ASHBURN, Va. — Jayden Daniels’ mind is wired for improvement. Constantly. He’s always looking for another edge — a throw that needs to be sharper, a play that needs fine-tuning, a tendency that can be eliminated. He seeks betterment even when he’s just been crowned the best in his class after completing a historic rookie season.
A few days before Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Daniels — sporting a custom suit, designer glasses and a diamond chain — stepped off the stage at NFL Honors after being named the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year. As reporters peppered him with questions about the award and his record-breaking rookie season, Daniels said, repeatedly, that he was eager to get back to training.
“It means a lot, just to be able to come in and have some success as a rookie,” he told them. “But I’m looking forward to building on top of this. … I have to close the curtain on the rookie season and get ready for Year 2.”
After leading the Commanders to a 12-5 record and the NFC Championship Game in his first NFL season, Daniels spent most of his first NFL offseason on the field — and in the film room.
His months-long self-scout and retooling produced noticeable changes as early as OTAs in May that have continued into training camp. Some are physical — he put on a few pounds of muscle. Many more are mechanical, meant to improve the finer parts of his game. And others are mental, the unquantifiable part of quarterbacking that Daniels has embraced.
“I’ve always felt he had real control of things, and we work at the line of scrimmage a lot and he’s really comfortable in that,” coach Dan Quinn said in June. “He was always somebody that really was on his details. What I’m seeing now is just the accuracy, the footwork, so more of his body mechanics that he wanted to emphasize. I see that coming through in his play.”
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Rarely is there time during a season to do an in-depth self-analysis, so Daniels, at the urging of veteran linebacker Bobby Wagner, dug deep into his own game over the offseason.
“My main focus was on how I can improve mechanically from Year 1 to Year 2,” Daniels told The Athletic in a recent interview. “… You kind of just see your tendencies and what you think some people will try to use against you going into the next season. So that’s something I learned from (Wagner).”
Daniels returned to California, where for years he’s worked with quarterback coaches Taylor Kelly and Ryan Porter. With Kelly, Daniels went through his own rookie year film to find tendencies that opponents could use against him.
Their broad goal was to calibrate the details of his play behind the line of scrimmage: his maneuvering in the pocket, keeping his eyes down the field instead of dropping them to the rush, breaking a would-be sack and maintaining control to extend plays.
They zeroed in on his footwork, an aspect of Daniels’ game that was already more developed than in many first-year quarterbacks.
“I think that’s always going to be the biggest piece, is fine-tuning the footwork,” Daniels said. “And obviously, another year in the system, I was more comfortable, so I could tie in different footwork with different concepts that I think Kliff (Kingsbury) would call just working that all offseason. … Just another year of understanding my body and understanding how to get certain throws off of different drops or different movements and how to still get the right throw if I’m throwing clean, if I have to move right or move left, and stuff like that on the run.”
The work, while monotonous, was about repetition until it became second nature, so any mistake could quickly be corrected because Daniels knew how and why he erred.
The results were evident early in camp — be it on deep throws to new receiver Deebo Samuel, or on the darts that zipped through defenders in the middle of the field before landing in the arms of tight end Zach Ertz.
“More accurate, can throw farther for sure,” Daniels said. “And then the velocity. So if I need to let one rip … so defenders aren’t able to pick the ball off because of how fast the ball is traveling. It all ties into that for sure.”
Kingsbury, the Commanders’ offensive coordinator who set dozens of school and NCAA records as a quarterback at Texas Tech before turning to coaching, joked when asked during his introductory news conference with Washington about the ideal characteristics of an NFL passer.
“The Chiefs quarterback,” he said with a laugh.
Kingsbury coached Patrick Mahomes for his three seasons at Texas Tech and has watched him set a new benchmark in the NFL.
“When you watched his high school film, it was unique to anything I’ve ever seen,” Kingsbury recently recalled. “He just had an incredible vision of the field. It didn’t look like a guy who’d been brought up playing the position in all the different camps and quarterback tutors, but he just, he led, and he moved the football.”
When Kingsbury turned on Daniels’ college tape from LSU, he came away with a similar assessment: This kid was just different.
“His ability to progress was very unique to a lot of college kids,” Kingsbury said. “You can set it up in college, a lot of times you get them to their first read and they’ll cut it loose. But his ability, with all his natural running ability, to stay in the pocket, progress through, the touch pass, the accuracy. It was just unique to most of the players that I’ve ever scouted.”
After being named the Offensive Rookie of the Year, Jayden Daniels began a rigorous self-analysis. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)
When Daniels returned for a second training camp, Kingsbury noticed plenty more in his game, especially before the snap. The quarterback, Kingsbury has noted, is now seeing additional leverages and working his reads faster.
“(He’s) getting us into different things that maybe he wouldn’t have seen last year when it was moving a little bit faster for him,” Kingsbury said. “But you definitely see, particularly the protections, really taking pride in getting us slid the right way. And then a lot of the checks that we have in our offense, trying to get us into our best matchup, get us into our best pass play, best run play versus certain looks.”
Some of it is simply comfort after a year in Kingsbury’s offense. But Daniels also absorbs the game like few others, veteran or rookie. He retains information almost instantly. When he errs, he generally does it only once and learns from it. That trait, Kingsbury said, is “a God-given thing, not a coaching thing.”
Quinn and others have similarly cited Daniels’ overall command at the position compared to last season.
“He’s always been so poised, such high confidence, but I feel like he’s just taking another step,” Ertz said.
Two days after setting their initial 53-man roster last year, the Commanders signed veteran receiver Noah Brown, another (bigger) target. After their first practice together, Daniels stayed after for extra throws with Brown, talking to the receiver after each to specify where he wanted him and when on certain routes.
Throughout a second year of OTAs, minicamp and training camp, Daniels has done even more of that with his receivers and tight ends, talking to second-year tight end Ben Sinnott about a blitz pickup or to the veteran Samuel about the timing on his deep ball.
“In camp, we hit a lot of deep balls together,” Daniels said of Samuel. “So like, ‘I’m gonna put it to where you need to get, but I need you to be at this certain spot on the field.” He understood that and took that and learned from OTAs, and then when we came back to camp, we kind of hit that stride, like, ‘OK, he’s seeing the game as I see it.’”
Daniels’ natural ability to get along with anyone has been one key to his success. Between series in practice, he often chats with players on defense if he isn’t talking to one of his pass catchers. But in Year 2, he’s also using his voice to set a standard.
During one training camp practice, Daniels sent one of his receivers off the field after a false start penalty, then turned to the coaches on the sideline to send in someone else. The quarterback’s message was clear: The sloppy mistakes simply won’t cut it.
“He’s so much clearer on the communication to teammates, whether it be a route or a standard of things,” Quinn said earlier in camp. “… I recently saw it with him and Deebo, working a specific route against two specific coverages and they did a good bit of that pregame. … I think that’s the step — not only is (Daniels) going to handle himself, we know that, but then how do we make others around him better? I think it’s the conversations, the deliberate practice on a specific route or a specific skill. Those are the things that I’ve noticed.”
(Top photo: Eric Canha / Imagn Images)
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