If the 2025 season has taught us anything about the Washington Commanders, it should be that the path to winning a Super Bowl might not be with quarterback Jayden Daniels leading the way.
Daniels was brilliant as a rookie but cratered in 2025. That he did so with the entire roster built around him and built for a Super Bowl run speaks volumes.
Instead, the Commanders are 4-10 and will spend the last month of the season playing a series of meaningless games without Daniels, who went 2-5 in 7 starts before he was shut down for the final 3 games of the regular season on December 15.
If the Commanders are bold, there’s a way to become Super Bowl contenders again in 2026. By bold, we mean trading Daniels to the Cincinnati Bengals in exchange for quarterback Joe Burrow, who might need a change of scenery worse than any superstar in NFL history.
On paper, the mechanics of the trade wouldn’t be too complicated.
In this proposed trade, the Commanders send Daniels, their 2026 first round pick and 2027 second round pick to the Bengals in exchange for Burrow, who is playing on a 5-year, $275 million contract extension which runs through 2029.
Why the Trade Works for the Bengals
Burrow’s unhappiness with football and life in general was on full display in a “What Did He Just Say?” press conference on December 10 which you could take one of 2 things from it — either Burrow doesn’t want to play for the Bengals anymore or he just doesn’t want to play football anymore.
It’s safe to assume Burrow, who turned 29 years old on December 10, doesn’t want to quit playing. So, he needs a way out of Cincinnati and away from skinflint owner Paul Brown, who has almost single-handedly tanked the last few seasons for the Bengals by not paying his best players (other than Burrow), then overpaying them at the last possible second and costing the team valuable capital it could have spent on more starters.
That’s bad business, Burrow knows it, and he sees the Bengals cutting corners where the best teams in the NFL go all in.
Add in 4 years of terrible, no-good, very bad drafts — the Bengals haven’t drafted a player who has scored a touchdown since 2023 — and you’ve got a major problem.
Why the Trade Works for the Commanders
There’s enough data on Daniels to know now the injury problems which cost him 10 game in 2025 aren’t going away anytime soon. The wide variety of injuries that cost him games speaks to that — he missed games due to a sprained knee, hamstring pull and a dislocated left elbow.
While Burrow has had his own injury issues, you can chalk that more up to having arguably the NFL’s worst offensive line for several years going. That won’t be a problem in Washington.
If the Commanders could go out and sign a legitimate WR2 option behind Terry McLaurin in free agency and draft some young talent on defense, Burrow would have the weapons in place to win a Super Bowl in his first season, a la Matthew Stafford with the Los Angeles Rams in 2021 — the team Burrow lost to in Super Bowl LVI.
Brown & Co. would undoubtedly jump at the chance to get someone so talented on the cheap and get 2 more seasons with him before he’d be looking at a huge payday. They’d also get a young, energetic player in place of the seemingly always-mopey Burrow.
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