The Cowboys are not in first place in the NFC East, but they will be at the end of the season, if the betting odds are to be believed.
After Monday night’s win in Philadelphia, Dallas is a +115 favorite to win the NFC East. Just behind the Cowboys are the Giants at +125. The Commanders are long shots at +800 and the Eagles are the longest shots at +1500.
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said after the game that the importance of winning on the road in the division wasn’t lost on him.
“I think it gets us right back into the hunt in the NFC East,” Schottenheimer said.
The 4-2-1 Giants have a 1.5-game lead over the 3-4 Cowboys, and the Giants beat the Cowboys in Week 1, so it might seem like the Giants should be favored. But the perception among bettors is that the Cowboys remain the better team, as they were expected to be before the season.
The Giants-Cowboys rematch is Week 17 in Dallas. The NFC East may be on the line when the two teams meet again.
Commanders Clips
Help is on the way for a Rams team that is dealing with several injuries.
In a Friday appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said edge rusher Myles Garrett is likely to return to practice next week.
That could put Garrett in a position to play against the Chargers in Week 8 or the Commanders in Week 9.
Garrett has been sidelined with a knee injury. He played through discomfort in Week 1 before undergoing a procedure to help him get back to 100 percent.
While he played 62 percent of Los Angeles’ defensive snaps in the Week 1 loss to the 49ers in Australia, Garrett did not register any defensive stats.
Garrett was the AP defensive player of the year in 2025, registering a single-season record 23.0 sacks for the Browns.
Just this week, Los Angeles placed defensive linemen Poona Ford and Kobie Turner on injured reserve. The team’s defensive front could use a boost from the return of a player like Garrett.
Monday night’s game between the Commanders and 49ers started as a blowout. The road team eventually turned a 23-3 deficit into a 23-17 nail biter.
The end result, for ratings purposes, resulted in 17.9 million viewers to the various Disney-controlled networks: ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network, and ESPN Deportes.
The release from ESPN includes no information regarding the audience to the debut of the Pat McAfee alt cast or the Next Gen Stats broadcast on NFL Network. (Last week, ESPN disclosed that 1.1 million watched the ESPN2 ManningCast and the NFL Network Next Gen Stats presentation, without specifying the audience for either network.)
Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reports that the McAfee alt cast attracted a mere 351,000 viewers, which equates to 1.96 percent of the total audience. That’s far less than the ManningCast attracts, even as the Peyton and Eli show continues to slump.
Which brings us back to the overriding question about all alt casts: Why? With the exception of the broadcasts aimed at getting kids to watch by turning the game into a collection of cartoon or video-game characters, there’s no reason to siphon viewers from the primary broadcast.
The people who watch the alt casts meant for adults will watch the primary broadcast, in the absence of the alt cast. It’s ultimately a pointless exercise that only wastes time and money.
The Commanders have brought in a veteran defensive coach to help the club during the week.
Via NFL Network, Washington has hired Steve Wilks to work with the team’s coaches under head coach Dan Quinn and defensive coordinator Daronte Jones.
Wilks is in the building to help with game planning during the week. Nicki Jhabvala of TheAthletic.com notes Wilks comes in on Sundays and departs after practice on Wednesdays. Additionally, Wilks was not hired in response to anything that’s happened in recent weeks, as this has been in the works since before the season started. Wilks officially began his role last week.
Wilks was most recently with the Jets last season as defensive coordinator, though he was fired in December.
A longtime pro and college coach, Wilks was notably the 49ers defensive coordinator in 2023 when the team reached the Super Bowl. The year before, he served as Panthers interim head coach after the club fired Matt Rhule, leading Carolina to a 6-6 record.
He was the Cardinals’ head coach in 2018.
One of the lingering questions from this week’s Monday Night Football relates to the perception that Commanders coach Dan Quinn didn’t know his team was facing a fourth-and-two play from the San Francisco 13 when it was, you know, facing a fourth-and-two play from the San Francisco 13.
After the game ended, Quinn (who was ready to address the viral lip-reading moment) said he “definitely” knew it was fourth down, before essentially acknowledging that he didn’t instantly realize a post-snap foul on the offense could be declined.
