. You’ve been to the NFC Championship game. You’ve been in big moments before. And to me, like even after a sack, you’re casually getting up.”
Parsons made it clear that, in his view, quarterbacks are expected to always know what’s going on.
“This is your job, bro,” Parsons said. “This is your job to be prepared to understand the game and understand situations. That’s in your job profile. And you’re telling me, ‘Oh, we’re gonna want to pay this guy eventually $60 million? This cannot happen. . . . I’m a big JD5 fan, but that’s inexcusable, bro.”
Parsons said that the Packers work on situational football “every day,” What happened at the end of the Giants-Commanders game should have required no discussion, frankly.
“This is a lack of preparation, a lack of mentality, and a lack of urgency,” Parsons said. “That just can’t happen.”
Parsons isn’t wrong. The fact that it did happen raises plenty of questions about the level of preparation and attention to detail, as created by the coaching staff. It speaks to potential cultural flaws, perhaps one in which Daniels hasn’t been challenged or held as accountable as he could have or should have been, given his standing in the organization.
It would be a lot easier to make sense of all of this if the Commanders had recorded and preserved the relevant communications. And Daniels surely will face even more questions on this topic the next time he speaks to reporters.
The fact that the outcome was so bizarre, so jarring, and so downright surreal becomes a horrible moment for everyone involved. As to the ultimate consequences, Parsons hit the nail on the head — Daniels’s failure to take charge of the situation in the moment will probably cost Quinn his job.
But Daniels will continue to be the starting quarterback because, even if he made an inexcusable mistake as to one of the easiest parts of the job, he does the hard parts better than most of his peers.
The problem with everyone taking the blame for a colossal clock-management blunder is that, if everyone is Spartacus, it’s impossible to know who’s truly at fault.
As to the end of the Giants-Commanders game, coach Dan Quinn has taken the blame — and quarterback Jayden Daniels has taken the blame. Presumably, offensive coordinator David Blough will take the blame, too, the next time he speaks to reporters.
So who’s truly to blame?
On Tuesday’s edition of PFT Live, Chris Simms suggested that Daniels may have been told to throw the ball away on the last snap the Commanders took. If he had, the clock would have stopped and the Commanders would have had time to kick a potential game-winning field goal. If that’s the case, it seems logical that there will be reporting from unnamed sources that the internal review came to that conclusion. (And, again, it would have been easier to get to the bottom of it if the Commanders had recorded and preserved all in-game communications.)
Here’s another possibility, one that has a historical example. In 2008, after a 13-13 final score between the Eagles and Bengals, Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb admitted that he didn’t know a regular-season game could end in a tie. He wasn’t alone; other players on the Eagles’ roster didn’t realize the game ended when the overtime period expired.
Said McNabb at the time, who was in his tenth NFL season: “In college, there are multiple overtimes, and in high school and Pop Warner. I never knew in the professional ranks it would end that way. I hate to see what would happen in the Super Bowl and in the playoffs.”
Eighteen years later, could it have been déjà vu all over again? Is it possible Daniels’s lack of urgency in the final seconds of overtime resulted from the fact that he didn’t know the game would be over when the clock struck zero?
Given the Eagles’ widespread lack of awareness as to the overtime rules in 2008 — which had been in place unchanged for 34 years — is it crazy to think Daniels and possibly other players didn’t know? Likewise, is it beyond the realm of possibility that Blough, who is the same age now as McNabb was then, didn’t know? (Blough absolutely should be asked that question, just in case.)
Giants safety Jevon Holland said this after the game: “I mean, even when the clock ran to zero, there was a second where I was like, ‘Is it going to go to the second overtime?’ I don’t know if it was two overtimes or not. I’ve never been in an overtime tie like this.”
That makes it a fair question to ask, of Daniels and other members of the offense. Did he, and others, think that once the time ran out, the teams would change ends and the game would continue?
While hardly an acceptable explanation, it would make the complete lack of urgency as the seconds ticked away a little more understandable.
When a plane crashes, the “black box” preserves all evidence regarding the cockpit conversations. When an NFL team has an inexplicable failure of coaching, is there a way to go back and listen to how it all happened?
While some teams may preserve that data, the Commanders do not.
Coach Dan Quinn was asked that specific question on Monday, one day after a disastrous failure to manage the final seconds of overtime against the Giants.
“We don’t do specifically that,” Quinn said. “We do a writeup and then go back and review conversations, situations, the film, and the R&D department goes along with that. As far as the communications go, I want to make sure that’s up for me, you know, at the top, this is what’s happening. This is what we need to get done. And we’ll continue to work really hard on that. We have definitely ways to simulate it. That’s one way that we have, and we’ll continue to do.”
