The Commanders signed outside linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson to a one-year, $11 million deal this offseason. He was one of the top edge rushers on the free agent market after a breakout 2025 season.
“It’s huge, man. It’s huge,” Chaisson told Bryan Colbert, via the team’s YouTube channel. “Obviously coming off a phenomenal year, man. Didn’t get a chance to seal the deal like I wanted to, but a lot of things have been moving in the right trajectory of my career. Getting a chance to be a part of this, and continue the rebuilding phase, but honestly, I’d say put the final touches on something that has already been progressing.
“I want to continue to be that guy, to be that missing piece that can send us in the right trajectory. . . . I think it’s everything and more for my career and for this team for sure.”
Chaisson, 26, played a career-high 639 snaps, a career-high 10 starts, a career-high 7.5 sacks and a career-high 18 quarterback hits.
“You’ve got to decide to block me all four quarters, and that’s my favorite part about it,” Chaisson said. “I’m willing to take it to a fifth quarter if it has to go there. I like that part about it. I never quit; I can go all day long. The mindset and the energy that I play with, it’s now or never for me.”
Commanders Clips
Gabe Taylor was six when his brother, Sean, died at 24. Now 24, Gabe Taylor is a day away from playing his first home game as a member of the D.C. Defenders.
Via Todd Archer of ESPN, the younger brother of Washington great Sean Taylor plays defensive back for the local UFL team. Like Sean did, Gabe Taylor wears No. 21.
Gabe didn’t play football until his senior year in high school. He had 11 interceptions and six pick-sixes in his only season at Gulliver Prep in Miami, where the field is now named for Sean Taylor.
After playing college football at Rice, Gabe Taylor wasn’t drafted in 2025. He had a tryout at the Commanders’ rookie minicamp, but there were no NFL offers.
Enter the UFL.
“I’ll tell you this, if he was two inches taller, he wouldn’t be playing in our league right now, for sure,” Defenders coach Shannon Harris told Archer. “He’d definitely be playing in the NFL. But Gabe, man, the kid is very smart. You can see the football pedigree there. He’s another guy that flies around. He’s sticky in coverage. He does a great job getting his hands on the ball, lot of pass deflections.”
Last week, Gabe Taylor sealed a win over the Columbus Aviators with an interception.
“This is everything to me,” Gabe Taylor told Archer. “It’s definitely a reminder, especially with the Taylor name on the top. I can’t just half-ass everything. So it’s definitely a reminder, I have to put my best foot forward because I can mess up and people be like, ‘Oh, you suck,’ just like that. I can make everybody smile by making plays and then give it one play and it’s like, ‘Oh, this kid can’t play.’ So it’s like, this means everything. The legacy I feel like I have to carry, but it’s definitely a reminder, it’s bigger than football.”
And, frankly, this is the kind of story the UFL needs, if it hopes to become bigger than it currently is. For D.C. fans on Saturday, the home debut of Sean Taylor’s brother will make it a very big game at Audi Field.
Defensive end Charles Omenihu signed with the Commanders as a free agent this offseason, but he spent the last three seasons with the Chiefs and that gave him experience in trying to stop two of the league’s top quarterbacks.
Omenihu was asked to weigh in on facing Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. He didn’t hesitate before saying he thought Allen would win a Super Bowl first if the two players switched teams and that Allen’s habit of turning the ball over isn’t enough of a drawback to make up for the book that defenses have put together on stopping Jackson.
“I don’t think the league has truly figured [Allen] out,” Omenihu said on the Speakeasy podcast. “With Lamar, honestly, you bring a five-man rush on him and collapse that pocket, he’s drifting backwards and, unfortunately, he might make a play that isn’t going to be the best play for the Ravens. With Josh, he’s going to drift backwards, run around, and he’s so hard to tackle. He’s a large human being, hard to get down, he can make every throw. Every throw from no matter where he’s at. His arm strength is unbelievable. I don’t think Lamar has that big amount of arm strength like Josh does. Like I said, I think you’ve figured out Lamar. You come after him, you close all the lanes, you five-man rush him and you cover his guys, and I think you get it done. It’s been shown.”
Neither Alllen nor Jackson has made it to the Super Bowl yet, but the Bills and Ravens are currently the betting favorites to be the AFC Champion so that could change at the end of the 2026 season. If it does, the quarterback left standing will have a big leg up in the legacy building battle.
The Commanders have a meeting set with one of the top wide receivers in this year’s draft.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that former Indiana wideout Omar Cooper will visit with the team. Cooper has also spent time with a number of teams, including the Panthers and Cowboys, and is expected to meet with a handful of others before the widow for pre-draft visits comes to an end.
Cooper had 69 catches for 937 yards and 13 touchdowns during the Hoosiers’ national championship run.
With Zach Ertz and Deebo Samuel still unsigned for 2026, Terry McLaurin is the top returning receiver in Washington. They signed Van Jefferson and Dyami Brown to go with Treylon Burks, Luke McCaffrey, and Jaylin Lane.
Kirk Cousins had multiple reasons to sign with the Raiders. Some substantive, at least one superficial.
“Best jerseys in pro sports I think,” Cousins told the team’s website on Monday. “I remember being in warm-ups once playing the Raiders and our head coach looked at me and said, ‘Those have to be the best jerseys that they are in pro sports.’ And I said, ‘You know what Coach, I have to agree. Those are really sharp.’”
