Quick Slant: 2025 NFL Madrid Game - De Madrid al Cielo
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant
Situated in Spain’s belly, high on a plateau where summer heat gathers like stored voltage, Madrid sometimes feels closer to the sun than the sea. The air is dry as a kiln, faintly metallic. Autumn weather is a silence occasionally broken by a drumroll from sudden black clouds.
Time, to Madrileños, is a suggestion. Their clock is not as sleepy as Andalusia’s but more elastic than most of Europe’s. The city is in no hurry, awaking late, lingering at counters to sip coffee in thick porcelain mugs where Americans might reach for plastic on the go, and strolling to work under the shade of plane trees and chestnuts, along streets of granite and cobblestone, and up and down marble stairs, all long worn by years of foot traffic and bicycles.
As the sun sets, light pools on the facades along Gran Vía and Plaza Mayor, and a feeling of a city after school fills the air, which weaves the layered sounds of chatting, gently whirring motors, buskers, political dissidents, and pop music. People creep indoors, with the smells of jamón fat and warm bread foretelling a nine o’clock dinner. Lingering is such a way of life in Madrid that a waitperson won’t drop a bill until flagged twice, assuming only then that a patron truly means it. When midnight nears, a street sweeper hums past—the soft hiss of water and brushes marking the city’s quiet surrender to the night.
Here, a round ball is king; Real Madrid and Atlético inspire near-religious levels of devotion. The NFL comes like a circus in the parking lot of a mall—its fans, devoted, but smaller in number. The atmosphere at Santiago Bernabéu is sure to be festive, curious, and light—Instagram-worthy, but unserious—a spectacle that, for most, won’t be brought home, save for a sweatshirt or hat to commemorate the occasion.
Madrid invites a pair of 3-7 disappointments to borrow the pitch at El Bernabéu, the cathedral of Spanish football: the Washington Commanders, sans Jayden Daniels and Terry McLaurin, and the Miami Dolphins, sans Tyreek Hill. For a sideshow distraction, this is hardly a concern; for the NFL, whose expansion across Europe is its Manifest Destiny, bringing a saddle with no horse to its first regular season game in Spain is disappointing, to say the least.
As for the season-specific implications? It’s probably about jockeying for next year’s position at this point. Can Miami HC Mike McDaniel do enough to hold onto his job? After all, he coordinated one of the most electrifying and effective offenses in recent memory. Can QB Tua Tagovailoa regain the trust of a fan base that blanketed him in merciless boos only two weeks ago? Can Washington HC Dan Quinn’s takeover of defensive play-calling duties—a clear sign that he’s moved from contention mode to survival—nurse a unit that is surrendering 28 points a week back to respectability? And could one of these teams still climb back into playoff contention after all?
The locals have a saying: “De Madrid al Cielo”—from Madrid to Heaven. It means that, beyond Madrid, there is nowhere on Earth higher to go. For the NFL, that’s the question now: can its grand expansion borrow that kind of finality, that sense of arrival in Spain? Can it even attract one new fan? Or will it, like the circus at the mall, pack up by Monday morning, leaving behind bags of trash in an empty lot, and a city already moving on to its next distraction?
Commanders
Implied Team Total: 22.5
Considering their high hopes to start, the Commanders have been disappointing; their Pythagorean expected wins show that they should be pacing for 6.6 wins. Only slightly better are the Dolphins, who are on pace for 6.8. Both teams’ real-life records come in under that pace.
The Dolphins are slight favorites; the tipping point there probably has more to do with the Commanders’ QB Jayden Daniels missing the game than anything; he is still out after suffering a gruesome-looking dislocated elbow in garbage time of a Week 9 game the Commanders had, for all intents and purposes, already lost.
There is a sweet spot for fantasy where a team excels at offense and struggles at defense. This usually maximizes offensive volume, translating to more opportunities for all, which is ideal for fantasy scoring. The Commanders are in that sweet spot this year, as they are slightly above average in offensive EPA, but among the very worst in the league in defensive EPA.
Sadly, it hasn’t translated to significant volume after all. The Commanders run 61 offensive plays per 60 minutes (T-23rd). The Commanders are relatively quick to snap the ball—in fact, they run the only 2025 unit that could be described as a no-huddle offense (65% no-huddle, roughly three times more than any other team).
Washington has a slightly negative pass rate over expected (PROE) at -0.4% (19th), and their overall pass rate is 54% (T-24th), indicating that many of their plays are ceded to the running game. They are also 28th in time of possession (28:17), so they spend a lot of time watching their opponents dictate the terms. As a result, they rank only 30th in dropbacks per game (34.5) and 28th in passing attempts per game (27.8).
