Jayden Daniels Is Just That Good

A wild Wednesday newsletter appeared!

I know what you’re thinking. It’s Wednesday! What are you doing here?

I promised a good pal that I would not let this week go by without a proper tribute to what we’ve been seeing from the Washington Commanders the last few weeks, and since we’re in a busy period for high-stakes football, I figured I could get all my NFL thoughts out in this mid-week post and save the college final for Friday. Who’s with me?! Break!

Today, we mark the arrival of a messianic figure in the DMV. His name is Jayden Daniels, and I think he might just make a career out of this pro football thing.

It really bears underlining: this just doesn’t happen. Generally speaking, rookie QBs are a pretty good thing to bet against when we get to this time of year. It’s very hard to adjust to the pace and pressure of the NFL in January when you’ve never been there before. Most guys need more time. That is normal.

Jayden Daniels is not normal, and here’s the telling stat making the rounds this week. A total of six quarterbacks have ever made their conference championship in their first year, Daniels now included. Also note the team’s scoring defense that season.

• Shaun King, 1999 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, #3 scoring defense

• Ben Roethlisberger, 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers, #1 scoring defense

• Joe Flacco, 2008 Baltimore Ravens, #3 scoring defense

• Mark Sanchez, 2009 New York Jets, #3 scoring defense

• Brock Purdy, 2022 San Francisco 49ers, #1 scoring defense

• Jayden Daniels, 2024 Washington Commanders, #18 scoring defense

Notice anything? This dude’s got the cape on, already demonstrating poise beyond his years and the raw athleticism that sent him up big boards last year. This is not a case of a game manager handing it off and throwing screens. He’s doing a lot of this himself.

Who saw this coming? Daniels has been working some kind of magic all year, bringing out some seemingly fluky miracle plays like that Hail Mary in Chicago. Remember this?

Jayden Daniels does. That’s some of the craziest shit I’ve seen in an NFL game, and there was every reason to think that would be the craziest shit he did all year. That would’ve been plenty! He’s but a rook.

After that Week 8 game, Daniels promptly got hurt and went through a bit of a midseason slump. It seemed that he would end this year as a promising young player and we’d see what he was made of in the years to come as the Commanders had successive offseasons to build around him.

Not so. The magic returned in Week 16, when he led the first of three consecutive game-winning 4th quarter drives.¹ First the Eagles, to keep their playoff hopes alive, then the Falcons to clinch, and then the Buccaneers in the Wild Card round. Everyone keeps waiting for the magic to run out, and it still hasn’t.

So maybe… it’s not magic? Maybe he’s just really, really good already. No wait necessary. We’re already past the ‘going to be’ phase. Jayden Daniels is a superstar, right here, right now.

This team was 4-13 last year, its first year out from under Dan Snyder, who was widely reviled as perhaps the worst owner in American pro sports. I take special joy in this happening pretty much immediately after he left. I don’t have nearly the same animus for Ron Rivera, but the move to Dan Quinn has been a clear success, even if he wasn’t their first choice. That’d (reportedly) be Ben Johnson, the wunderkind play-caller they just outgunned in Detroit.

Washington had the biggest turnaround this year outside of Minnesota, and we saw what happened to them last weekend. They’re still kickin’, and you’d have to give them at least a puncher’s chance against Philadelphia and a visibly hobbled Jalen Hurts.

One thing is abundantly clear this far in. This guy is not scared of anybody, and he hasn’t been scared of the moment yet either. Hoping for a good one Sunday.

While I’m really thrilled for Washington and what they’ve got going on all of a sudden, I’m definitely bummed for Detroit. In the immediate, I have my questions about their game plan, which seemed to get further and further away from the success Jahmyr Gibbs was having running the ball the more it worked. I also have no explanation for that Jameson Williams play, other than to say that I don’t necessarily trust Jameson Williams to make that decision in that situation. The defense was pretty decimated, so I can’t hold the pressure against them as much, but safe to say that didn’t work out. Daniels was 12/16 for 191 and a TD against the blitz. Again, I repeat. He is a rookie. Wild.

I don’t think the bottom’s going to fall out in Detroit, but it’s really hard to maintain the standard when both your coordinators leave for head-coaching gigs. Ben Johnson’s already gone to division rival Chicago, and word is Aaron Glenn may be the new guy in New York. (Sorry, Rex.)

Those departures present a new test for Dan Campbell, who first became an over-caffeinated meme before becoming a heroic leader of men and/or warrior poet. Their window’s not closed, but it might just be cracked.

I love watching this team, and I hope they stay anywhere near this fun. They’ve been a massive asset for the watchability of the NFL, supplanting Kansas City as the most fun offense in the league by a country mile.

I love their two-headed thunder/lightning RB monster, I love their burners (when they’re not throwing passes), I love their reverses and sweeps and hook-and-ladders. I imagine many of those just walked on over to the Windy City, but man. I hope someone in Detroit was taking some notes. We deserve those plays.

This weekend also played host to an MVP duel in Buffalo, which did not disappoint.² I generally thought all the games this weekend were a lot of fun to watch, which was a nice change of pace after last weekend’s blowout.

Lamar Jackson showed up and, for the most part, showed out. I feel awful for Mark Andrews, who now runs a real risk of being remembered for this game rather than his excellent career.

Josh Allen didn’t pitch the ball backwards (he thought about a rugby offload, people!) when he sure friggin’ looked like he wanted to. From the couch, you could see his eyes get wide before he wisely decided against it.

That’s a weird thing to cite as a big play, and yet. T’was. We’ve seen the flip side of that, if you remember this one from 2019. (Which,

Ben Wylie

, has some aspirational Sonny Bill Williams to it, no?)

My own Bills fandom, such as it is, is just not old enough to claim this victory for myself. The scars of the 90 are not my own, so I’m along for the ride in this fair freezing weather. But I was still yelling, loudly, when they won on Sunday, and I hope to be yelling loudly next Sunday too.

This is as good of a shot at the kings as the Bills have gotten.³ That hasn’t ended well in years past. Will this one be any different? By this time next week, we’ll have the answer to this question:

Whoever asked that must have known this was coming. On to KC, eh?

📺 There’s a new episode of Search Party out that I got to work on with Sportico’s

Jacob Feldman

. It’s all about the soaring costs of being a sports fan, something to which most of you can probably relate. It’s always a pleasure to work with Sam on these, so please go check it out:

Back to our regularly scheduled programming on Friday, where I will present my thoughts on such diverse names as Smith, Ichiro, Novak, and Steph. Drop on by!

1. Daniels didn’t lead the comeback against the Cowboys in Week 18 — that was Marcus Mariota — but Washington as a team strung together four of those in a row. Must be something in the water.

2. Lamar Jackson’s going to win the award and, as far as I can tell, he should. He was electric this year. Josh Allen was excellent too, in what was expected to be a step-back year in Buffalo, but the numbers just weren’t in his favor by the end. I have accepted this.

3. And in case this wasn’t obvious, for those who might’ve missed the very first All Fields piece, I hated the Mahomes flop this weekend. Hated. I understand why he does it, and I know the rules allow it, but uh, maybe they shouldn’t. To try and blatantly draw a foul like that in an NFL game, where, unlike the NBA, the rules protecting quarterbacks exist, in theory, for player safety, is just not something I’m gonna be down with. It’s a little disgraceful, actually! So, sorry. Get that out of the game.