The Commanders will be unveiling a new look next month.
The team shared on social media that they will be revealing new uniforms on April 15. They did not tease any details about what the uniforms will look like, but the return of a familiar look last season might provide some hint.
Washington debuted an alternate “Super Bowl era” look that brought back the look of the helmets and uniforms that the franchise wore while winning three titles under head coach Joe Gibbs.
The answer to whether that was a clue about the direction the franchise will be taking will come ahead of the draft when the Commanders fully reveal their new togs.
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Free agent cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon is visiting the Commanders on Thursday, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports.
The 49ers drafted Witherspoon in the third round in 2017 when current Commanders General Manager Adam Peters was a personnel executive with the team.
Witherspoon, 31, spent four seasons with the 49ers, two with the Steelers and three with the Rams.
In 2025, he started the first two games before injuring his shoulder in the Week 2 win over the Titans. Witherspoon returned in Week 13, was inactive in Weeks 15 and 16 and returned to the lineup for three games before re-injuring his shoulder. The second stint on injured reserve ended his season.
He totaled eight tackles, one interception and two passes defensed in six regular-season games.
In his career, Witherspoon has appeared in 96 games with 64 starts and has recorded 243 tackles, 13 interceptions, 60 passes defensed and one forced fumble.
Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate ran a 4.52-second 40-yard dash at the Scouting Combine. The time is not expected to hurt his draft status as a top-10 pick.
That’s why he decided not to run at Ohio State’s Pro Day on Wednesday, saying no teams have questioned him about his speed.
Instead, Tate did only position drills, catching passes from Julian Sayin.
“I definitely think it can be overvalued,” Tate said of the 40-yard dash, via Daniel Oyefusi of TheAthletic.com. “Like a couple of great NFL receivers right now like Puka [Nacua] and Jaxon [Smith-Njigba] like they probably didn’t run the fastest of times, but they’re the two best receivers in the league right now. It just depends on who’s looking at it and how y’all want to take it.”
Tate said he has top-30 draft visits scheduled with the Titans, Saints, Commanders, Giants and Chiefs. He has already visited the Browns. All of those teams draft in the top nine, with the Titans holding the fourth overall pick.
The Giants are signing long snapper Zach Triner, Aaron Wilson of KPRC reports.
The team needed a long snapper after Casey Kreiter left this offseason.
Triner appeared in only one game last season, long snapping for the Commanders in Week 13 against the Broncos. He played eight snaps.
He was the Bucs’ long snapper for most of the previous six years.
Triner, 35, played 81 games for the Bucs and has played 85 in his career. He was with the Dolphins for three games in 2024.
One of the top receivers in this year’s draft has been a busy pre-draft schedule, including meeting with an NFC South team in the top 10.
Via Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, former USC receiver Makai Lemon is working out for the Saints on Tuesday.
New Orleans has the No. 8 overall pick this year.
Additionally, Lemon has worked out for the Commanders, who select at No. 7 overall. He visited with the Browns (No. 6) last week and will visit with the Titans (No. 4) this week.
Lemon became one of the top prospects for this year’s draft by catching 79 passes for 1,156 yards with 11 touchdowns as a junior in 2025. He caught 52 passes for 764 yards with three TDs in 2024.
Offensive lineman Foster Sarell failed to make the Commanders during training camp last summer, but he’ll take another shot at it in 2026.
The Commanders announced that they have signed Sarell on Tuesday. No terms of the deal were disclosed.
Sarell was released by Washington last August and wound up on the Chargers’ practice squad. He went on to play six games and make one start during the regular season.
The move to the Chargers was also a return engagement for Sarell. He played in 35 games and made three starts for the AFC West team between 2021 and 2024. He also had brief stints with the Ravens and Giants after going undrafted out of Stanford in 2021.
Matt Leinart recently stirred up a debate about jersey numbers when he said he refused to let USC give his retired No. 11 to recruits who wanted it. At Oregon recently, a similar question came up with the opposite conclusion.
Dylan Raiola, who previously started at Nebraska and transferred this year to Oregon, will wear No. 8 for the Ducks. Oregon doesn’t officially retire numbers, but the No. 8 jersey has been considered special at Oregon since Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy wearing it, and when Dillon Gabriel wore No. 8 in 2024, it was with Mariota’s blessing. Raiola didn’t take the No. 8 jersey until both Mariota and Gabriel said it was OK.
“The last two people, if you look at it, who wore it were Dillon Gabriel and Marcus Mariota,” Raiola said in a video published by Oregon. “So before I even thought about wearing it, I called Dillon and I asked him, and then I actually asked him if I could have Marcus’s number and I called Marcus and I was blessed with the opportunity to wear it.”
