The much-anticipated start of the 2026 NFL regular season now sits just a little over a month away, and most offseason storylines haveshifted to focusing on how the league’s 32 franchises plan on approaching the schedule at hand
Most ongoing football-related debates center around limited roster spots, positional battles, and setting record expectations, but there’s still plenty of off-field drama worth accounting for this close to preseason kickoffs. The Washington Commanders, for one, have yet to escape one particularly nagging narrative; they’ve yet to quell lingering doubts about whether they’ve settled the race for WR2 behind lead pass-catcher Terry McLaurin, and a few divisive names have loudly expressed their eagerness to join the up-and-coming Commanders over the coming weeks.
If we have ways to get better, we’re always going to look into that and assess whether it’s the right move for our team. If we do think it is, then we’re not afraid to do that.
Commanders GM Adam Peters
We’ve mostly been referring to San Francisco 49ers wideout Brandon Aiyuk whenever the topic of enthusiastic, controversially eccentric receivers angling their way to D.C. comes up, but another famed talent has left breadcrumbs of his own for Commanders fans to follow. Stefon Diggs is still out there in free agency, and he’s open to returning to his DMV home
Stefon Diggs already commented that it would “make sense” to him to join the #Commanders at his ‘A moment for Mom’ event back in the DC area in May, given his local roots.A month later, Diggs told TMZ while leaving a workout near a track that he was “open to everything” when… https://t.co/UeaOdoUbFDpic.twitter.com/lgpOWYqMUG
— JosinaAnderson (@JosinaAnderson) July 27, 2026
Diggs’ Complicated D.C. Pitch
After losing the Super Bowl to the Seattle Seahawks alongside the out-of-nowhere New England Patriots, Diggs sounds willing to join another rising-third-year quarterback in Jayden Daniels. And he still looks to have gas left in the tank as a potentiallyplished resume, as he just posted his seventh 1,000+ yard season in his lone stint alongside Drake Maye
But Diggs’ Washington fit may not be as clean as the on-paper excellence he’d posted in his New England bounce-back. He can’t be depended upon to consistently fill the go-to starting role he’d occupied as a Pro Bowler with the Buffalo Bills, even if he did thrive in a Patriots platoon during the latest step of his transition from star to journeyman
His 2025 catch percentage and success rate were 83.3% and 68.6%, respectively, both career-highs. There’s a convincing case to be made that he benefited greatly from an outlier season of pass-converting 11 years into his professional career and against a legendarily weak strength of schedule, sustainability concerns that followed the Patriots throughout their playoff run
McLaurin is more established in Washington than the Gaithersburg native and University of Maryland alumnus, and it isn’t particularly close. The longtime Commander has maintained some pretty productive numbers of his own: he has five straight 1,000+ yard finishes to his name over the half-decade he spent leading up to 2025’s plagued campaign, now armed with a dynamic deep-field Daniels connection that’s grown with the time they’ve each put in
Diggs would not become Daniels’ unquestioned first option, and there’s a chance that he’d have work to do before cementing himself as the clear-cut second receiving option, even within an incomplete-looking offense
Chig Okonkwo is considerably younger than Diggs while offering a lot more upside as an athletic, well-rounded tight end, and that’s without getting into the less-proven receivers peppering the depth chart. Recent third-round draftee Antonio Williams deserves a shot to prove he can handle a starting-caliber burden, andTreylon Burks is similarly likely to earn a chance of his own after his three consecutive starts to close out this past season
Williams, more than Burks, has an opening at clinching the second starting receiver role on the Commanders, even if Diggs is healthy and spry, and that’s where the question of how he’d handle a role adjustment comes into play. He’s had no problem making his grievances heard before, having built up quite the assortment of on- and off-field headlines after a decade in the NFL’s spotlight
That’s the big holdup with Diggs, and it’s tied to his in-game contributions. The chance of his creating headaches within the Commanders’ facility may be just as real as the possibility of his meaningfully elevating the squad’s contending aspirations. If Washington’s evaluators have reason to believe that they’d be better off with in-house options and younger weapons with less mileage, they should pursue that initiative on their own terms
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Published 11 hours ago| Modified 11 hours ago
HENRY BROWN
Henry covers the Washington Wizards with prior experience as a sports reporter with The Baltimore Sun, The Capital Gazette, and The Lead. A Bowie, MD, native, he also handles On SI’s Wizards beat, extending his DMV coverage, and has earned his journalism degree from the University of Maryland
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