Washington ranks 13th in offensive EPA per play and eighth in offensive success rate. They rank 14th in offensive EPA on dropbacks and tenth in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
Backup QB Marcus Mariota gets the call for the second week in a row—his third go ‘round as the Commanders’ fill-in this season after Daniels suffered a sprained knee that gave Mariota work in Weeks 3 and 4 and a hamstring pull that gave him work in Week 8. This will be Mariota’s fifth start; in the first four, he has been a QB1 twice.
Mariota, the former 2nd overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft, is historically an underwhelming passer, but he’s a quality rusher; as we know, this gives him an elevated platform to start, and with it, he automatically comes with a higher floor and ceiling than a pocket passer. Mariota has tended to fail as a starter throughout his career. Still, he’s probably in the upper crust among backup QBs in the NFL, especially as it pertains to fantasy football.
This doesn’t necessarily bear out this year. Mariota has not contributed dazzling passing numbers, but what has really kept those numbers down is his attachment to such limited opportunity, not poor performance.
Isolating Weeks 3,4,8, and 10, which are the games Mariota started (excluding those in which he came on midway through), Mariota has averaged 28.5 dropbacks. He has gone 17-25 for 197.25, 1.5 TDs, and 0.75 INTs. Extrapolated over the season, he would rank 34th in pass attempts per game, 32nd in completions per game, 26th in passing yards per game, tied for 18th in passing TDs per game, and with the 16th-most INTs per game. Mariota has 7.75 YPA (11th), a 91.9 QB rating (22nd), +5.1 CPOE (9th), a 9.4 aDOT (T-5th), and just a 38.7% YAC% % (39th), indicating his yardage is more earned on the weight of his throws than the efforts of a receiver or the scheme.
Mariota has actually been refreshingly good this season; of course, we are still in a small sample size, with only four complete games to consider.
After a slow start to the season, the Dolphins have been stout against QBs in their last five games. Of course, the strength of this run has come against Dillon Gabriel and late-stage Kirk Cousins. Nobody’s torched them, but Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen have been serviceable.
Mariota falls more into that former class than the latter, for sure. He is still very streamable, as alwasy, because of his rushing.
The Commanders have two pass catchers with at least a 15% target share per game over their last five: WR Deebo Samuel (22.0%) and TE Zach Ertz (21.2%). WR Terry McLaurin, who entered the year as the Commanders’ presumed no. 1 pass-catcher, has missed much of the season with injuries. He will miss Sunday’s game in Madrid, as well.
The slight leader for the season has been Samuel, whose fantasy production has tanked in the last five weeks.
He missed Week 7—a moment in time that somewhat aligns with his sudden dip in production—with what was referred to as a “nagging heel,” so he may be toughing through something quite painful. Unfortunately, that would mean his splits likely predict sustained disappointment. However, it is also possible that variance has drawn us a strange pattern here that appears to mean something when it actually doesn’t. Obviously, I don't work for the Commanders, so I can only guess. We can still work with 22% in a good offense, but we would at least hope he can turn that into some WR2 weeks along the way.
As for how he plays with Daniels vs. Mariota, Samuel has done decidedly better for fantasy football in games where Daniels has played this season, drawing nearly twice the targets, receptions, and receiving yards. Weeks 3 and 4 were played with Mariota, so this isn’t simply a matter of Daniels playing more of the games before news of Samuel’s nagging heel came out. Of Mariota’s four starts, Samuel has one WR1 performance.
The Dolphins began the season as a target for fantasy WRs, but they’ve appeared to stabilize. Over their last five games, they’ve essentially played two mediocre games against WRs, and three good ones.
I know it seems like everything comes with a caveat. Still, it’s worth pointing out that these were games against a Tillman-less Cleveland, a London-less Atlanta, and a Ravens team that spent the first half getting QB Lamar Jackson back up to speed after an injury absence and the second half firmly in control.
Ertz has only two TE1 weeks. However, he has infrequently tanked a fantasy lineup, especially considering the modest investment a GM would have made to acquire his services, which would usually portend a roster construction less reliant upon a stud TE. His target share in the last five games—two of which overlap with Mariota—would rank third among all TEs if extrapolated over the whole season.
Ertz has not achieved a TE1 week while playing with Mariota, and he had his worst game of the year in Week 4, when Mariota was the QB. However, his splits are not as starkly different with or without Daniels as Samuels’ are. He has barely recorded fewer targets, receptions, and yards, so this is almost entirely based on where Ertz’s TDs have landed.
