It's been a tough year for the Washington Commanders. It feels like just yesterday they were destroying the Lions in the NFC Divisional Round. In 2025, it’s been a much different story. Injuries have plagued this team, including knocking star QB Jayden Daniels out for weeks. They had the highest 4th-down conversion rate last season, but this year, they’ve struggled immensely in that field. After overproducing in 2024, the Washington defense has really taken a step back this season, with a lot of the same guys. One player they could certainly use right now is former 1st-round pick Emmanuel Forbes Jr….

2024 must’ve been a tough year for Forbes. Ron Rivera and the Commanders got roasted for picking him before Patriots’ stud corner Christian Gonzalez. A clip of Commanders executives Martin Mayhew and Eric Stokes went viral talking about strongly preferring Forbes over Gonzalez, which Commanders fans never let them live down.

Images of Forbes also went viral before his rookie season even started, with trolls cropping pretzel sticks and toothpicks in for his legs. He was constantly getting chirped for being too skinny, almost looking malnourished. It’s safe to say that Commanders fans didn’t like the first round draft pick from the start.

When Adam Peters took over as the GM of the Commanders last year, he made it clear he wanted his own guys on the roster. Anyone recent draft pick who wasn’t producing was released from the team, including cornerbacks Emmanuel Forbes Jr. and Benjamin St. Juste. Well, in typical 2025 Commanders dumpster-fire fashion, both of those young cornerbacks are now having career years on their new squads…

If you’re a fan of Washington, you’re used to stuff like this happening. For my entire lifetime, we’ve either overpaid veterans to join the team after career years and then watched them struggle in maroon and gold, or let struggling players walk and witnessed them glow-up on their new team the following year. This isn’t new for the Commanders,  but after the best season in decades, I think we were all hoping the “curse” was finally lifted. Well, after watching an abysmal and embarrassing 2025 season so far, the bad luck might be back again.

Benjamin St. Juste has been a solid cornerback for the Chargers this season, but the real star of the show has been Emmanuel Forbes Jr. on the Rams. This kid is playing like a top-5 corner in the league, which is hilarious after watching him play himself off the field the entire 2024 season. From bust to goat, Forbes has finally found his confidence and is carrying this Rams secondary right now. 

After watching Forbes get absolutely cooked week in and week out, it’s painful seeing him thrive in a Rams uniform. Last night he had one of the best games I’ve seen in years from a cornerback. He held one of the best offenses in the NFL to 0 receptions, with an INT and multiple passes deflected. I’m happy for the kid, but I can't lie… as a Commanders fan, it pains me to see him playing so well when our defense looks like they’re playing with blindfolds on. Maybe he’s in a better scheme, or just having a good stretch of games, but you can’t deny the film: Forbes looks like one of the best young defenders in the NFL this season, and everyone saw what he is capable of on primetime last night…

He’s not just playing well, he’s literally breaking records and doing things that haven’t been done since 2022. What a turn of events for the most made-fun-of draft pick of 2023. After trading for Marshon Lattimore and watching him get burned or miss games for the past season and a half, it would’ve been nice if we had the cornerback we drafted in the first round of 2023 to bolster the secondary. 

It’s shaping up to be another year of pain and misery for the Washington Commanders. As a fan, it’s very fitting to see the team regress after their first dominant season in my lifetime. With one of the worst defenses in the league this year, it would’ve been nice to have either Benjamin St. Juste or Emmanuel Forbes Jr. in the secondary, to say the least. After we thought cutting/not resigning them would be a good thing with the addition of Marshon Lattimore, we should’ve known there was more pain and suffering on the horizon. After all, this team has been cursed since the 1990’s. Did Dan Snyder sell his soul to the devil back in the day? I guess we’ll never know…