Washington fans want Commanders coaches to give snaps to younger players as the ‘25 season winds down

Confidence

Well, at least we’ve determined the elasticity of fan confidence with respect to a late-season win against the Giants: it’s +17%.

A week ago, at the tail-end of an 8-game losing streak, fan confidence, as measured by the Hogs Haven Reacts survey, stood at 32%. This week, it moved up fairly sharply to 49% after a road win over the NY Giants. Interestingly, the last time confidence had dipped to 32%, it rebounded to 45% after an OT loss to the Dolphins. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what that might mean with respect to the Dolphins and Giants.

Looking ahead

Our 2nd & 3rd questions in this week’s survey looked ahead; Question 2 asked about the running backs the upcoming game against the Eagles while the final survey question asked about the middle linebacker position for the balance of the season.

Running backs

Asked to say which running back should get the most carries in today’s game against the Eagles, the results were rather lopsided in favor of Bill Croskey-Merritt over Chris Rodriguez.

Looking through the comments of the survey article, there’s little to indicate why respondents chose Bill over Chris; in fact, more people indicated in the comments that they had voted for Rodriguez than for Croskey-Merritt.

The one comment that did give some useful detail said:

Bill needs the carries. We need to see if he can physically handle the load after getting dinged up often earlier this year. Is he the future or do we need to look at the draft again?

I appreciate that insight. Given that there hasn’t been a ton of difference in the production of the two backs, it seems to rest on the fact that Bill is a rookie while Rodriguez is a 3rd-year player. It seems worthwhile to note that, while Bill is a young 24 years of age, Chris is not ancient at 26.

You can see from this graphic that Bill has gotten much more work as a ball carrier this season, but Rodriguez has produced slightly more yards per carry (4.6 vs 4.5) and has been significantly more productive as a scorer (4 TDs on 372 carries vs 5 TDs on 646 carries).

My feeling from reading comments all season long is that fans are somewhat split in their preference between the two young running backs, and that their preference for one or the other has often been swayed by the performance in the most recent game(s). The results this week may have been heavily influenced by the fact that Bill ran for 96 yards and a touchdown against the Giants this past Sunday while Chris missed the game due to injury.

But a fairer portrayal of fan sentiment probably comes from the fans who commented that this shouldn’t be an either/or choice, but a “hot hand” or “two-headed monster” choice.

Play the hot hand at RB. Most importantly, establish the run early and stick with it. CRod had an 80% rushing success rate against the Vikings. Bill was over 70% against the Giants. Those are two good options.

I want to see both of them get a lot of carries; which of them gets the most depends on game flow and situation.

Committee/Two-headed Monster/Thunder & Lightning – both deserve as many carries as they can get, lets lean on the run game so we can feed them both.

Linebacker

The question about who should get the most snaps at middle linebacker to finish the season is a pretty straightforward question about youth vs experience.

Youth won the day. Big time.

By a margin of nearly 9 to 1, Hogs Haven readers want to see Jordan Magee play in favor of Bobby Wagner.

The arguments for Magee range from finding out what we have in him to he’s better in coverage to we need more speed on the field. Magee is seen as the (potential) future at the position while Bobby Wagner is seen as a great player whose time is quickly passing away. In a season in which there is no postseason payoff, the goal of many fans is to give snaps to younger players for the dual purposes of evaluation and development.

I doubt that the majority will get their wish in this case. I think it goes beyond Dan Quinn’s loyalty to a player who was instrumental in helping Quinn launch his NFL coaching career; I think DQ genuinely sees Wagner as providing the best opportunity for Washington to go 3-0 to finish the season. That said, Wagner, who might very well be playing the last three games of his (so-far) 14-year career, needs 25 more tackles to become the third player in NFL history to achieve 2,000 career tackles. I don’t see coach Quinn taking Wagner off the field right now.

As an aside, if Wagner plays a 15th season, he will almost certainly pass both London Fletcher (2,039) and Ray Lewis (2,059) to become the all-time leader in career tackles.

Bottom line

It’s clear that the majority of Hogs Haven readers at this point are focused on seeing younger players on the field — even when that means a 24-yr-old rookie getting the nod in favor of a 26-yr-old 3rd-year ‘veteran’. Fans want to see the younger players on the field so they (the fans) can evaluate them (the players), and there is a strong and well-founded belief that the snaps for these younger players will promote their professional development.

Coaches, of course, see things differently. They have the ability to evaluate players on a daily basis from July onwards; they don’t necessarily have to see the young guys get extended play time to evaluate them. Coaches also put a premium on winning games, and they see these last three games of the season as being just as important as the first three. That’s a key difference between coaches and fans. Of course, the veteran players who get displaced in favor of younger players are another factor that fans don’t have to deal with in any meaningful way. NFL seasons are short; NFL careers are short. No player gladly sits down to make way for another player — especially if the reason for the change is just to give the younger player experience. NFL players understand and welcome competition; getting beaten out for playing time is how the business is supposed to work. Losing snaps because coaches are looking ahead to next season isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

When it comes to the running game, I expect the coaches will feed the running back who seems to be having the most success against the Philly defense this evening.

With respect to the linebacker group, I expect the coaches will continue to give Jordan Magee opportunities to get on the field, but as long as Bobby Wagner is healthy, I don’t expect him to play less than 100% of the Commanders defensive snaps between now and the final whistle in Week 18.

Washington fans want Commanders coaches to give snaps to younger players as the ‘25 season winds down

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