Was Jayden Daniels' injury really behind the Commanders 2025 collapse? And more lingering questions

Robert Mays· Host0:00

Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Our lingering question series rolls on today. We did this last off-season, wanted to bring it back this summer. Just a set of questions that we have about the way that last year ended that we didn't really have time to address because we were focusing on the teams that were gonna be playoff teams, that-- or we're focusing on a side of the ball that was more important to a team making the playoffs. We're gonna talk about the Niners young defensive players today. When we were studying and thinking about the Niners near the end of last year, it was mostly is the offense good enough while the defense is terrible for them to be competitive against these teams in the NFC playoffs? So we wanna take a little bit of time today to study that defense, to look at a guy like Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins. What can they be heading into year two based on what their rookie years looked like? We talked about the Cowboys. The Cowboys, the entire off-season has been about the defense. Can the defense get better? Can the defense get better? Because I think that there's just this presumption that the offense is already good enough for the Cowboys to be a contender in 2026. Well, is it? Was it? Like, how should we actually feel about the Cowboys offense? So those are the types of questions that we are gonna be digging into as part of this series here over the next few weeks. Really enjoyed the first go-around of it with me and Derek. Let's get to that conversation right now. [rock music] Digging in today to our first real lingering question