Commanders fan confidence

I’ll be honest, following the brutal 0-31 shutout loss to the Vikings this past Sunday, I expected fan confidence expressed in our Reacts survey of Hogs Haven readers to collapse to single digits.

It didn’t.

Instead, roughly 1 in 3 respondents to our survey continue to express confidence in the direction of the team.

This isn’t really anything new, though. The three lowest points in the year for fan confidence came in Weeks 8, 11 and 15 following bad losses to Kansas City, Detroit and Minnesota.

However ugly the on-field losses were in those low points, though, roughly 30% of fans continued to express confidence.

I think this tells us that about 30% of fans consider the question about the direction of the team to depend primarily on the long-term. Getting to ‘yes’ for those survey respondents involves a belief in the most foundational elements of a team — owner, GM and quarterback. It may also indicate continuing belief in the coaching staff, which, oddly, is probably the least secure of the 4 pillars of an NFL franchise.

The roughly 70% of fans who have voted ‘no’ in those three ‘valleys’ of Weeks 8, 11 & 15 are clearly more focused on the on-field results and more prone to change their confidence in the direction of the team based on team performance and competitiveness and/or wins & losses. For those fans, the current W-L record or competitiveness in the most recent game(s) is much more meaningful to the question of the team’s direction than what might happen in the coming offseason; in the 2026 season; or what lies beyond.

The Commanders, the Giants, and the 2026 Draft

A look ahead to the 2026 offseason is embedded in this week’s second survey question, which asked:

Which team, the Commanders or the Giants, ends up with the selection closest to the #1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft?

With the two teams playing one another this week, the question invites fans to play ‘what if’, not only with the outcome of this week’s game, but with the three subsequent games to finish out the 2025 season.

As things currently stand, for Washington to have the earlier pick in the draft, New York and Washington have to finish with the same record, or Washington has to finish with fewer wins.

This is because, unlike calculating playoff seeding, the key tie-breaker for draft position is not head-to-head competition or conference W-L records; instead, it is strength of schedule (SoS).

Strength of schedule is based on the W-L records of all 17 opponents in the regular season.

Currently, the Giants have an SoS of .532 while the Commanders have an SoS of .511. In the event of identical records, the team with the lower SoS will have the earlier draft pick.

You can see this rule in action in the current list of the top-10 draft picks from Tankathon.

You can see that, while three teams have 2-11 records, the Giants hold the top pick in the draft because of the .532 strength of schedule, which is lower than the .55 and .575 SoS for the Raiders and Titans, respectively.

Likewise, the Commanders SoS of .511 puts them in the middle of the 5 teams that sport 3-10 records.

Of course, because W-L records change as each week’s games are played, SoS is a moving target.

But not every game outcome will be relevant to the SoS calculations for draft position with respect to 2 given teams. For example, when the Eagles lost to the Chargers recently, while that game outcome changed the Eagles’ likelihood of winning the division, it didn’t change the relative SoS for the Commanders or Giants because both NY and Washington played the Eagles and Chargers during the season. No matter the outcome of the Philly-LAC game, one win and one loss would be added to the SoS for NY & Washington, meaning no relative change in the SoS positions for the Giants and Commanders. This is true for any common opponents that play over these final 4 weeks.

There are six non-common opponents that will change the relative SoS between the Commanders and Giants:

As mentioned, in the event that Washington and the Giants end up with identical records (which would require NY to win one more game than the Commanders over the final four weeks), SoS would currently award the earlier draft pick to Washington, but that is subject to change based on the outcome of this Sunday’s head-to-head matchup and the outcome of the 24 games involving the 6 non-common opponents between now and Week 18.

Despite the number of variables involved, we asked HH readers who they thought would have the earliest 1st round draft pick, and the results were either encouraging or discouraging depending on whether you’d prefer seeing the Commanders win more games or have the best possible draft position.

Our survey results show a rough 60/40 split between those who think Washington will pick ahead of New York in the draft (59%) and those who think the Giants will have the earlier pick (41%).

Personally, I’ll be rooting for the Commanders to finally find themselves, and to go on a 4-week tear through the NFC East to finish with 7 wins and a middle-of-the round draft pick.

That will start, I hope, with a curb-stomping of the Giants this Sunday, before back-to-back home beatdowns of the Eagles and Cowboys, and end with the humiliation of the Eagles at Philly in Week 18.

I’m very much hoping to see the 59% proven wrong.