LANDOVER — After the miracle, Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters walked into the locker room to congratulate the players. He worked his way from the receivers to the running backs to the offensive linemen, who were exhausted and bruised.

“AP, how about that?” right guard Sam Cosmi said, beaming from his chair. Peters, beaming too, dapped him up.

Left guard Nick Allegretti limped over, still smarting from the Charley horse he’d gotten on the final play, and shook his head, grinning.

“Unbelievable,” he said.

They all talked like that for a moment, the fragmented phrases of “Wow” and “I can’t —” and “Man!” somehow perfectly capturing one of the best moments of their football lives.

Soon enough, inside the team’s walls, the afterglow of Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary to beat the Chicago Bears, 18-15, on Sunday, will fade. Players will slip back into their relentless weekly routines and say their focus has shifted to the next opponent.

But the locker room felt different Sunday night. For decades, the Commanders would have lost games like that, and even though many players thought they shouldn’t have needed a Hail Mary — that they should have pulled away far earlier — it worked, and no one who had been a part of this organization under the previous regime took such a seismic shift for granted.

“We were just telling each other, ‘It’s not over until it’s over,’” wide receiver Terry McLaurin said. “Man, it is just great to be a part of this team, where so many guys never quit.”

“We just keep on fighting for one another,” Cosmi said. “[This brotherhood is] something that I’ve never felt in my whole football career, to be completely honest with you — including college. This is special.”

The miracle started with one savvy play. The Commanders were on their 35-yard line with six seconds left and no timeouts, so the Bears, anticipating a Hail Mary, went into prevent defense and backed up their secondary to near the goal line. Instead, Daniels threw a quick out to McLaurin for a crucial 13-yard gain that left them at their 48 with two seconds left.

“Stealing yards,” backup quarterback Jeff Driskel said. “If he wasn’t aware, he might turn up the field and ran the clock out. But he was super aware to go right out of bounds … and that put us in range.”

Since training camp, Driskel estimated, the team had practiced the Hail Mary about a dozen times.

But many players had never been a part of one that worked. The last time Daniels completed a Hail Mary was just before halftime of a game during his junior year of high school.

On Sunday, despite their presnap struggles throughout the game, everyone knew what to do. They lined up quickly and snapped the ball. The Bears used a three-man rush and a spy and left seven defenders in coverage near the goal line — though cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, who had been jawing all game, didn’t notice for several seconds because he was hyping up the crowd.

As the Commanders’ four skill players sprinted downfield, Daniels scrambled in the backfield. He ran back to the 30, then right, then left. While the tackles and running back Austin Ekeler handled the edge rushers, Allegretti noticed Bears defensive tackle Gervon Dexter Sr. coming back toward Daniels and hit him square — but Dexter’s right knee got him in the thigh, leading to Allegretti’s postgame pain.

Ultimately, Daniels let the pass fly after holding the ball for 12.79 seconds and covering 40.7 yards before throwing, which are the highest and third-highest metrics, respectively, on a touchdown pass since Next Gen Stats began tracking such data in 2016.

In the end zone, the Commanders got in a diamond formation with one “jumper” on the back line of the end zone, another jumper on the front line and two players in the middle to catch the football or try to tip it in a scrum. Stevenson, the cornerback, rejoined the play just in time to run over and tip the pass up into the air.

The ball, which had flown 64 yards through the air, traveled four more and landed in the hands of wide receiver Noah Brown, who joined the team in late August after roster cuts, didn’t know the offense well enough in Week 1 to suit up and now had secured perhaps the greatest play in the history of the stadium. In that split second, everyone on the Commanders sideline realized they had just witnessed a miracle and burst into motion. They looked like the kids they had been when they started playing this game, screaming and hugging and tearing up. Driskel said he ran around “high fiving with anybody I made eye contact with.”

Backup offensive tackle Trent Scott accidentally body-slammed a staffer.

Everyone was moving except left tackle Cornelius Lucas, who had suffered an ankle injury. He was sitting on the bench, immobile, when suddenly everyone around him was gone.

“I just melted on the bench and enjoyed the moment by myself,” Lucas said, laughing. “It was phenomenal.” In the locker room, center Tyler Biadasz pulled out his phone and teammates huddled around. They watched the Hail Mary in wonderment again and again.

The GM came in, his crisp white dress shirt a sharp contrast with their sweaty, grass-stained uniforms. Within hours, they began preparing for the New York Giants. But this play would endure, helping them believe they could do anything.