Ousted Commanders Owner Reveals True Colors As Jayden Daniels Sends

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 17, 2025, 9:06 AM

ousted commanders owner reveals true colors as jayden daniels sends

Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels 5 walks the field after a game against the Chicago Bears at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland on Sunday, October 27, 2024. The Commanders beat the Bears 18-15 after Daniels 5 threw a 65-yard Hail Mary pass into the end-zone with no time left on the clock. PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxHUNxONLY WAP20241027447 BONNIExCASH Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels 5 walks the field after a game against the Chicago Bears at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland on Sunday, October 27, 2024. The Commanders beat the Bears 18-15 after Daniels 5 threw a 65-yard Hail Mary pass into the end-zone with no time left on the clock. PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxHUNxONLY WAP20241027447 BONNIExCASH

Watching the Commanders’ fairy tale run to this year’s NFC Championship game can make anyone happy for the way they have bounced back from years of mediocrity. Like just six playoff appearances in 24 years and two postseason wins in two decades. The Commanders were basically a team that no one took seriously until something changed. Yes, you could say they turned it around with a rookie QB, Jayden Daniels leading from the front. But it’s the change in ownership that really worked wonders for the team from our nation’s capitol. See, the Commanders were under the ownership of business tycoon Dan Snyder since the turn of the millennium with the aim of a rebuild.

But all he could deliver was just two seasons of double-digit wins and heaps of scandals. Snyder was charged with sexual harassment of employees and a toxic workplace culture. The NFL even fined Snyder on his way out of Washington a whopping $60M for all of his wrongdoings. So, after selling the Commanders for $6B to Josh Harris and his group of investors. That’s when the real rebuild began. Under Harris’ ownership, the first season of Commanders didn’t bear the fruit their fans would have hoped for.

A 4-13 record painted a bleak first-year picture of the new look Commanders. However, a complete revamp of the locker room was spearheaded by first-time GM Adam Peters and former Cowboys DC Dan Quinn as head coach. And, of course, their No.2 overall draft pick, Jayden Daniels, propelled the Commanders to their first NFC Championship game in 33 years. So, that success after Snyder’s exit didn’t really make him happy. Instead, “He f—— hates it,” as per ESPN. The Washington Commanders have the best quarterback in NFC East, if you believe longtime NFL cornerback Fred Smoot.

Smoot, who spent seven of his nine NFL seasons in Washington, recently called Jayden Daniels the top quarterback in the Commanders’ division. Daniels, of course, won the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year last season and led the Commanders to a 12-5 record and a trip to the NFC Championship Game. A year before at LSU, he won the Heisman Trophy, which is what landed him with the Commanders at the No. 2 overall pick. Daniels finished with a 69.0 completion percentage and 25-9 touchdown-to-interception rate. He also led all QBs with 822 passing yards and five touchdowns in the playoffs, even though the Commanders lost 55-23 to the Philadelphia Eagles in the conference-title game.

Even though the Commanders QB was the breakout star of 2024, Daniels is being judged against the reigning Super Bowl champion quarterback Jalen Hurts. That is because the Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is coming off a serious injury and the New York Giants have a revolving door at quarterback. When I met Dimitri Karmiris at a bar in mid-November, he was wearing a football helmet. He was at Walter’s Sports Bar in Washington, D.C., to watch the Washington Commanders–Philadelphia Eagles Thursday Night Football game, and I was there to talk to Commanders fans—about this season, and about how the... The combination of former Commanders owner Dan Snyder’s departure from the franchise and rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels’s arrival had seemingly revived a depleted fan base and restored hope in a team that many had... And as soon as I walked into Walter’s that Thursday, I saw a guy wearing an old-school yellow Washington dome standing alongside a woman who was rocking an Eagles helmet.

I couldn’t help my curiosity. I went up to the man and asked, as politely as possible: “So, uh, what’s your deal?” He introduced himself as Dimitri and said his parents had immigrated from Greece to a D.C. suburb in 1970. Growing up, Dimitri was fascinated by football, but his parents wouldn’t let him play, so in ninth grade, his older brother forged his permission slip and he joined the Potomac School team in McLean,... He scored eight touchdowns in his first two games, and he played in secret for two years before his parents found out—after he broke three ribs in a game.

