Commanders lose ground in NFC East without playing as Giants stun Texans in overtime during Washington’s bye week
Washington stayed at 1-4-1 on its bye, but New York’s 27-21 overtime win in Houston pushed the Giants to 4-2-1 and made the Commanders’ NFC East climb even steeper.
The Washington Commanders didn’t play a snap Sunday, but their position in the NFC East still got worse.
Washington entered its bye week at 1-4-1, needing some help from other teams to keep its hopes of climbing back into the division race alive.
The Houston Texans had an opportunity to provide exactly that against the New York Giants. Instead, New York escaped with a 27-21 overtime victory, improving to 4-2-1.
The result leaves the Giants 2.5 games ahead of Washington in the standings, a full game further ahead than they would have been with a loss.
For a Commanders team that has managed only one win, that’s a costly development during a week when it couldn’t do anything to change its own record.
Houston actually gave Washington some late hope. C.J. Stroud connected with Xavier Hutchinson for a touchdown with 52 seconds remaining, tying the game at 21 and forcing overtime.
But the Texans went three-and-out on their opening overtime possession. New York needed only two offensive plays to end it, with Cam Skattebo breaking a 42-yard run before Devin Singletary scored from 30 yards out.
For Commanders fans rooting against the Giants, that was about as frustrating an ending as possible.
What a Giants loss would have meant for Washington
Flip the result in Houston and the picture looks completely different. A Texans win drops the Giants to 3-3-1, which leaves the Commanders 1.5 games back with plenty of season left to chase that down. 1.5 games back in late October is a deficit you can work with. You can talk yourself into a run from there.
Instead, the gap sits at 2.5 games. Washington didn’t add a loss to its record and still slid further behind. That’s the cruelty of a bye week when you’re chasing. You can’t control anything, and the one thing you’re hoping for (another team handling its business) is the one thing you have no say in. Houston had the roster to do it. The Texans went to overtime with a team they should have handled and let it slip away.
Dallas and Philadelphia still hang over the division
The timing makes it worse. Had the Giants lost, the Commanders would have had real daylight heading into Monday Night Football, where the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles meet.
Philadelphia is facing the possibility of playing the remainder of the season without Jalen Hurts, who is undergoing treatment for blood clots. That’s a massive blow to the team that has set the bar in this division. Dallas, meanwhile, keeps doing everything it can to get right and keeps failing to get there. A division with a wounded Eagles team and a stumbling Cowboys team should be a division where a 1-4-1 club can dream a little.
That dream needed the Giants to come back to the pack. They didn’t. Now New York sits at 4-2-1 as the team that took advantage while everyone else was either hurt, flailing, or resting.
The math only gets tighter from here
Look at where this leaves Washington. The Commanders come off the bye at a disadvantage in the division without having lost a game in the meantime. They’ll need wins of their own, obviously, but they’ll also need the rest of the league to start beating New York, and they’ll need the Monday night result to break their way.
That’s a lot of moving parts for a team that’s only won once. Every week Washington spends depending on someone else is a week it isn’t controlling its own fate, and the margin for error is already gone.
