ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — This week has been a bit of a novelty for Jayden Daniels. For perhaps the first time in his NFL career, the Washington Commanders lost and a big part of it was his fault.
Daniels has had off days before, but this last defeat was different. Facing third-and-1 late in the fourth quarter Monday night, Washington was a couple first downs away from potentially running out the clock when Daniels fumbled on a handoff. That gave the Chicago Bears the ball near midfield, they drove for the winning field goal, and Daniels has had to face one of the less enjoyable aspects of playing quarterback — taking ownership in defeat.
“I mean, that's what a quarterback does,” he said. "But it was on me. So I take accountability.”
After a dazzling rookie season in which Daniels led Washington to its first NFC championship game in over 30 years, there were plenty of questions about whether he would regress a bit in year two. There hasn't been much evidence of that. In the four games he's been healthy enough to play, Daniels has a 98.7 passer rating — awfully similar to last season's 100.1 — and he also continues to impact the game with his legs.
The interception he threw early in Monday's game was his first of the season. The key fumble at the end? It was the first he'd lost in his NFL career. Still, you don't have to look too far to find someone suggesting Drake Maye has passed him as the top quarterback from that draft class. And with the Commanders sporting a 3-3 record, there will be some scrutiny on Daniels at Dallas this weekend, when Washington may need to score a lot to win.
“We feel we can put up points, but we just got to be better with the details and execution,” Daniels said. “So we don't have slow starts.”
The Commanders have been outscored 36-14 in the first quarter this season.
Daniels has maintained good production despite a lot of upheaval in the receiving corps, which continued Wednesday when the Commanders put Noah Brown (knee, groin) on injured reserve after he'd missed the past four games.
“Last week we worked Noah Brown back into practice, and unfortunately his groin didn't respond,” coach Dan Quinn said. “The aim is to get Noah fully right. He's such a tough competitor, and it's the right call right now to get him into that spot. Let's get him all the way back and ready.”
On a more optimistic note for Washington, receiver Terry McLaurin (quadriceps) could potentially return this weekend after missing the last three games. He was listed as limited at practice Wednesday.
“He'll practice this week,” Quinn said. “Today is going to be more at a jog-through pace where we're not fully speed, up and going. That'll be more as we get into tomorrow. I'll have a better assessment after we go through some full-speed routes and movements to see where he's at. But I'm excited where he's trending.”
With McLaurin and Brown out against Chicago, and Deebo Samuel limited to 15 yards on four catches, Daniels was still able to spread the ball around. He threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to Chris Moore, a 33-yarder to Luke McCaffrey and a 6-yarder to Zach Ertz.
That still wasn't enough to halt the trend in which the Commanders have alternated wins and losses since the beginning of the season.
“We understand it's a roller coaster of a season so far,” Ertz said. “We've got to be more consistent as a team — offense, defense, special teams.”
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Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels speaks with reporters after an NFL football game against the Chicago Bears, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Landover, Md. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
MILAN (AP) — The gala crowd at Milan's Teatro alla Scala cheered the season premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk '' with a 12-minute standing ovation Sunday, as the storied theater synonymous with the Italian repertoire opened with a Russian melodrama for the second time since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The crowd of luminaries fully embraced stage director Vasily Barkhatov's bold telling of merchant wife Katerina Izmajilova's fall into a murderous love triangle against the backdrop of Stalin's Soviet Union, right up to the jarring final scene with a Soviet truck barreling into a wedding party, and two characters perishing in burst of flames.
U.S. soprano Sara Jakubiak was showered with carnations and cheers for her tireless portrayal of Katarina, the title character, and the audience cheered its appreciation for conductor Riccardo Chailly, making his last Dec. 7 gala premiere appearance as music director.
“No one ever expects this,'' Jakubiak said backstage. ”I am just so happy.''
While the 2022 gala season premier of “Boris Godunov” drew protests from the Ukraininan community for highlighting Russian culture in the wake of the invasion, the premiere of "Lady Macbeth'' inspired a flash mob demonstrating for peace.
Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.
A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’
Another, larger, demonstration of several dozen people in front of city hall called for freedom for the Palestinians and an end to colonialism, but was kept far from arriving dignitaries by a police cordon. Demonstrations against war and other forms of inequality have long countered the glitz of the gala season premiere that draws leading figures from culture, business and politics dressed in their finest frocks.
Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli was joined by the senator for life Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in the royal box.
Chailly began working with Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the success “Boris Godunov,'' which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia’s politicians from its culture.
But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture.
Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’
“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ Chailly told a news conference last month.
La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov " at the theater best known for its Italian repertoire.
‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the news conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin's own.’’
Jakubiak made her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she self-immolated to kill herself and her treacherous second husband's new lover. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.
“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”
Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.
“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.''
Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.
Barkhatov, who at 42 has a flourishing international career, said “Lady Macbeth” is a “very brave and exciting" choice.
Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.
For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place.
Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’
“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.
Stage director Vasily Barkhatov sits during an interview with The Associated Press prior to the dressed rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
External view of Teatro all Scala ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Soprano Sara Jakubiak has her makeup done ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
The stage is prepared ahead of the dressed rehearsal of the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Dmitri Shostakovich, at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