It would make sense to preserve the headset communications, if only for the benefit of ownership to get to the raw and undeniable facts at a time when folks may be looking for ways to cover their butts.
Of course, if owner Josh Harris was on the sideline during games, he’d have first-hand evidence as to what transpired. Which is what Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon does, even though some feel compelled to criticize her for it.
For the owners who aren’t on the sideline, preserving those communications should be a no-brainer. If they aren’t already doing it, adopting that system could be the equivalent of all teams incorporating victory formation after the disastrous Joe Pisarcik moment from 1978.
The 49ers are going to be down another wide receiver in the coming weeks.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan said that Deebo Samuel will be out of the lineup for an indefinite period of time after injuring his hamstring in Sunday’s 32-29 win over the Seahawks.
“Got it pretty good, so he’s gonna miss some time,” Shanahan said, via 49ersWebzone.com.
Samuel had two catches for 21 yards and two carries for four yards on Sunday. Brandin Cooks, Jacob Cowing, and Jordan Watkins are the receiver options to join Mike Evans on the field with Samuel out of action.
Shanahan had more hopeful news about defensive end Nick Bosa. Bosa has missed the last three games with a calf injury, but Shanahan said that he has “a chance” of being back on the field in Week 6. The 49ers host the Commanders next Monday night.
Commanders coach Dan Quinn, who remains employed on Monday, met with reporters for his press conference one day after the most recent game. And the most recent game, a 27-27 tie with the Giants, ended with the worst example of clock management in recent years, if not ever.
Quinn began with an opening statement that addressed the woolly mammoth in the mudroom.
“Well, I spoke with the team and with the coaches today, and honestly just like furious about our execution in the crucial moments of the game,” Quinn told reporters. “We work really hard on these, and it didn’t look like that yesterday. And [I’m] pissed about it.
“So I’ll take you through overtime. We wanted to use some clock after getting into field goal range. There has been four kicks that had been missed in the game. So burning some time is the smart call, as you kick near the end of the game.
“About 56 seconds, we handed off to Rachaad White, and it took entirely too long from there on to execute our strategy, from subbing to clock awareness to clocking [the] ball. And when I told the team, and with the coach— like, it was a breakdown. It can’t happen. And our time today as a team was spent on the how and the why and make sure that it never does again. So, yesterday’s ending was the biggest example, but we’ve got a lot of shit to clean up on from yesterday’s game, and trust me, everyone in this building started with me feels that urgency.”
During the question-and-answer phase of the press conference, Quinn was asked whether he has spoken to ownership and whether he’s concerned about his job.
“I do know how the league goes,” Quinn said. “I’m well aware of that. [Owner] Josh [Harris] and I, we talk regularly before games, after games, after good games, after tough games, and that’s a normal process for us. And, trust me, no one is pleased with this outcome and where we’re at. The part that we do have, those hard conversations, we’re honest about where we’re at and what we need to fix and what we need to work on. And so I like having that communication with him.”
Implicit in that response is that Quinn has spoken to Harris, that Harris wasn’t pleased (as he shouldn’t have been), and that Harris did not and won’t be firing him, at least for now.
As to the surreal tick-ticking of the clock at the play that began with 55 seconds on the clock and that resulted in the next play beginning with 12 seconds left, Quinn was specifically concerned about the time required to make substitutions and get the play that was called by offensive coordinator David Blough started.
“If you execute it quickly,” Quinn said, “then you can get back on the ball and clock it. So the execution of subbing and the slowness of that to go is entirely too long. Hindsight, don’t sub, we can get back on the ball with the same group, and do the same outcome. But it wasn’t anything unorthodox or unusual, our execution as an entire group in that [55] seconds down to when we weren’t able to get it clocked. That’s not the play selection, but yet the execution of all of it.”
He’s correct, but he continues to speak about the situation as if he wasn’t standing on the sideline. He was there. He was in position to override whatever was happening. To hit the kill switch on the artificial, I mean, super intelligence. By all appearances, Quinn did nothing other than act as a passive observer.
He later was asked whether the moment will define the season for the Commander.
