Junkies debate: What’s the floor, ceiling for the Commanders' 2024 NFL season?
Coming off a 4-13 season in which the head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, the front office decision-makers, quarterback and most of the rest of the team was not retained, change was the only constant for the Washington Commanders this offseaon.
With the season-opener coming up on Sunday in Tampa Bay, new head coach Dan Quinn and rookie starting quarterback Jayden Daniels have a tough task ahead of them if they want Washington to be one of the NFL's biggest surprises in the 2024 season.
On CBS Sports, they reckon the ceiling for the rebuild is an 8-9 finish – four wins better than a year ago - but no playoffs. The floor, is still an improvement, but only to 6-11. That got the Junkies talking on Tuesday morning.
JP Flaim said his ceiling is 10 wins with Daniels having a CJ Stroud-type season and his floor would also be lower that "there is the possibility - for all the reports it doesn't seem likely - but the possibility that Jayden has a Bryce Young rookie season or he gets hurt. There's a good possibility the secondary stinks and the offensive line struggles and a lot of things go wrong."
The latter of that scenario, Johnny "Cakes" Auville added, is more likely than the former and that it is more likely Daniels gets hurt than he struggles and has a season akin to the Carolina Panthers rookie QB last year. "I just don't see him having that poor of a stat line," he said about Washington's rookie.
In Carolina, Young completed 59.8 percent of his 527 passes for 2,877 yards (5.5 yards per attempt) with 11 touchdowns and 10 interceptions while being sacked 52 times for a loss of 477 yards and a 73.7 passer rating and 33.4 QBR. The team went 2-14 in the 16 games he started.
While Washington may not have a ton of weapons for Daniels – even after the addiion of Noah Brown last week – Cakes said you are "discounting" the Commanders QB's legs: "I mean he could run for eight or 900 yards as a rookie if he stays healthy."
Aside from the quarterback, however, Flaim's biggest concern is that the defensive personnel – aside from at inside linebacker where Bobby Wagner and Frankie Luvu are big improvements – the rest of the players are not markedly better.
"I think the floor is lower than the six wins, their defense was dead last year... I think their linebackers are better, their pass rush is a huge question mark and their secondary is weak," he said. "And then I think the offensive line struggles, we don't know if Noah Brown is gonna be a good No. 2 receiver or whatever heck they do."
Cakes believes the floor can't be lower than five and "if they're right where they were last year with Ron [Rivera] or god forbid worse, than the first year with Dan Quinn is just an unmitigated disaster. It has to be better than Ron."
On the changes to the coaching staff, Jason Bishop points out that it is likely the Commanders will be "more prepared each week," which will lead to a better defense, and offensively they will "be more balanced" because offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury is "gonna do a much better job" than Eric Bieniemy did.
"I still have concerns about the wideout threats," he added, "because if I'm a defensive coordinator I'm taking [Terry] McLaurin out of the game and I'm making those other guys beat me."
Bishop put his ceiling at nine wins, which would "be a great year, because if you win nine games that means your quarterback played pretty well," and his floor is probably six wins.
Eric Bickel, the most optimistic of the bunch, called it "an impossible question to answer" as the entire season hinges on Daniels staying healthy. If he gets hurt "they're gonna win zero" games and the ceiling is 10 or 11 wins.
The full conversation can be heard on the audio player above!