Raiola, Gabriel and Mariota are all from Hawaii and have formed a connection over that, as well as their status as Oregon quarterbacks wearing No. 8. Raiola previously wore No. 15 at Nebraska as part of his effort to emulate Patrick Mahomes, but now it’s a couple of his Oregon predecessors he seeks to emulate in the No. 8.
Flag football is still football. Even without contact, a risk of injury remains.
And it was clear on Saturday that, for the active NFL quarterbacks in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, there was much more activity than target practice in seven-on-seven drills.
Watch this clip of the things Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was doing. Cutting, spinning, falling, diving. Ditto for Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Grant Paulsen of 106.7 The Fan in D.C. had this to say during the games: “Jayden Daniels is playing receiver, running routes, juking guys. [Team USA] is playing like it’s an NFL playoff game. Biggest day of their careers. There have been collisions. I just can’t believe the Commanders are cool with this.”
There was, at one point, a vague sense that Daniels was hoping the team would tell him not to do it — and that the team was hoping Daniels would decide not to do it. The all-important third year of his career to date is coming, and any injury would have complicated his effort to fully prepare for the football season to come.
In the end, and as far as we know, none of the active NFL players were injured. Former Patriots and Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski pulled a hamstring after catching a pass for a two-point conversion on the first drive of his team’s first game. For active players, a hamstring injury could mean weeks of rest and rehab, with the offseason program coming very soon.
So, yes, there’s a risk. It’ll be there during next year’s Fanatics Flag Football Classic. It’ll be there if/when USA Football decides to hold a competition to determine the participants in the U.S. men’s national team for the 2028 Olympics. It’ll be there for the Olympics, which will happen days before the opening of training camps.
The NFL seems to be willing to accept that risk in pursuit of the reward that comes from further globalizing the game. The individual teams are going along with it, with silent reluctance. The players, for the most part, don’t think about injuries until they happen.
Still, the risk is there. And quarterbacks, as we saw on Saturday, are far more involved in flag football than standing behind the action and throwing passes.
Darrell Green, the Hall of Fame cornerback who retired after a 20-year career with Washington in 2002, still wants to compete at the age of 66. And he thinks he can do it, in flag football.
On a weekend when a major flag football event in Los Angeles will feature big-name NFL players, Green will be a couple hours away in Chula Vista, participating in national team trials for USA Football. If he does well, he can earn a roster spot on Team USA at the flag football world championships in Germany this summer.
“I’m going to give it my best and I’ll walk away with my head up, either way,” Green said.
Callie Brownson, senior director of high performance and national teams for USA Football, says Green will be given a legitimate chance like all the others who qualified for the tryouts.
“Darrell qualified through our digital combine. He’s later in his career than the other trials participants, but his testing results were impressive,” Brownson told the Associated Press. “Our coaches and staff felt he deserved a closer look. . . . He’s a rare athlete who has stayed in shape and is ready to compete this week.”
It’s still unclear how the USA flag football team for the 2028 Summer Olympics will be chosen, and whether participating players will come from current NFL rosters, from the USA Football flag squad, or some combination of the two. Even if Green can make Team USA for this summer’s world championships, he’d be an extreme long shot to make the Olympics at age 68. But Green didn’t shy away from challenges in his NFL career, and he won’t start now.
The Commanders entered the offseason wanting to get Jayden Daniels another wide receiver alongside Terry McLaurin. That’s still on the list of priorities.
The first choice was apparently Colts wide receiver Alec Pierce, who re-signed with Indianapolis just before it became legal for teams to negotiate with free agents. According to John Keim of ESPN, a source said Pierce “absolutely” would have signed with the Commanders if he had reached free agency.
Realistically, however, if the Commanders were going to out-bid the Colts for Pierce, they would have made sure Pierce’s agent knew that before he re-signed with the Colts. Teams and agents talk all the time, and Pierce wouldn’t have signed with the Colts just before the start of the negotiating window unless he had a very good idea of what other offers would be out there once the window officially opened. So while the Commanders may have wanted Pierce, that doesn’t mean they would have gotten him, even if Pierce had waited long enough to let them make him an official offer.
With the Commanders still needing a No. 2 receiver to complement McLaurin, 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk would be an obvious choice. Daniels and Aiyuk are close friends and were teammates at Arizona State, and they’d love to play together again. Aiyuk is still under contract to the 49ers, but they have said they’ll move on from him this offseason. When the 49ers officially move him, Aiyuk would make a lot of sense in Washington.
The Commanders could also draft a wide receiver, and there are still veterans available in free agency Jauan Jennings, DeAndre Hopkins and Keenan Allen. It’s a position where the Commanders would still like to fill a need, even as free agency slows down.
