playBill BarnwellSep 21, 2026, 08:10 AM ETCloseBill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more. He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsIt’s hard to say that any week of an NFL season can feel seismic, especially when it’s the second week of the campaign.
But I believe we’re going to look back on Week 2 and say it was extraordinarily impactful in deciding and decoding the NFC.Injuries to young quarterbacks were the biggest stories of the day, but we also saw several of the conference’s top contenders reaffirm themselves with big victories, a couple of teams we’re still not sure about squeak by and a preseason contender narrowly save itself from the 0-2 cliff. We even saw the NFC South get on the board with a pair of victories.Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’Let’s run through some of the results and events from Sunday that might really matter in the NFC’s big picture and break down how they played out and how they impact the conference moving forward. I’ll start with the game in Dallas, where the Commanders are facing serious short- and long-term questions about what’s next.Jump to: WSH and Daniels’ injury CHI and Williams’ injury NO and its big win GB and its near loss Three teams at the topWashington Commanders (0-2)Lost 37-20 to the CowboysSunday showed why organizations were both transfixed and terrified by the idea of drafting Jayden Daniels as their quarterback of the future. For most of the first half, Daniels was single-handedly propelling the Commanders forward on offense.
In addition to going 11-of-17 for 96 yards as a passer, he picked up five first downs with his legs, scrambling seven times for 69 yards. Having a QB capable of bailing the offense out and picking up explosive plays in the process gives the Commanders a floor that most other teams don’t have on a weekly basis.And then, on the final play of the first half, we saw the other side of the coin. With the Commanders passing up a field goal attempt to try to score a touchdown with three seconds remaining, Daniels took the snap from under center and got caught up in the footwork of left guard Chris Paul. As Daniels fell to the ground, he tried to brace with his left elbow, only for it to visibly give way and dislocate.
He somehow got up and threw an incomplete pass and then did not return after halftime in a game that got away from Washington after the break.The injury is likely to sideline Daniels for an extended period. He missed four games after dislocating the same elbow in Week 9 a year ago, then aggravated the injury in Week 14 and did not return over the remainder of the season. Missing a month would be a season-altering injury for the Commanders, who are already 0-2 and about to face the defending champion Seahawks in their home opener next week. Marcus Mariota is a capable backup, but the veteran doesn’t offer the same sort of explosiveness and calmness under pressure that Daniels exhibited during his remarkable rookie season.The excuses that factored into Daniels’ injury last season also don’t apply.
A year ago, coach Dan Quinn took the blame for having him on the field late in a lopsided game. Unless you want to be particularly pedantic about the idea that the Commanders should have taken the points on one play on the road against one of the best offenses in football, Daniels was on the field in a situation where he belonged. This wasn’t a risky play or a product of taking too many hits as a runner. Even among those six scrambles I mentioned earlier, he ended the play by sliding or stepping out of bounds five times.
This is early in the season without the sort of significant accumulation of hits that might wear Daniels down late in a campaign.In the past, it was easy to believe that he would stay healthy if he took fewer hits or if Quinn had him out of a noncompetitive game. The Commanders moved him out of the shotgun and the quarterback-read run game, putting him under center more often to try to keep him healthier. And yet, in a complete fluke, Daniels had his foot stepped on here.After a mostly healthy rookie season in 2024, Daniels will now have gone no more than three games without missing a start to injury since the beginning of the 2025 season. How do you rely on that QB as your franchise passer, even one as talented as Daniels?
He’ll be eligible for a contract extension after this season. Even if he returns after a month and stays healthy for the rest of the year, will the Commanders realistically be able to justify giving the face of their franchise the sort of contract his play deserves? Can you bet $60 million or more per year on that player if you can’t count on him being on the field for most of the season, let alone all of it?The Commanders can pick up Daniels’ fifth-year option and go year-to-year while holding on to the franchise tag, of course, but if there’s any organization that knows the dangers of playing that game, it should be Washington. When it was under former owner Daniel Snyder, this same franchise picked up Robert Griffin’s fifth-year option, then sat him during his fourth season to avoid triggering the injury guarantee on that option year. (This was before all fifth-year options were fully guaranteed at the time of signing.) Washington franchised Kirk Cousins twice, lost him in free agency for nothing and then spent years cycling through quarterbacks before eventually landing on Daniels, who looked to be their QB of the future.What’s more concerning is that Daniels isn’t the only issue.
Star left tackle Laremy Tunsil is out for most of the year with a torn triceps. Guard Sam Cosmi, who was excellent in the opening-week loss to the Eagles, was hit by his own teammate and needed help walking off the field after an extended time down. And 31-year-old wideout Terry McLaurin, coming off a contract extension and a disappointing 2025 season, has four catches on 13 targets through two games. Even a defense that looked solid in Week 1 allowed the Cowboys to score 37 points on eight drives Sunday.play0:32Jayden Daniels carted off field with elbow injuryAnd yet, as with so many teams through two weeks, the Commanders could point to a couple of moments and feel like they were close to being 2-0.
A fourth-quarter comeback against the Eagles was scuppered by a successful Jalen Hurts scramble on third-and-18 and Washington’s failed 2-point try on a shovel pass to John Bates. Against the Cowboys, the Commanders narrowly missed on what should have been a pair of long touchdown passes to McLaurin and Treylon Burks — each on a drive that ended up producing zero points.Last season, a Commanders team with Super Bowl aspirations lost Daniels to an injury at the end of the game in Week 2 for a couple of weeks, kicking off what would be a wildly frustrating season. After an 0-2 start and another Daniels injury, it certainly feels like another one of those wasted years for Washington, if not something even more ominous.Chicago Bears (1-1)Lost 9-3 to the VikingsThe Bears, meanwhile, might be facing a slightly better scenario than the one they feared Sunday afternoon. One week after he led the Bears to a 59-point performance against the Panthers, quarterback Caleb Williams was struggling against a much more difficult opponent in Brian Flores’ hyperaggressive Vikings defense.
Battling the rain for most of the day, Williams and coach Ben Johnson finally found a way to create a big play against a Flores blitz look, faking a screen one way and slipping D’Andre Swift out the other for a 32-yard completion. After converting a fourth-and-1, the Bears were set up with a first-and-goal opportunity and a shot to take the lead midway through the final quarter.And then most of Chicago w
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