How is Jayden Daniels so good?

A question from an IRL buddy sparks a random long post

A buddy of mine asked this morning the question in the title, and it got my wheels spinning. As long-time readers know, the posts where I just write about some thing because I’m fascinated by it are typically the best I can offer here.

This post isn’t just about Jayden Daniels, but also guys like Anthony Richardson, C.J. Stroud, and more young quarterbacks, as well as a bunch of different concepts. And as always, there are hardcore ball knowers who understand all this stuff way better than me, and I’m just sort of passing along the bits and pieces I’ve picked up, and how I understand this complex sport.

Daniels was so good last night, and I’ve seen so much praise for the coaching staff, as well. I do think Kliff Kingsbury deserves credit for how well his offense utilizes Daniels’ mobility to be very good at the high-percentage stuff, meaning — for me — stuff around the line of scrimmage. Runs, both with the QB and the RBs, and then short passes, which the Commanders do a ton of through their RPO stuff and sometimes with just straight screens, etc. Offenses can be successful a variety of ways, but mostly you’re trying to get numbers advantages in different areas of the field, and this offense uses misdirection and multiple options on various playcalls to allow for a “right” place for the ball to go on a high number of plays.

And then Daniels is elite at diagnosing it. This isn’t the first RPO-heavy offense in existence, and for as much credit as Kingsbury deserves, it works because you have a magician diagnosing, making the right decisions every time to get his skill players — most of whom are has-beens or never-weres — touches in areas where they have obvious room to run. You can watch 100 NFL games and not see players get the ball with that much space, that close to the line of scrimmage (read: in high-percentage ways, i.e. without putting turnovers in play and getting the ball in harm’s way), that consistently.

I understand why that credit goes back to offensive design, and some of it absolutely does belong there. But again I need to emphasize that while Kingsbury has certainly grown as a coach, the biggest difference between his time in Arizona and now is the difference between Kyler Murray and Jayden Daniels, which isn’t even meant to be a knock on Kyler but rather to emphasize how unique Daniels is.

The mobility is a key here. I’ve talked for years now about how the QB mobility creates numbers issues just around the line of scrimmage, holding backside ends and forcing the defense to always account for that one more thing which is enough to open up other lanes and show us things like a substantial increase in RB yards per carry in offenses with a QB rushing threat. Daniels has a direct impact on his RBs, and on the numbers advantages the Commanders can get on the perimeter in their quick passing game out there, which can lead to plays like the long Terry McLaurin TD we saw last night. Does McLaurin deserve the vast majority of credit for that play? Absolutely. But some of it is on Daniels too, from a scheme perspective, and then on some minor level with him just getting the ball to the right spot, quickly and accurately. McLaurin, like his Commanders teammates, is able to show his skills better because of the challenge Daniels provides defensive coordinators.

This is the point at its core. Daniels is a nightmare to scheme for. Coordinators want to be able to take away explosive passes. That’s been the shift in the NFL over the past half decade, we’ve discussed it a ton. That has meant lighter defenses, and more DBs on the field, and dropping back into coverage. What mobile quarterbacks do is start to shift those things back, where they can get better downfield passing looks, which my understanding is always that they get more single-high looks, and defenses can’t play as much zone against them, because again it’s a numbers thing. If you need more guys playing down in the box, you don’t have the players dropping into coverage to have two safeties, or to have a zone look, which requires more guys in coverage. When you’re down to only as many guys in coverage as are out in routes, you’re playing one-on-one across the field, which is man.

One of the reasons a defense that can rush four and still create pressure is so dominant is how they can drop seven into coverage and then they have numbers against what is sometimes only four eligible routes downfield because the fifth guy might even have to stay in to help protect because of how well those defenses rush even at a numbers disadvantage. If you start to have to bring more players to get pressure, you have to make decisions and trade-offs and those things.

That’s all just sort of talking through old school dropback football, thinking back to how the Giants stopped the undefeated Patriots, or the Buccaneers were able to beat the Chiefs, in those Super Bowls where rushing four in a disruptive way was so important. But then you start to think about, “OK, what are you going to do when the guy has the ability to break the pocket and run for a first down?” And that requires a spy, or rushing more to try to keep the guy in the pocket, etc. This has been the promise of QB mobility and why so many teams have paid top dollar for guys like Richardson and Trey Lance only to find out they may be unplayable.

And that part of it gets back to Daniels’ greatness. The margins are so thin at the NFL level. When you get the man coverage look, and your guy wins down the field, what that means is a step or two, and the ball has to be there. Maybe in college, you can get guys so wide open the ball can be underthrown, and maybe even if it brings the defender back into the play, that guy doesn’t have the ball skills to stop the big play. It’s a 50/50 ball and your guy might just be better.

