The NFC East
As you can see from the standings, the Eagles have scored 1 more point this season than the Commanders, while Washington’s defense has allowed 3 more points to be scored than the Eagles D. With only a 4-point difference in net points, the Eagles managed an unblemished 4-0 record while the Commanders limped to a 2-2 record in September.
The Cowboys, despite being 31st in points allowed, have somehow managed to stay within a half-game of Washington (and Dallas faces the 0-4 Jets this week). After this week’s trip to New York, the Cowboys travel to Carolina to take on the 1-3 Panthers before hosting Washington in Week 7.
In the next 4 weeks, the Eagles play Denver and Minnesota, but they also play the New York Giants twice. The prospects for closing the gap between Washington and Philly in the month of October don’t seem great unless Jaxson Dart finds a way, even without New York’s top offensive player, Malik Nabers, to transform his Giants into a more dominant force.
If the Commanders are going to have a successful 2025 season, they probably need to have a relatively successful October. Washington, of course, is in LA to play the 3-1 Chargers tomorrow — a game that most of the country will watch in the late afternoon. They will return home to play the Bears on Monday Night Football in Week 6. After the road trip to Dallas, they close out the month with another away game on another Monday night versus the Kansas City Chiefs.
The combined record of these four opponents is 8-7-1, which doesn’t sound too intimidating, but the Bears seem to be ascending, the Chiefs are always dangerous at home, and Washington has struggled in both of its road games so far this season.
October’s travel schedule alone — LA, Dallas, Kansas City — is pretty daunting. The prospect of beating the Chargers on the road — even after the Giants beat those Chargers with a rookie quarterback in his first start just 6 days ago — seems remote after the brutal performance by Washington’s defense in Atlanta.
In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked Hogs Haven readers to predict Washington’s record for the month of October.
The most popular projection, by far, was for a .500 record of 2-2 that would see the team approach the halfway point of the ‘25 season with an overall record of 4-4. Interestingly, 22% of respondents predict one additional win while another 22% predict an additional loss. Very few respondents expect either a winless or undefeated month.
Based on the comments from the survey article, I’d say the greatest pessimism centers on this week’s upcoming game against the Chargers, while the greatest optimism is focused on the Week 7 trip to Dallas. The prediction of 1, 2 or 3 wins largely seems to depend on how readers viewed the two Monday night opponents — Chicago and Kansas City.
Confidence
Washington fan confidence in our Hogs Haven Reacts polls through the first month of the season was quite strong. In fact, a common comment in the first two weeks involved wondering why fan confidence wasn’t 100%.
Not so much following a 7-point road loss to the Falcons in which Washington’s defense appeared overmatched in every aspect of the game.
Confidence about the team’s direction fell to a season-low of 62% this week; it was at 89% following the victory over the Raiders.
Interestingly, the relatively pessimistic view of Commanders fans is just slightly more so than that of Philly fans, only 65% of whom expressed confidence in the direction of their undefeated team this week.
Cowboys fans are the gloomiest of the four NFC East fan bases; after falling to just 7% a week ago, Dallas fan confidence ‘rebounded’ to 39% this week — its second-highest level of the season.
Giants fans are finding reasons for optimism despite the team’s 1-3 record in September. Following New York’s win over the Chargers in Jaxson Dart’s first-ever NFL start, fans of Big Blue logged a confidence reading of 72%.
Week 5 expectations
As mentioned above, fans seem pessimistic about Washington’s prospects for a win in Los Angeles tomorrow despite the return of the Commanders starting QB, Jayden Daniels, who missed the last two weeks with a knee injury that occurred in the Packers game in Week 2.
It appears that fans in SB Nation’s national email survey agree with that pessimism.
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With four teams on byes this week, there are only 14 games being played. Fans from across the 32 fan bases have picked the Chargers to win this week, but they are clearly not infallible — they incorrectly projected the Rams to win at SoFi Stadium on Thursday night. Let’s hope the stadium juju holds through Sunday.
Fans in the national survey picked the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys to win this week. If they have correctly predicted all the game outcomes for NFC East teams, then the Commanders could find themselves with the same overall record as the Giants, and sitting in 3rd place in the division behind an undefeated Philly team when Washington hosts the Bears in Week 6. Let’s hope that doesn’t come to pass!
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