and a quick and unhappy end to the Eagles’ season
Washington’s highest-priority veteran free agent extension
In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked Hogs Haven readers which soon-to-be veteran free agent should be the top-of-the list for a contract extension. The answer is both surprising and unsurprising.
The choice of Bobby Wagner by just over one-third of all respondents is surprising because, even back in 2021 when he first parted ways with the Seahawks and entered free agency, he was perceived by many NFL fans as a once-great, expensive linebacker who was past his prime. What makes it surprising is that three years later, this 34-yr-old player is seen by the Washington fan base as a key element of the team that just won 12 regular season games and advanced to the NFC championship game.
But this excitement about Bobby Wagner is not some hypocritical enthusiasm that is a product of the team’s recent success. When it was announced back in March that Wagner had signed with the Commanders, Hogs Haven readers celebrated the announcement.
That’s why it’s unsurprising that, while some NFL fans would point to limitations of the 2024 version of Bobby Wagner in terms of coverage ability or straight line speed, Commanders fans, who entered the season quite excited about the future Hall of Fame linebacker joining the roster, and seeing him in the mold of another older but high-performing middle linebacker — London Fletcher — who came to Washington late in his career…we welcomed him as a sign of better days to come.
I think it’s fair to say that Bobby Wagner proved himself to be everything we could have reasonably hoped for.
On the field, he played 1,072 defensive snaps and 83 snaps on special teams, accounting for 132 regular season tackles and another 25 tackles in the playoffs. Wagner also earned Pro Bowl honors for the tenth time in his career.
But Wagner’s role as a leader both on and off the field may be seen as his biggest contribution to the re-calibrating Commanders. It was almost funny to hear player after player in the Spring talk about how awesome it was to be in the locker room and on the field with Bobby Wagner. His total buy in to the Dan Quinn program provided encouragement and tacit permission for others to do the same. He has been described by local media as being an approachable, friendly and surprisingly ‘normal’ guy who is openly welcoming to players, media members and fans. He quickly formed a special relationship with incoming rookie QB Jayden Daniels that many beat reporters describe as ‘big brother-little brother’ in its mix of light banter and meaningful dialogue.
Any Washington fan who integrates salary cap hits into the equation would have to feel as though Wagner was a massive bargain at $6.5m in 2024, on par with Josey Jewell, TJ Edwards, and Germaine Pratt, and only about one-third of the cap space devoted to Tremaine Edmunds.
Wagner was clearly a huge element of Washington’s dramatic turnaround in fortune from 2023 to 2024, and it appears as if respondents in our survey are convinced that he should be brought back to continue the story in 2025, which would be Wagner’s 14th season.
What became clear in reading back through the comments under the survey article was that most commenters found it difficult to choose just one player as the highest priority. Most commonly, readers paired Wagner and Ertz as the two key guys to extend, but other players like Marcus Mariota and Dante Fowler were also frequently mentioned.
The takeaway, I think, is that Hogs Haven members deeply appreciate the 2024 roster construction and recognize the synergistic nature of what was accomplished this past season. While nearly any reasonably knowledgeable football fan could review the Commanders roster and highlight the holes and weaknesses position by position, the fact is that Washington fought its way to a 12-5 regular season finish before beating the NFC darling Lions in Detroit to reach the NFC championship game. What is often credited for this seeming over-achievement is the organizational alignment of vision from top to bottom and the ‘brotherhood’ that the players built under the guiding hand of head coach Dan Quinn.
Commanders fans could be forgiven for thinking that another offseason of roster enhancement by Adam Peters could lead to greater achievement next season and in the years to follow, but that a sense of continuity that comes with re-signing players like Wagner, Ertz, Mariota, Fowler, Chinn, Way and others may be a critical piece of the puzzle in the next five weeks.
Rooting interest for next week’s Super Bowl
In our Reacts survey this week, we also asked Hogs Haven readers to identify their rooting interest in the ultimate game of the 2024 season.
As you can see, faced with a choice between rooting for the hated Philadelphia Eagles or the first-ever ‘three-peat’ by an NFL team, Commanders fans picked the lesser of two evils, with 42% saying they would back Kansas City.
Given the deep love of football typically expressed by Hogs Haven readers, it seems surprising that 29% would say that they simply aren’t interested in the game, but I honestly feel the same way. There’s no result that can fully satisfy me here. The only thing I know is that I really don’t want the Eagles to win; I simply don’t want to have to listen to their fans crowing about it going forward.
What does not surprise me, then, is that more fans voted that they would hope for a planet-killing asteroid strike than voted to see the Eagles win another Lombardi Trophy. The main conclusion I draw from the final result is that about 14% of readers who voted in this week’s poll were visitors from Bleeding Green Nation.
The national email survey
SB Nation also carries out weekly surveys of all 32 fan bases via email. It turns out that the distaste Commanders fans have for those in Philadelphia is somewhat parochial. Nationally, the distaste for Mahomes, Kelce, Swift and the adoring game officials that act as KC’s guardian angels runs deeper than the disdain for Philadelphia fans and their punchable head coach.
Asked to choose between the two competing teams, the nationwide survey saw 56% of respondents picking the Eagles over the Chiefs as the preferred winner.
Commanders fans have hope, however. The Chiefs are 1.5-point favorites in New Orleans.
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