Commanders general manager Adam Peters held his first weekly Friday morning interview with the Junkies on 106.7 the Fan in Washington D.C., detailing what went wrong in a 24-22 loss to the Phliladelphia Eagles in Week 1 and what must be better on Sunday afternoon against the Dallas Cowboys.
He addressed the hot-button issues of the week, including Terry McLaurin’s target share, Mike Sainristil’s lapses in coverage, Dorance Armstrong’s return and more. We’ve pulled the best quotes for you, with a link to the full interview at the bottom.
Why Terry McLaurin’s targets were down
Terry’s a true No. 1 receiver and they didn’t want him to beat them. You saw a lot of cloud coverage, what you could call double coverage, on Terry. They rolled the coverage to him. He’s a huge part of our offense, and they did a really good job of trying to take him away as much as possible. That’s what this offense is, trying to find the open guy if they’re going to roll coverage to Terry. We have to beat them in other ways.
There are going to be games where he doesn’t get as many balls, but we know that in gotta-have-it moments, he’s gonna make that play. He’s gonna make plays in double coverage, too. They did a good job taking him away, and we still have to find ways to move the ball. Terry’s going to get his. He had an incredible camp. I have no worries that he’s going to have a really good year.
Drafting Antonio Williams in the third round
He was definitely someone that we were targeting. Those guys were coming off the board pretty quick. Even De’Zhaun Stribling, that the Niners took with the first pick of the second round, those guys were coming off pretty quick. The board got thin. We had targeted Antonio and thought he would probably be a second-round pick. We were at the top of the third. We were kind of holding our breath for him. There were a couple of guys we would’ve taken – not necessarily receivers but other guys.
But, with Antonio, the reason he lasted until the third round was because he had a fantastic 2024 season, playing all over the field – outside, inside and beating a lot of really good corners – and in 2025 him and Clemson didn’t really have a great year. He battled through a hamstring all year. To his credit, he played through. The whole year, but he wasn’t as productive. That’s ultimately what put him down into the third round, because he was predicted sometimes, at the beginning of the year, to be a first-rounder.
For him to be there and seeing what we saw on tape – you look over both years with his ability to win inside and outside – he has a great feel for the game. He knows how to change up the tempo of his routes and get open. He’s a friendly target. He catches everything. He’s a guy we targeted and were thrilled was there in the third round. Honestly, he really shouldn’t have been.
Mike Sainristil
He didn’t have a good game. Mikey knows that. We all know that. At the same time, we have a lot of confidence in Mikey and his resilience and his ability to bounce back. He knows what he did and what he needs to work on. I have all the confidence in the world that he’s going to do that. He is who we think he is and we know he’s going to bounce back.
Adding Dorance Armstrong to the pass rush
He was on pace last year to be one of the league leaders in sacks, before he got hurt, which actually happened in Dallas. He was playing great, great ball. He was ascending. Having him back and getting him on the field with Odafe (Oweh), getting him on the field with (K’Lavon Chaisson), that adds another high-end rusher and someone they have to account for. That’s a package that is going to be even more robust this week in terms of having him on the field.
He looks great. He really does. He has been rehabbing his tail off and really looks like he’s ready to go. He played in Dallas. He’s from Dallas. It’s going to be a big game for him. I think having an extra, high-end rusher really makes it harder on the offense. You’ll see some of those packages where it’s going to be hard to account for everybody.
Offensive struggles vs. Eagles
You’ve got to tip your cap to them and their scheme, but we were a little lost, too. That was the first time Jayden’s played a game in a while and it’s the first time he has called a game with all those guys in it. It wasn’t one player on offense. It was kind of everybody. Someone was off on this play and someone else was off on that play.
The stats weren’t really good for Jayden but I thought he managed the game well in the first half and didn’t get us into a ton of negative plays. We weren’t just hitting on all cylinders until the second half.