At his day-after press conference (which, by virtue of the fact that it happened means he hasn’t been fired, yet), Quinn addressed the decision of Jayden Daniels to throw the ball to a wide open Sourdough Sam, who was standing in his 49ers mascot costume well beyond the back of the end zone.
“Even when you know there’s a penalty, like, you still take your shot, man, to go throw it, complete it, you don’t know if it’s gonna get picked up,” Quinn said regarding his message to Daniels.
It’s more than the flag getting picked up. A penalty on the offense, coupled with the decision of the officials to not stop the play, didn’t alleviate the obligation to get a first down. It remained a “gotta have it” play. It didn’t become an occasion to throw the ball away.
Daniels addressed the situation in his post-game press conference.
“I’ve just got to execute better in that situation regardless of a flag or not,” Daniels said. “You know, fourth down . . . I have to be better, you know, in that spot.”
But it wasn’t a matter of better execution. It was a matter of better real-time decision-making. He decided to essentially give up on the play.
Daniels also confirmed that he knew a flag had been thrown.
“I did know. I didn’t know what it — it could have been offsides, it could have been on us,” Daniels said in response to the last question of the session. “You know, I’m not really into that type of stuff, you know?”
The final comment is confusing. Why wouldn’t he be “into that type of stuff”? The concept of situational football doesn’t end when a play starts. Things can happen during a play that dramatically change the situation.
In this case, the flag created one of two new situations. If the defense was offside, it was a free play. In that situation, Daniels should have taken a shot to the end zone because the penalty always could have been accepted if it didn’t work out. If the penalty was on the offense, he still needed to convert.
No one knew what the flag was for, but since there wasn’t an obvious jump by the defense (which we see all the time, and which quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers always use to go for the jugular), the best decision in that situation would have been to try to get the first down, no matter what. The worst decision would have been to just throw the ball out of the end zone, which is the decision Daniels made.
It’s another example of an institutional failure to coach Daniels to be ready for all situations and/or a failure of Daniels to want to have all the answers for all possible situations.
Based on Quinn’s comments, Daniels got coached about it after the game. Why wasn’t he coached about it before the game?
The end result further reveals the tangible flaw in the overall approach to ensuring that the quarterback, the offensive coordinator, and head coach aren’t taking a trial-and-error approach to pro football.
Again, it’s not on-the-job training. The training happens (or at least it should) during meetings, practices, more meetings, more practices, even more meetings, and even more practices.
All that said, the more reasonable explanation is that Quinn and Daniels didn’t know it was fourth down. While not as egregious as what happened at the end of overtime against the Giants, it makes the lingering bad vibes regarding the institutional command of situational football a little bit worse.
The NFL considered moving the Week 8 Eagles-Commanders game out of prime time. In the end, the NFL decided to stay put.
Via multiple reports, the rematch of the Week 1 game between NFC East rivals will be televised nationally by NBC and Peacock on Sunday night, November 1.
Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who first reported that the NFL was thinking about moving Eagles-Commanders out of the Sunday night spot, reports that the league strongly considered replacing it with Browns at Steelers.
In past years, there has been a rule requiring one of the two home-and-home games between division rivals to be televised on Sunday afternoon. The fact that the league considered moving Browns-Steelers to Sunday after their Week 4 game in Cleveland was played on Thursday night shows that, if the rule still exists, it’s more of a guideline.
Either way, it’ll be the 2-4 Eagles (who don’t have their starting quarterback) and the 1-4-1 Commanders instead of the 4-2 Browns and the 4-2 Steelers in a game that would have featured Mike Tomlin’s return to Pittsburgh and Cleveland’s reward for claiming first place in the AFC North after six weeks of the 2026 season.
Commanders wide receiver Terry McLaurin’s knee injury looked bad on the field Monday night and head coach Dan Quinn confirmed the worst at a press conference on Tuesday.
McLaurin will miss the rest of the season with a torn patellar tendon. McLaurin will have surgery to repair the injury.
McLaurin had a 27-yard catch before the injury on Monday and 15 catches for 230 yards and a touchdown in five games this season. He also missed seven games last season while dealing with a quad injury, but had played in every game over the previous four years.
