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Washington Commanders
The rookie quarterback’s season has been excellent, no doubt. But it hasn’t been perfect. Like most first-year guys, Daniels has hit walls and been challenged to break them down as he fights through and adjusts to the grind of an NFL season.
Another one crumbled in Daniels’s presence Sunday.
To set the stage, Washington went down 14–0 almost right away to a Philadelphia Eagles team riding a 10-game win streak. Then, it was 21–7. Then, it was 27–14. And even if the Eagles were playing their backup quarterback after Jalen Hurts was concussed, the Commanders were fighting through a difficult circumstance of their own creation—they had five turnovers.
Yet, there Dan Quinn’s crew was, taking the lead in the final 10 minutes, at 28–27, then losing it again, with the fifth of those turnovers (a Daniels pick), sandwiching two field goals that put the home team down 33–28 at the two-minute warning.
“It just gave me another opportunity to go out there and win the game,” Daniels told me, as he wrapped up his day at the stadium. “There really weren’t any coaching points or anything. We were in four-down territory the whole way. .”
And they would, 36–33. Because of their rookie quarterback.
First, Washington covered 41 yards in five plays. From there, the fun started. And, if you get a closer look into what actually was happening in the huddle, Daniels’s mettle showed.
On second-and-3 from the Eagles’ 16 with 27 seconds left, OC Kliff Kingsbury called an RPO to Daniels’s right. Only the receivers to that side didn’t get the quarterback’s signal.
Panic time? Not exactly.
“I didn’t make the signal good enough,” Daniels says. “So I just followed the blocker, to see what I could get.”
Whether or not it was on him is (I’ve heard at least) up for debate, but he willingly took the bullet for it, and the hit—calmly running behind his linemen and falling just short of the first down, at the 14, forcing the Commanders to call their last timeout with 23 seconds left.
From there, Kingsbury called a run to convert third-and-1, Brian Robinson Jr. ground out five yards and Daniels rushed the offense to spike it with 11 seconds to go. The next call Kingsbury sent in was one that assistant quarterbacks coach David Blough added to the playbook at the end of the spring, specifically for end-of-game situations. And the Commanders have repped it in practice a ton since training camp, just for a situation like this.
The thing is, normally, what’s happened has been that coverage would follow Daniels’s first read in the progression, Jamison Crowder, and the quarterback would have to make the throw to the second guy in the pattern, Zach Ertz. But at practice Thursday, during a red zone period, Daniels hit Crowder wide open between levels of the scout team’s coverage.
So there was the call again Sunday. There was Crowder for Daniels, wide open. And there was the Commanders’ franchise quarterback, quick to the trigger with the game-winner.
“It set up perfectly,” Daniels says of Blough’s concept. “We did that same play in practice, same route, right behind the linebacker, in two-high coverage. That was my first read presnap from what I’ve seen—.”
In doing so, he and his team did what no one else has been able to do in more than two months, and that’s send the mighty Eagles home with a loss.
But the reality is that they accomplished more than just that Sunday, and really on a lot of Sundays this fall. Plenty of the guys in Commanders uniforms now were around the past few years. Those in the stands watching them know the score, too. For a quarter century in D.C., when something could go wrong, it usually did.
So the challenge for Quinn and his staff has been to flip that psychology on its head. And this situation unfolding was more evidence that that’s exactly what’s happening.
“One hundred percent,” Daniels affirms. “We believe that we can be in every game. We’re confident going in that we have an opportunity to win. It’s how we prepare, how our coaches bring confidence to us.”
Now, it’s how they’re playing, too, and Daniels is a big part of it as well.
Because, again, as good as he’s been, the bumps have been there. In mid-November, Washington lost three straight, and he didn’t play particularly well—with passer ratings of 68.5, 81.6 and 82.7 in those games. That was after he suffered a rib injury that was probably a little more serious than anyone let on.
But this is a 24-year-old who saw a lot, both football-wise and otherwise, through a five-year college career that encompassed 55 starts, and multiyear starting runs at two different historic programs in two different power conferences. He was there for an NCAA scandal at Arizona State. He had to transfer, and improve to win and keep the starting job at LSU. It takes a lot to shake him.
“The best teacher in life is experience,” Daniels says. “To be able to go out there and play as many snaps as I did in college, I knew it would translate to the league.”
And now he and the remade franchise he’s leading are full speed ahead, with a win that typified the growth the Commanders have undergone. Washington is 10–5. Quinn is the first coach in franchise history to win 10 games in his first season. Daniels is closing in on Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. They’re all on the verge of the playoffs.
Everything, seemingly, has changed.
“It means a lot for us, playing a team that’s been on a win streak and fighting for a No. 1 seed, that’s going to be in the playoffs,” Daniels says. “It means a lot to go compete and know that we can put up big-time wins against these guys.”
After Sunday, it’s fair to say that everyone else knows, too.
