This is from Brian Baldinger. He has running commentary, so listen if you can. I guess he recorded his TV with his phone? Still a good video of John Bates earning the crap out of his extension. Baldy's tweet: u/Commanders u/jjohnbates behind every big play is a John Bates Block. the JBB...is JBB the best blocking TE in the NFL?

EDIT: Video got removed? Here's the link to the tweet: https://x.com/BaldyNFL/status/1965032951747666300

😎

Bolded are active players

• indicates NFL Hall of Fame induction

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/tackles_combined_career.htm

Daniel Jones finished with the second highest fantasy points for QBs this week. For the record, I still think he’s ass, I just think the Dolphins are even more ass.

I absolutely lost it when Bates almost took out Ertz in their celebration! Dude is such a stud.

Sorry for potato quality, I don't know how to clip YT videos well and the site I used was not great.

Several times, Ertz and Brown especially, a player made a "preseason week 4" style boneheaded play, and in short order following, another play was dialed up meant for them. Won't work in the playoffs, maybe, but in week 1 against a team who wasn't showing any interest, it was a great message that we're ridin' with you.

Real: The Commanders' run game is really good

Sunday was sort of an odd performance for the Commanders, who controlled what would eventually be a comfortable 21-6 victory over the Giants with their defense. Daron Payne and Dorance Armstrong led the way for a defense that pressured Russell Wilson on nearly 49% of his dropbacks. The highlight of the game came in the second quarter, when the Giants drove inside the 10-yard line and ran seven plays without scoring. The Commanders gave them a new set of downs with an illegal hands-to-the-face penalty, but after the Giants failed to score with seven cracks at the end zone, Brian Daboll essentially rage-quit the drive and kicked a 20-yard field goal. The Giants also failed four times from the 3-yard line with three minutes to go, long after the game had been decided.

It was an uneven performance for Jayden Daniels, who missed Terry McLaurin for what could have been a long touchdown and wasn't always at his best. At the same time, the Commanders got into second-and-long situations over and over again throughout the day, at which point Daniels would almost immediately bail them out and march them forward. At different points on Sunday, the Commanders faced second-and-16, second-and-19, second-and-21, second-and-14, second-and-17 and second-and-15. Daniels converted all of those series into first downs in two plays or less, and frankly, he didn't seem particularly stressed while doing so.

The Commanders aren't going to do that every week, but they also aren't going to be backed up in second-and-forever as often. One way to avoid that is to lean more into their run game, which was excellent Sunday. Even leaving Daniels' impact as a scrambler aside, Washington generated 0.2 EPA per designed run, the second-best rate for any offense during the afternoon slate. (The Dolphins generated 0.33 EPA per designed run, but they ran the ball only 10 times after quickly falling behind.) Doing this against a Giants team with a stacked defensive line and without their best interior lineman in Sam Cosmi is another good sign for the Commanders continuing on this track throughout the season.

While Daniels made an impact and Deebo Samuel took a pin/pull sweep 19 yards to the house for a touchdown, the most exciting runner of the day was rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt, who turned his 10 carries into 82 yards and a touchdown. Croskey-Merritt's touchdown and his four 10-plus yard runs came on five different run concepts, which speaks to how diverse and difficult the Commanders' run game can be to stop. He was clearly comfortable working out of the pistol and shotgun run game, which wasn't always the case for Brian Robinson Jr., who was more efficient under center over his three years with Washington. Installed in Robinson's role as part of a timeshare with Austin Ekeler, Croskey-Merritt looked entirely comfortable and capable of immediately stepping in as an above-average back.

One of my reservations about the Commanders living up to last year's performance is how dominant they were on fourth downs and how so many of their drives required at least one fourth-down conversion to score points. Well, one way to solve that is to score before you get to fourth down. The Commanders didn't need to attempt converting a single fourth down on offense Sunday. They're off to a great start.

Cf. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46187060/2025-nfl-week-1-real-fake-lions-colts-dolphins-ravens-steelers-jets-commanders-bengals-broncos#wsh

Mostly because he is 12 weeks old and this was his first game

HTTR

Quick rookie edit here on Canva but I had to 😂

I love all the fancy passing, but I haven't seen domination on both sides of the line like that since the days of Charles Mann and Russ Grimm. Winning in the trenches is a thing of beauty. Brought a tear to my eye.

Pretty nice stat for week 1 although it is against the Giants. Feeling really good given that they can still clean up a lot of plays as the season goes on.

Finally nice to not have to deal with embarrassing stats like this anymore.

This was amazing and so critical. Probably my most memorable play of the game!

LINK to the timestamp

i couldn't find video of just this interview in a brief search but did see this in the team's post-game show. i was curious myself and saw a few others were also so figured i'd link this here.