The Commanders have McLaurin under contract for two more seasons, but his future with the team could be impacted by the level of offseason changes that go on in Washington. If things don’t get better after a 1-4-1 start, those changes could be significant.
The Falcons are adding an edge rusher to the roster.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that they will sign outside linebacker Charles Snowden. Snowden had been on the Commanders’ practice squad.
Snowden signed with the Commanders last month after spending part of the summer with the Cowboys. He opened the offseason with the Raiders, but was cut in May.
Snowden appeared in 31 games for the Raiders the last two seasons. He had 67 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks and an interception.
Samson Ebukam, Cameron Thomas, Za’Darius Smith, and Bralen Trice are the current edge options for the Falcons. They also have 2025 first-round picks Jalon Walker and James Pearce, but Walker is out for the season and Pearce has two more games to go on an eight-game suspension.
After Monday night’s game, Commanders coach Dan Quinn took his time in showing up to talk to reporters. He arrived nearly an hour after the game ended — and after quarterback Jayden Daniels met with reporters (which is very unusual, for any team).
Quinn knew all about the viral moment in which he seemed to be surprised after a failed fourth-and-two play from the San Francisco 13 in the second quarter. It looked like he didn’t know it was fourth down. At the press conference, Quinn had an explanation.
“I definitely knew it was fourth down,” Quinn said, before slipping into a word salad that was largely confusing and pivoted to him explaining that they planned to go for it on fourth down throughout the game because they expected it to be a higher-scoring contest.
Even though Quinn’s body language suggested that he was surprised to find out it had been fourth down, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He knew it was fourth down. But the operation for which he’s responsible didn’t know, once the penatly flag landed on the field (in plain view of quarterback Jayden Daniels) that it wasn’t a situation in which failure to reach the line to gain would make it fourth and seven with a chance to kick a field goal.
When the play isn’t shut down by a pre-snap foul, a penalty on the offense can be declined by the defense.
After the play, there should have been no confusion — from anyone — as to what had happened. The 49ers would decline the penalty, and the 49ers would take possession. Because it had been fourth down.
While some will believe (as I do) that Quinn (and his quarterback) didn’t know it was fourth down, the explanation doesn’t exonerate the lack of attention to detail. Instead, it changes the conversation from “did you know it was fourth down?” to “why didn’t you realize you still had to gain at least two yards to retain possession?”
It speaks to the overall culture under Quinn. The mastery, or lack thereof, of situational football.
Quinn will get another chance to explain himself today, when he conducts his day-after press conference (unless he’s fired before then). With the Commanders entering their annual bye, both Daniels and offensive coordinator David Blough won’t be available to reporters until next week.
If/when there’s ever an admission that a mistake was made, we know what the drill will be: “It’s my responsibility. I take accountability. It won’t happen again.”
How many lessons will Quinn, Daniels, and Blough get to learn on the fly? Teams don’t hire head coaches with the idea that there will be multiple years of on-the-job training when it comes to the nuances of the game. Quinn has been coaching in the NFL continuously since 2001, with the exception of a two-year stint at Florida in 2011 and 2012. He served as the Falcons’ head coach for six years, and it’s his third year with the Commanders.
In hiring Quinn, the Commanders weren’t rolling the dice on a newbie. They were hiring a fully-formed football coach who presumably knows how the game works, in all respects.
The last two games have proven otherwise. And it further complicates the decision that owner Josh Harris, who is still a new, inexperienced owner, will be making as to whether to make an in-season change.
Commanders wide receiver Terry McLaurin had to be carted off the field with an air cast on his left knee on Monday night and the image didn’t do much to conjure up hopes of a quick return to the field this season.
Head coach Dan Quinn confirmed that the team feared a “significant” injury after the game and that McLaurin would go for tests on Tuesday to determine just how significant it is. Those tests are pending, but Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that the team is bracing to learn that McLaurin will miss the rest of the season.
McLaurin missed Week 4 with a hamstring injury and has 15 catches for 230 yards and a touchdown on the season.
McLaurin has two more years left on his contract and is set to have a $34 million cap number in 2027, but there’s no guaranteed money left on the deal should the Commanders opt to move in a different direction.
