Leo Chenal spent his first four NFL seasons popping on defense and special teams for the Kansas City Chiefs. Which means, in his first three seasons, he played in three Super Bowls, winning two. His defensive coordinator in K.C., Steve Spagnuolo, has been one of the best at his job for two decades. That the Chiefs suffered through a gap season of sorts in 2025 due to cascading injuries, most notably to Patrick Mahomes, and didn’t make the playoffs, doesn’t detract from the notion that Kansas City has become a destination franchise, an NFL blue blood.
Chenal is 25. He could have stayed with Mahomes and Spags and been right back in the mix for the Lombardi Trophy next season — if Mahomes returns from his ACL and LCL tears — and been one of K.C.’s leaders on defense. But, just as he’s entering his prime, he opted to come to Washington, and to the Commanders — who are, you may have heard, coming off a 5-12 season, and who’ll have first-time offensive and defensive coordinators calling the shots.
So, why leave that for, uh, this?
“Obviously, records, this past year, with the Chiefs, we didn’t have a great record,” Chenal said Thursday on a Zoom with local reporters, after signing a three-year deal with Washington.
“Here, we probably didn’t meet expectations,” he said. “I just know that we’ve got a bunch of great players in the building, that are capable of winning. We’ve got a staff, front office, coaches, everybody involved, it’s like, the energy, the culture that they have, we’re capable of having a great record, pushing in the playoffs. So, you know, I didn’t look at records. I looked at, where can I thrive, where can I thrive, (and) as a team as well, where are we going to thrive? And this place just stuck out a lot.”
That the Commanders’ front office, and coaches, and returning players have been able to convince so many free agents from so many winning organizations to come to D.C. and try to resurrect Washington’s magical 2024 campaign is a significant win. Yes, the Commanders had millions to throw at free agents. But a lot of other teams did, too. Few brought in as many upside plays as Washington did this past week.
As of Sunday morning, Washington had signed 12 new players in free agency. (This doesn’t count the Commanders extending or re-signing players from last year’s roster, like Laremy Tunsil, Marcus Mariota and Treylon Burks.) Three of the new guys — wide receivers Dyami Brown and Van Jefferson and running back Jerome Ford — are likely more depth pieces than potential starters, and that’s not at all a criticism. The Commanders were destroyed by injuries last season, without enough depth to withstand catastrophic losses at position groups like wide receiver and cornerback.
Of the nine players that the Commanders signed who are likely to either start or play significant snaps next season, though, seven — Chenal, defensive end Odafe Oweh, edge K’Lavon Chaisson, nose tackle Tim Settle, defensive end Charles Omenihu, running back Rachaad White and cornerback Amik Robertson — come from teams that were in the playoffs in one or both of the last two seasons. Chaisson was in the Super Bowl last month; Settle’s Houston Texans played against Chaisson’s Patriots in the divisional round.
Safety Nick Cross came from the Indianapolis Colts, who just missed the playoffs each of the last two seasons. Only former Tennessee tight end Chig Okonkwo comes from a complete rebuilding program.
And: Nine of the 12 will be 28 or younger on opening day next season. (Settle and Omenihu will each turn 29 this summer.)
None of that feels coincidental.
GM Adam Peters indeed pivoted, as he said he would after the season, toward younger, faster players and toward multi-year deals, instead of the one-year contracts for aging talent that highlighted Peters’ first two offseasons as GM. Nor did he reflexively go after ex-San Francisco 49ers, though it’s more likely than not that wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, technically still a Niner, will, ultimately, be in Ashburn. (Omenihu did play for San Francisco in 26 games over two seasons in 2021 and ’22, but he’s been in K.C. since then.)
Sure, White is close to Jayden Daniels, as is Aiyuk. That might explain much of their interest. And resetting the tackle market certainly would explain Tunsil’s desire to stay here long-term. But all of the others?
The Commanders certainly seemed to have a type this time around: position fast, capable of playing multiple spots on the field, looking for a more prominent role than they had before — and people who’ve been in winning shops, and who really bought into the culture setting. Maybe re-culture setting.
“Once I got here, it was love,” Oweh said Saturday. “They really let me know how they saw me fitting on this defense, in terms of just being able to find those one-on-one matchups and be able to target those, and play fast, just play up the field. They let me know they were going to allow me to do that, and I was on board with that.”
None of this guarantees a renaissance in 2026. The Commanders still have to find a wide receiver, or receivers, to pair with Terry McLaurin. They still need a center after their unexpected and still lightly explained release of starter Tyler Biadasz last month, leaving Nick Allegretti as the only player on the roster with significant snapping experience. They could still use another DB or two, and another linebacker wouldn’t hurt. Some of that will be addressed in the draft, but not everything.
Both David Blough, the first-time offensive coordinator, and Daronte Jones, Washington’s new defensive coordinator, will be under tremendous pressure to deliver in what feels like a make-or-break season for Dan Quinn.
But the Commanders haven’t whiffed. They missed out on wideouts Alec Pierce and Romeo Doubs, despite reportedly offering each big dollars, but any uncertainty about Quinn’s future didn’t keep other good players from signing.
“Obviously, I got a chance to talk with Dan, and DJ, and (outside linebackers coach John Pagano), just about the trajectory that the organization would like to take,” Chaisson said Friday. “You can’t tell me that you would have thought the same thing would happen with us last year, with the Patriots. Excited for the opportunity. Excited for the building pieces that we have within the building, the staff, I believe in ’em, all the way. Everything that they’re trying to instill culture-wise, the defensive system, and the players that we’re bringing in, it’s all about the belief. And I think they brought the right guy (Jones) in to hurry up, to kind of progress that, and enforce those traits.”
Again: Washington still has lots of questions going into ’26 — on the field, and in the coaches’ box. Daniels has to show he’s able to stay available all season, and Blough has to show he’s capable of helping Daniels do so with his play calling. Jones has to immediately bring the best of what Brian Flores ran defensively in Minnesota, with an awful lot of new pieces. With this much roster churn, chemistry will be hard to find right away.
But the Commanders aren’t running it back, either in philosophy or along the depth chart. Even the most cynical among the team’s fan base can’t say Washington has played it safe so far this offseason.