Cousins didn’t specify the team for which he was playing at the time. He has a 3-0 career record as a starter against the Raiders — one with each of his three prior teams.
In 2017, Cousins and Washington beat the Raiders, 27-10. In 2019, Cousins at the Vikings beat the Raiders, 34-14. In 2024, Cousins and the Falcons beat the Raiders, 15-9.
Despite getting the victory in Las Vegas on a Monday night in December 2024, Cousins was benched the next day for then-rookie Michael Penix Jr. Cousins didn’t play again that season.
Now, he’s on track to start for the Raiders in Week 1, unless the Raiders don’t make quarterback Fernando Mendoza the first pick in the 2026 draft and unless Mendoza wins the job right out of the games.
As to his observation about the silver and black jerseys (along with the rest of the uniform), it’s hard to argue. There’s a reason the Raiders’ look has resisted becoming Nikefied in the 14 years since the company took over the apparel deal from Reebok, when change for the sake of change swept through the league.
While the team has needed a fix that so far remains elusive, there’s nothing broken about the Raiders’ uniforms. They’re simple and classic. And they’ve never felt compelled to embrace numbers that look different from the standard football-jersey numbers that were once nearly universal in the NFL.
The Commanders have hired a new coach.
Washington announced on Tuesday that the club has brought in John Glenn to be assistant special teams coordinator.
Glenn is back with the Commanders after spending last season as Raiders linebackers coach under former head coach Pete Carroll. He had been with Carroll for most of the coach’s tenure with Seattle, serving as linebackers coach from 2018-2023.
Glenn was the Commanders’ assistant special teams coach in 2024 before reuniting with Carroll in 2025.
When the Commanders drafted Jer’Zhan “Johnny” Newton out of Illinois in 2024, they were expecting him to make an immediate impact. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but the team still thinks that impact is coming.
Commanders coach Dan Quinn says that when he thinks of players who are going to take a big step forward this season, the first player he thinks about is Newton, who is healthy and eager to show what he can do.
“First one that comes to mind is defensive tackle Johnny Newton,” Quinn told Kevin Clark on This Is Football. “His first year was injuries, had a foot injury to come in, I think he’s a guy that’s about to absolutely take off. As a defensive tackle, man is he quick. Beating somebody to the spot, his ability as an interior rusher, I think he’ll be somebody you say, ‘I remember talking to Dan in March or April and this guy turned out to be a heavy hitter.’”
Newton was a part-time player in the Commanders’ defensive line rotation last season, playing 38 percent of the Commanders’ defensive snaps. He still managed five sacks in his part-time role, and this year Quinn expects Newton to play more, and contribute more to the Commanders’ pass rush.
Wide receiver Makai Lemon is expected to be a first-round pick in this month’s draft and he’s making the rounds with some of the teams that could add him to their lineup.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Lemon visited with the Chiefs on Thursday. Kansas City has the ninth overall pick this year.
Lemon is also slated to meet with the Jets, Giants, Commanders and Dolphins. The Jets have the second and 16th picks, the Giants are slated to pick fourth, the Commanders are at No. 7 and the Dolphins have both the 11th and 30th picks. Lemon also spent time with the Saints, who pick eighth, in March.
Lemon had 79 receptions for 1,156 yards and 11 touchdowns at USC during the 2025 season. He was given the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver.
Kirk Cousins has spent 14 years in the NFL. He’s been to the playoffs three times. He has one postseason win.
And he nevertheless sits near the top of the list of all-time NFL earners.
Depending on the source, Cousins is either second behind Matthew Stafford or third behind Stafford and Tom Brady. Once the latest $20 million is added to the total Cousins pile, he’ll likely become the undisputed No. 2.
And $20 million is a key number. It’s the bookend to the figure that sparked Cousins’s climb.
In 2016, Washington applied the franchise tag to Cousins, at $20 million, after his four-year, fourth-round contract expired. But they offered him a long-term deal with an average annual value of $16 million.
It made the decision a no-brainer for Cousins. Take the $20 million, show up for everything, and focus on having the kind of season that would lay the foundation for a long-term deal.
In 2017, Washington tagged him again, at $24 million. (Some in the organization at the time lobbied for Colt McCoy at $3 million, arguing that Cousins wasn’t eight times better than McCoy.)
As of 2018, Washington wasn’t inclined to give Cousins a 44-percent increase (by rule) for a third tag. He became a free agent and the highest-paid player in NFL history after the Vikings boxed out the Jets.
His initial three-year deal in Minnesota became a six-year stay. When the Vikings insisted on a year-to-year arrangement as of 2024, Cousins opted for the multi-year financial security in Atlanta, which (as he quickly learned) didn’t mean multi-year job security.
Through it all, Cousins kept adding cash to the pile. He got $98.7 million for two years with the Falcons. His new deal with the Raiders puts him north of $330 million.
It’s obviously a temporary title. As the NFL’s money increases, the salary cap will rise and the market at the various positions will, too. Inevitably, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes will be No. 1 and No. 2.
For now, though, the biggest claim to fame for Kirk Cousins comes not from his exploits in the postseason, but from trips to the bank made in January and other months of the year.
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
