Following Washington’s 55-23 loss to Philadelphia on Sunday night, the die-hard Commanders fans who travelled up I-95 for the NFC championship showdown at Lincoln Financial Field were hardly sulking. Starting from their tailgates in the South Philly parking lots, they emanated a this-is-just-beginning sense of underdog optimism as they congregated in their Jayden Daniels jerseys, already thinking about what Washington might accomplish next season.
This has been a recalibration season for the Commanders, with new owner Josh Harris and new general manager Adam Peters ushering in a new coaching staff led by head coach Dan Quinn and a new line-up with the offense led by rookie quarterback Daniels and the defense led by new-to-Washington veteran Bobby Wagner. For Washington fans at the game, Sunday’s loss did little to dampen their optimism and sense of renewal after former team owner Dan Snyder’s long and ignominious reign.
Obbie English of Northeast DC, a life-long Washingtonian and Commanders fan, said he has been waiting for this moment since his days at Langdon Elementary School, where he wore Burgundy and Gold on the flag football field. For English, a tailgater and attendee at every home game this year, the trip up to Philly was nothing, as he drove 11 hours (waking up at 3 AM) by himself last week to watch the Commanders take on the Detroit Lions at Ford Field.
English says it’s all about showing up for players that, to him, reflect the heart and soul of the city: “They’re representing us, they’re putting their bodies and lives on the line. We’ve got to come out and support them while they represent us.” Despite watching the Commanders fail to contain start Eagles running back Saquon Barkley and wide receiver A.J. Brown, English came out of the game with hope for the future.
“My immediate reaction to this is that Jayden Daniels is about to turn into a monster after this,” English said. “I feel like he needed to experience this adversity, every success story needs a little bit of adversity. This is about to be a part of his story. Every supervillain has a backstory. The future is looking bright for us.”
Against the Eagles, Daniels made NFL history, setting the record for most postseason passing yards by a rookie in the first quarter—and finishing the game with 822 postseason passing yards. Daniels both threw a 36-yard touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin and danced his way through the Eagles defense for a 10-yard touchdown run of his own.
Like English, lifelong Commanders fan Kendall Eberhardt told Washingtonian after the game that the team’s future looks bright, provided it upgrades its defense: “I was definitely disappointed that we didn’t show out better in the second half, but at the same time I’m encouraged with the talent that we do have with Jayden Daniels and Terry McLaurin. Zach Ertz played a heck of a game. We just need defense.”
Eberhardt tailgated Sunday morning with his brother Seth, who remembers watching their father, a pianist at their hometown church in Damascus, Maryland, play the team’s fight song during their Sunday services. Seth said his father played the song before the 1992 Super Bowl, in which Washington defeated Buffalo for its most recent NFL championship. “We’re back, we’ve been asleep for twenty years,” Seth Eberhardt said.
Speaking of awakenings: renowned superfan Tailgate Ted has seen his tailgates skyrocket from what he called “depressing” turnouts in the past few years to parties of over 700 people. Ted says he doesn’t blame any lapsed Commanders followers for hiding out over the last few years, and welcomes all with open arms: “DC is naturally divided by politics. We live in a city where you’re either on the left or on the right. But this team is a unifying force that we can all get behind.”
Tailgate Ted says he “parties with a purpose,” raising money for select causes each season—this year, he raised $10,000 to tackle lung cancer—while carrying on his father’s legacy as a diehard fan. “My father passed away in 2001,” he said. “The team called me up after he had passed and he had put my name on the season ticket waitlist when I was a baby. I didn’t know. It was the lasting gift he gave to me. That’s why I never stopped going. That’s why I’m never going to stop doing this.”
DC-born and Montgomery County-raised sisters Lee Acosta and Melissa Leon also have supported the Commanders since birth because of their families, and both are passing that legacy to their children. Acosta remembers gathering around her uncle’s tiny television with all her cousins, cheering with her family to support the franchise. “Now we see that in our kids,” Acosta said. “My daughter, she’s two, and she’ll run around the house chanting, ‘Go Commanders! Go Commanders!’ And I just think, ‘that was me.'”
Sunday was the first time she left her two children—a two-year old and nine-month-—at home with a babysitter in order to support the Commanders. “I feel like the coaching impact has transpired into the field and then into the fans and has driven the fans to come all the way up here,” Acosta said. “I grew up saying I would never come to a Philly game, and here I am.”
Commanders fandom has helped cement the friendship between Northern Virginia natives and UVA graduates Chris Colliton, Jake Letson, and Drew Cook, who also traveled to Tampa and New York for games this season. The three experienced decades of pain during the Snyder era. “Because Snyder is gone, the weight has been lifted,” Letson said. Added Cook: “Even on the best of days before, there was a dark cloud. But now it’s blue skies ahead.”
Letson, who used to rewatch the 1987 season Super Bowl on a VCR with his father, said that fans and players enjoyed the same sense of renewal this season: “There’s even a well of support that I didn’t know I had. The players are having so much fun and they’re also aware of how fun it is for the fans. It’s a really interesting, awesome relationship that I don’t know if any other teams have because we’ve ALL been through it. It feels like we’re in this together.”
The loss to Philadelphia—marked by four Commanders turnovers and an underwhelming defensive performance—showed where the Commanders have room to improve. Fans like English hope those deficiencies can be shored up in the NFL Draft and through free agency, and that next season, the team will take another step forward. “In the offseason we’re going to get all the pieces that we need,” English said. “There are no subtractions, only additions.”