Could Mariota be less inclined to produce TDs for his TEs than Daniels? Possible, although Mariota has had a good history with TEs. Delanie Walker made three straight Pro Bowls with Mariota as his QB, including a 1,000-yard season. During those three years, Walker earned 72 receptions for 898 yards and 5.3 TDs per season. It’s more likely a coincidence.
Miami is slightly above average in rush EPA allowed, but horrid at dropback EPA allowed.
Miami ranks 27th in EPA per play allowed and 25th in defensive success rate. They rank 29th in EPA on dropbacks allowed and 31st in defensive success rate on dropbacks.
Based on EPA stats, Miami is one of the most imbalanced defenses in terms of pass defense to run defense, making it an extreme pass funnel. The same is true for Washington; they rank as the second and third-most extreme pass funnels based on EPA.
Like everyone else, the Dolphins use zone defense far more than man-to-man; however, they do use each at an average rate relative to the league. They run man at a rate of 24.8% (14th). They use two-high safety at a rate of 55.9% (6th). Their favorite alignments are Cover 2 (29.0%), which they run more than any other team in the league, and Cover 3 (25.7%). They blitz at a rate of 30.8% (4th).
Fantasy Points’ coverage matchup tool assigns a zero-based matchup grade to each pass-catcher based on their opponent’s use of specific types and rates of coverage and how that pass-catcher performs against them. Positive numbers indicate a favorable matchup and negative numbers indicate an unfavorable one.
Based on this criterion, WR Chris Moore (+37.4%) and TE Zach Ertz (+33.5%) grade out as having highly favorable matchups. WR Jaylin Lane (+15.1%) also has a favorable assignment. Samuel (-5.5%), on the other hand, is expected to have an unfavorable assignment strictly based on the type of defense Miami runs.
PFF’s matchup tool is player-based, pitting the PFF ratings of individual players against each other for an expected number of plays based on historical tendencies and rating on a scale from great to poor.
According to PFF’s tool, all three WRs have poor matchups, while Ertz and Mariota have fair matchups. Samuel is expected to see a lot of CB/S Minkah Fitzpatrick, who is probably the Dolphins’ best secondary defender, so this feels like a bad week to expect much from him. On the other hand, it shapes up as a decent week to play Ertz.
Among the 30 teams playing this week, Washington ranks 17th in adjusted yards before contact/att (Adj YBC/Att, 1.91) generated. Defensively, the Dolphins rank 19th in Adj YBC/Att allowed. The aggregate is neutral, so neither side has a decided advantage.
Of the teams playing this week, the Commanders allow the fifth-highest pressure rate over expected (PrROE, +11.47%). Defensively, the Dolphins generate +6.72% (19th). The composite slightly favors the Dolphins defenders’ ability to get pressure, although not by a significant amount. The Dolphins recently traded DE Jaelen Phillips to Philadelphia.
Offensively, the Commanders rank 11th in offensive EPA per rush and sixth in offensive success rate on rushes. The Dolphins rank 17th in EPA per rush allowed and 11th in defensive rushing success rate.
For a while, it seemed rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt was taking off with the lead role. While he is not bell-cow, he still earns a substantial role; in his last five games, he earns a 54% snap share and 44% of Washington’s rush attempts, which is not terrible.
The problem, of course, is in the matter of high-value touches. 89.7% of Croskey-Merritt’s opportunities result in a low-value touch—i.e., a reception or a carry from inside the five-yard line. Of RBs with at least 25 attempts, this is the third-highest percentage in the league.
Strangely, RB Chris Rodriguez, who is in the same committee as Croskey-Merritt, ranks first with an unbelievable 91.1% of his opportunities going for low-value touches. This surprised me somewhat, as the word on the street is certainly that Rodriguez is Washington’s goal-line specialist. In reality, Rodriguez has four green zone touches.
RB Jeremy McNichols serves as the team’s primary pass-catcher, with an 11% target share. Sadly, this leaves all three as low-upside players, making them difficult to trust for fantasy purposes.
The Dolphins are better at run defense, but they are not unbeatable for fantasy. We look for any clues as to which Commanders’ RB might be the most likely to succeed. There are at least two clues that would lead us to McNichols: the perceived negative game script, as the Dolphins are favored by 2.5, and the fact that the Dolphins have ceded the sixth-most receptions to RBs in their last five games—a sample that includes Bijan Robinson, but otherwise, not a collection of backs we think of as dominant pass-catchers.
I can’t in good conscience recommend McNichols, or any other Washington RB, however. None of them appears to be a great option.