'What We Signed Up For': Washington Commanders GM Adam Peters Embracing the Challenge

There may be no fan base more starved for winning than the Washington Commanders, and it's on general manager Adam Peters to deliver the goods.

Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters at the Reese's Senior Bowl. / Vasha Hunt-USA TODAY Sports

For all the excitement surrounding them right now, the Washington Commanders have a lot going against them.

For starters everybody is new from the Commanders owner to the guys on the bottom of the roster there are new faces all over the place.

Typically new doesn't mean better, at least not immediately, as it takes time for new faces and personalities to fully gel and get in sync. But Washington is being looked upon to improve on one of the league's worst products over the past 20 years or so and general manager Adam Peters has staked his first - and potentially only - opportunity to build a winning team on the chance he's the guy that finally figure it out. So the expectations are that the group will show signs of moving in the right direction almost immediately.

Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters at the Reese's Senior Bowl. / Vasha Hunt-USA TODAY Sports

"There is a lot of pressure," Peters said ahead of this weekend's NFL Draft. "It's a great responsibility and we take this very seriously, and that's why we've been working tirelessly on this and turning over every stone."

There's an old cliche that nothing worth doing is done easily, and while many view taking a team that earned the No. 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft as a situation with nowhere to go but up, there is actually room to fall even further.

Specifically, if the Commanders are picking at the top of next year's draft this year will be looked upon as a total disaster and players like defensive tackle Jonathan Allen won't be the only one voicing frustrations.

Even worse, there will be plenty wondering if the quarterback predicted to be selected with the No. 2 overall pick was worth the investment and if the team should just cut bait after one season. Couple that with the fact there are at least three other quarterbacks theirs will be compared to in terms of success, and there is actually a lot that could go wrong for Peters and his new Washington delegation.

But he - and his staff - can't worry about that as much as they feel the pressure of it. The only thing to do now is to form the plan, execute as close to it as you can, and see where the chips fall at the end of the 2024 NFL Season.

The idea, it would appear, is to take a talented group of inherited players, blend them with the type of contributors the new staff believes it wants to build around, draft keystone pieces and then gauge how well they did or didn't blend together in year one. From there, around $100 million of salary cap room awaits Peters in 2025, and the team could be on the verge of fleshing out a competing roster with that money.

But that's only if this season goes reasonably well. Well enough to see a path through the forrest that leads to the land of NFL competitiveness.

"We want to do this obviously for this organization, but for this region, for this base, and for the men, the coaching staff and the players on the field to get this right," Peters continued. "So it's a great responsibility. With that comes pressure, but that's what we signed up for."