(Dimitri thinks the language barrier and his parents confusing “football” with soccer likely helped prolong the ruse.) His playing career was over after that. But the game is intertwined with his identity. “The Redskins made me feel like I belonged,” Dimitri said. “Like I was American.” Dimitri and his wife, Julia, an Eagles fan from Philly, are foreign service officers. Wherever they’ve lived across the globe—from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Liberia—Dimitri has made it a point to follow the Commanders, often watching games at 2 a.m.

or 4 a.m. He estimates he listens to local Washington sports radio “100 percent of the time.” (Yes, even while he sleeps.) And while Julia was in labor with their firstborn son in Athens in November 2023,... I asked Julia if she’d been mad at Dimitri for wanting the game on while she was giving birth. “No,” Julia said. “Because I know that is who I married.” Dimitri got hooked on Washington football during the team’s glory days.

From 1982 through 1992, Washington made five NFC championship games and won three Super Bowls under head coach Joe Gibbs. Those Lombardi trophies are the first things you see when you walk into Commanders headquarters. As recently as 2000, the Washington football franchise was named by Forbes as not just the most valuable team in the NFL, but the most valuable sports franchise in the entire country. It was a football powerhouse. “I just knew about winning only,” Dimitri said. “And nothing else.”

This article/post contains references to products or services from one or more of our advertisers or partners. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products or services. Commanders owner Josh Harris knows the gem that he has in quarterback Jayden Daniels. Washington didn’t get to the Super Bowl this past season, but it came way closer than anyone dreamed it would, and the former LSU star was the reason for that. He threw for 3,568 yards, 25 touchdowns and just 9 interceptions in the regular season alone. During the Commanders’ magical playoff run, he added 822 yards passing with 5 TD passes and 1 interception in leading Washington all the way to the NFC title game, where the Commanders fell to...

Daniels did major damage with his legs this season, too, rushing for 891 yards and 6 touchdowns during the regular season and 135 yards and 1 TD in the playoffs. He will be under contract at a bargain for at least the next 2 seasons, so Harris’s team should have plenty of cap room to build more talent around Daniels. Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters knew what he was getting when he informed his staff that they were taking LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels with the No. 2 overall pick. Peters, who jumped into the task of turning the Commanders franchise into a contender last January following the team's 4-13 campaign in 2023, had done his research up to that point. He had watched countless hours of film, spoken to coaches and seen the pre-draft workouts.

He spoke with Daniels personally, both at the Scouting Combine and at the Commanders' facility in Ashburn, Virginia, to see if all the things he heard about Daniels' work ethic, attention to detail and... Daniels checked all the boxes. Peters was convinced he had found Washington a quarterback -- something the franchise had spent years searching for -- and a foundation for the team's future. He was proven right, time and time again, in the form of dramatic wins, a deep playoff run and several broken franchise and NFL records. "If we could've run it up, we would've run that pick up," Peters said after Night 1 of the NFL Draft. "We waited a little while because I think they tell us to do that, but we couldn't be happier."

Commanders fans know what it's like having Daniels as their quarterback. It involves a belief that their team has a chance to win as long as he's in the game. That ended up being true, as Daniels went on to complete 69% of his passes for 3,568 yards with 31 total touchdowns. It might have required them to wait until the last second of games, but they were usually rewarded with unforgettable moments. The Commanders went 12-5 and advanced to the NFC Championship -- both firsts for the franchise since 1991. The Washington Commanders are suddenly spoiled when it comes to star power.

It isn't that the Commanders haven't had well-known players on the roster over the years, but right now, that noteriety is transcending even the field with people like Earvin 'Magic' Johnson involved as part... As it tends to go, when famous people get together, other people tend to pay attention. So when the Washington owner revealed he sat down to discuss several matters with Daniels and his mother/agent, there was no surprise that it got quite a bit of attention. "I enjoyed sitting down with our star Quarterback Jayden Daniels and his mom Regina Jackson today talking about this upcoming season and life after football," Johnson shared in a social media post. "Commander fans, we have a true leader. It was great to get to know Jayden off the field and listen to his mom’s vision for his brand!

Daniels has been reluctant to fully embrace his star status as the quarterback of the Commanders and 2024 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, but that hasn't stopped him from doing his best to... The Washington Commanders have fallen again. One week removed from a 28-27 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, albeit a short week, the squad hit the road to take on the Philadelphia Eagles. The star-studded NFC East squad got some separation from the Commanders in the division standings with a 26-18 win. Washington cleaned the house last offseason. They've got a rookie quarterback under center and head coach Dan Quinn is in his first year with the franchise.

LSU product and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels has been incredible despite being in his first year in the NFL. After the loss, Daniels had a message for his teammeates and the rest of the team. "For us? Man, we've got to execute. We haven't been executing how we were before at the beginning half of the season," Daniels said. "So, we've got to go back and, like I said, look at ourselves in the mirror.

Ousted Commanders Owner Reveals True Colors As Jayden Daniels Sends

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