Kaliakmanis has the QB3 job all but locked up
Washington's finale in Baltimore was a 41-3 wipeout, but the real news of cutdown weekend is a seventh-round rookie who has outplayed Sam Hartman all camp.
Kaliakmanis has the QB3 job all but locked up
With Marcus Mariota still working back from the sprained MCL he suffered in the preseason opener, the third quarterback job has quietly turned into one of the more decided position battles of camp. Athan Kaliakmanis, a seventh-round rookie, has outplayed Sam Hartman across the exhibition slate — against Detroit he went 11 of 14 for 162 yards and a 114.9 rating, while Hartman completed 8 of 15 for 80 yards and threw an interception, per SI's Onsi and Axios's Washington D.C. bureau.
LIVE: QB Athan Kaliakmanis speaks to the media after the game t.co/MTAuDMo1ND
Both got their reps in Friday's finale at Baltimore, and both stood in front of the podium afterward — Kaliakmanis included, the kind of postgame media access usually reserved for a job that's already his. Dan Quinn has said the front office isn't expected to go outside the building for depth behind Jayden Daniels in the meantime, which is about as clear a signal as a coach gives without naming names.
None of it is glamorous — this is a No. 3 quarterback job on a team with a franchise passer entrenched at No. 1 — but it's exactly the kind of camp battle a fan actually wants resolved before Sunday's cutdown deadline, and right now it looks resolved.
The preseason ended with the ugliest tape of camp
Washington closes the preseason at 1-2 after a 41-3 wipeout in Baltimore on August 28, a game the Commanders were outgained in 456 yards to 177. Dan Quinn didn't dress it up afterward, saying the group looked "without the energy and the speed to go finish on it."
Ravens3-41
Lions13-17
Dolphins20-7The box score wasn't kind to the names still fighting for roster spots. Luke McCaffrey caught one of three targets for 17 yards, and Kaytron Allen managed three carries for four yards and lost a fumble, though he did add a 9-yard kickoff return. Antonio Williams, by contrast, didn't play at all — the kind of night off that often says more about final-cuts thinking than anything that happens on the field.
It's worth saying plainly: this is preseason math, not season math. A blowout loss to a team that dressed its own depth tells you plenty about who's making the 53 and nothing about how this offense looks in September.
Two roster spots are already decided before cuts even start
The 53-man math got a little simpler this week for reasons nobody wanted. Safety Malik Spencer reverted to injured reserve, per the NFL's official transaction log, and defensive end Drake Jackson landed on Reserve/Injured with a hamstring issue — both are now out of the conversation entirely rather than fighting for a spot in it.
The finale itself was missing more bodies than the score suggests. Rachaad White (hamstring) and Jacory Croskey-Merritt (lower body) both sat out in Baltimore, and tight end Ben Sinnott was held out with an oblique injury Dan Quinn had flagged earlier in the week, per Nicki Jhabvala of The Athletic. None of it is Week 1 news yet, but it's exactly the depth-chart math that gets settled over cutdown weekend.
The opener is a division road trip to Philadelphia
The real season opens Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, with Washington as a road underdog against a division rival that's gone 0-3 in its own preseason. That record means less than it looks — Nick Sirianni's Eagles have barely played their starters in exhibitions since 2021, and Sirianni's teams haven't lost a regular-season opener since he was hired, a run that stands at 5-0 heading into this one, per PhillyVoice.
The line opened at 4.5 points in Philadelphia's favor with the total set at 47.5, a middling number for a game that will tell us a lot more about both rosters than anything either team did in August. Washington's own preseason line — a run of 1-2 in the preseason so far — is about personnel, not a forecast; the Commanders open the real thing 0-0 like everybody else.