“I don’t catastrophize things, but I do want to make sure that I don’t minimize things, either,” Quinn said. “And there are plenty of things for us to improve upon in this game, and not just, you know, the last play. And so, I want to make sure I’m always emphasizing that to the team, about what we’re capable of, what we need to work on, but by no small margin . . . it was the execution, man. And that’s what I want us as players and coaches to absolutely drill down, nail it, because you have this bad taste in your mouth . . . and you want it, like, in our team meeting today, we laid out the plan of how to go play our best at San Francisco. So I do want to make sure I’m expressing what we’re teaching, but at the same time, you know, also point to what we need to get done.”
What would Quinn say to the fans that have lost confidence in him as the head coach?
“I’m just as pissed, too,” Quinn said. “Like, this is a really hard loss, man. And I have a lot of faith in who we are as an organization, ownership, coaching, players, so I’m very much looking forward to get back on the field Monday night.”
Of course he is. The only way to put Sunday’s debacle behind him will be to beat the 49ers. Who are led by Kyle Shanahan. Who was Quinn’s offensive coordinator during the 28-3 debacle in Super Bowl LI, which happened in large part due to another example of Quinn not being able to properly manage the game clock in real time.
Another loss, especially a blowout, could end up being Quinn’s final act as head coach of the Commanders — especially with the Commanders’ bye coming in Week 7.
As of now, 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw is not eligible to play in San Francisco’s Week 6 game against Washington on Monday night.
Greenlaw hopes to change that.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Greenlaw is appealing his one-game suspension that was handed down on Monday after the linebacker headbutted Seattle’s Ernest Jones on the sideline during Sunday’s game.
Greenlaw was ejected from the contest for his actions.
This is Greenlaw’s second one-game suspension in as many seasons, as he was given one last year for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Greenlaw’s appeal is slated to be heard by one of the NFL and NFLPA’s jointly appointed officers: Derrick Brooks, Jordy Nelson, Ron Rivera, or James Thrash.
Most coaches in the NFL either have been fired or will be fired. Dan Quinn has been fired (by the Falcons) and he undoubtedly will be fired again (by the Commanders).
For now, the Commanders haven’t fired him.
Some have suggested that Sunday’s colossal blunder seals Quinn’s fate at the end of the year. Properly functioning organizations, however, will implement the decision as soon as it’s made, if only to begin the process of searching for the next coach. Really, what’s the point of prolonging the situation?
In this case specifically, any effort by Quinn to turn a 1-3-1 season into a playoff berth will be complicated by the task of getting the locker room to do anything other than roll their eyes when the time comes to listen to Quinn. The sooner the organization turns the page on the person responsible for the worst ending to a game since the Joe Pisarcik moment in 1978, the sooner the team can move on.
There’s a dotted line back to Super Bowl XLIX, Quinn’s last game with the Seahawks. While he wasn’t there for the aftermath of the fateful decision to throw the ball at the goal line, Pete Carroll dealt with the fumes of costing the Legion of Boom its “dynasty” label for years. Quinn, who has only weeks to work with, will have a very hard time burying this one.
The issue won’t go away quickly. It will be the topic of the week in D.C. Quinn will be asked about it again. Quarterback Jayden Daniels will be asked about it again. Offensive coordinator David Blough — who has yet to receive nearly as much blame as he should — will be asked about it. Other players will be asked about it.
Come next Monday, when the Commanders play the 49ers in Santa Clara, it will be a focal point of the ESPN pregame show. It will be mentioned once or twice (or more often) throughout the call of the game.
Can Quinn turn it around? The 2017 Falcons made it to the playoffs, after the 28-3 debacle in Super Bowl LI. But Quinn and the Falcons had an entire offseason with which to process their meltdown. For the Commanders, the next train is already on the tracks.
The bye is looming after next Monday night. Could ownership decide to give Quinn a chance to right the ship in San Francisco? Could an embarrassment next week be the final straw?
The problem is that the ultimate embarrassment has already unfolded. While stranger things have happened, it’s hard to imagine Quinn and the Commanders quickly putting this behind them. The process can’t even begin until Quinn finds a way to pull the locker room together again.
How can he do that? The players will be grumbling about this one deep into the coming workweek. Or possibly all the way through Monday and into the week off. What can he say to them to get them to understand how and why it happened?
He can continue to take the blame, but there’s no honor in acknowledging the obvious. He’ll need to find a way to get them to accept the fact that he made a mistake that never should have been made, and to persuade them to believe that the team is in good hands, notwithstanding Sunday’s events.
Maybe an “us against the world” approach will emerge. The problem is that, in this case, the world is right. And the only way to make things right in Washington’s world will be for the team to deliver the clearest, strongest message of accountability by relieving the person responsible for the situation of his duties.
