The weirdest Commanders' roster move that no one saw coming

One of the first official moves Adam Peters made after being named Washington Commanders general manager was trimming his roster of some key veterans. The first three players he released — Logan Thomas, Charles Leno Jr., and Nick Gates — had an average age of 31.

A couple of weeks later, Peters would purge the roster of many more veterans, including Kendall Fuller, Tyler Larsen, Jacoby Brissett, Curtis Samuel, David Mayo, and Cody Barton. 

Were you to look at the overall roster age, you wouldn’t be able to call this a youth movement. While Peters was getting rid of plenty of vets, he was simultaneously adding a group of even older players, like Zach Ertz and Bobby Wagner.

However, Peters was also investing in youth by loading up on draft picks. Montez Sweat and Chase Young had already been traded by the time he arrived, and the new general manager made it clear that he was prioritizing building through the draft when he dealt Jahan Dotson, thought to be the WR2, shortly before the season, to acquire more future draft capital.

Commanders’ plans to get younger made a U-turn in 2025

The net result of all this roster turnover was that Washington’s mean age went up from somewhere in the middle of the pack in 2023 to 25th in 2024. But its median age, which is not affected by outliers like Wagner, Ertz, or Nick Bellore, remained in the middle of the league.

It certainly appeared that Peters was going to engage in a gradual multi-year buildup of the roster around Jayden Daniels. Then, the quarterback had one of the greatest seasons a rookie signal-caller has ever produced, and those plans went out the window.

The first indication that Washington’s roster was not going to continue its youth movement came late last season, when Peters traded draft capital for Marshon Lattimore. He continued that trend this offseason by trading more picks for players pushing 30 — Laremy Tunsil and Deebo Samuel Sr.

When the dust settled from all the transactions, the Commanders were left with just five picks in the 2025 draft — as opposed to nine in 2024 — and the average age had risen. Just before cut-down day, the roster had an average age of 27.13. They were the oldest team in the league — the only team with an average age over 27.

Peters entered the 2024 season with the 25th-oldest roster at 26.64. Of the seven teams that were older, every one of them reduced their age by at least a half year in 2025. The Commanders got a half-year older.

In a vacuum, that’s neither good nor bad.

Any franchise wants a good young team, but more than that, they want to win. It is interesting to note that Peters came from a franchise in San Francisco that has failed to win a championship while its good young quarterback has been playing on a rookie deal. It appears that he is going to do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen in Washington.

Peters is going to do whatever he feels is necessary to win a Super Bowl before he has to pay Daniels an enormous amount of money. The No. 2 pick is so far ahead of schedule that he forced a complete rethinking of long-term franchise strategy.

Instead of getting younger, Washington has gotten older, which adds to the pressure of the next two years. It was not something anyone saw coming, but fans wouldn’t want it any other way.