At the NFL level, these cornerbacks are too good. They might get beat on a route, but they are very rarely trailing by more than two steps. And whether you were moved off your spot and are outside the pocket, or you have to step into a hit, or no matter what happens on your end, to win in modern football you have to be able to get the explosives in the pass game when they do become available, so that throw has to be there. And frankly, for every NFL QB, it can be there. Richardson can make some ridiculous throws. But it has to be there, with consistency. The margins are thin, again. Your opportunities are limited. A big part of the difference between Daniels and Richardson is the massive difference between how consistently they can be deathly accurate down the field to make the defense pay when the look is there, because of all the other things they force the defense to account for.

For Richardson, those throws are often way off. The chances are there, but he just can’t make those throws consistently enough. It’s that simple, and so it allows the defense to focus on the higher-percentage stuff and bring numbers into the box, and so Richardson winds up with these massive aDOTs and huge air yards numbers where he has opportunities to get the ball downfield.

My UW Huskies have this freshman QB who finished out the end of the season for us named Demond Williams. One of my buddies was lamenting how his legit 4.3 speed is awesome, but he doesn’t quite have the passing stuff yet, and I was telling him that that’s because even at the NFL level that combination is so rare. It immediately makes you an elite offensive weapon. You’re all those things all the mobile QBs are in terms of a scheme problem, and then when you get the advantageous passing looks, you can hit them.

This is the level Lamar Jackson has taken his game to under Todd Monken, which is not to say that he wasn’t already a lethal passer, because he’s always been underrated in that area, but schematically it just wasn’t there under Greg Roman. We’ve seen Josh Allen develop into a similar hybrid of dynamic runner — and it’s not just a specific type of speed or whatever, there’s skill to rushing even for QBs, just like for RBs — who can also be very accurate as a passer when he needs to be. Patrick Mahomes is obviously the cream of the crop for the passing skills, and then he adds just enough of a mobility threat that for him it’s really about using that mobility to beat the looks when defenses drop too much into coverage. But he can go to that.

The way these things interrelate is all influenced by offensive scheme, talent around them, and how the defense has to account for them. I’ve talked a lot about how pocket passing skills are becoming more important again because of how much defenses want to drop into coverage and take away the explosive passes, so you have to be able to rip throws into tight, deep-intermediate windows when those chances are there. And so often, the guys who develop those skills are the ones who — starting from high school — don’t have the mobility to rely on and they make the NFL because of those skills.

But that’s not to say that every mobile QB can’t do that, and the question is obviously what happens when you have that but you don’t have to sacrifice the mobility aspect? That’s what Jayden Daniels is, already. And that’s what the scheme is offering him, as well, by being so good at hammering the defense on the high-percentage stuff, and Daniels is additive to that with his decision-making — he’s always quick and on time, and it’s so important to get the ball where it needs to be a half-second earlier than some other QB might (so, so important) — and then when the defenses inevitably have to bring more numbers down and give up a man coverage look down the field, Daniels is going to hit that throw even if it’s only a half-step advantage like the ball he placed into Dyami Brown last night.

Now some of that, for Washington, was the product of the well-documented Detroit injuries. The Lions were already undermanned, then lost key pieces of their secondary in that game, and it was really a tough situation for them. Offenses know who the new guy is on the field, and they will design stuff to get him in isolated situations and go at him. That’s just part of football, too.

But even that goes back to Daniels, because it’s like, “Can we spare to roll a safety over our corner who needs help?” and the answer is a clear “No.” The Commanders were getting chunk plays on the underneath stuff, and then even when the Lions did successfully keep them from chunk plays and forced those fourth downs in the bend-don’t-break mold so as to hopefully get a stop, Daniels once again is just different. He’s all the cliches. He’s cool in the moment, has ice in his veins. He just never seems to miss the throws you have to have to make everything else work, whether it’s on the key downs (the Mahomes trait), or down the field, as I’ve said.

I don’t know what this guy’s ultimate ceiling is, but I love watching him. And the answer to “How is he so good?” isn’t really all that complex when you sit with it, like we’ve tried to here. He has all the stuff to be a nightmare to scheme against, and he’s just really good at all the things you need to be to take advantage of whatever the defense is giving you — processing, accuracy, etc. — so it sort of doesn’t matter what you throw at him. You have to start trying to be creative and hope he misses something because you’re showing something he hasn’t seen, but from what I can tell watching him play, that just never matters. He’s just diagnosing everything so well. Again, you just don’t see skill players in such advantageous positions, so frequently, and that’s not to take anything away from any of them who are playing well, but it is absolutely and without hesitation to give Daniels his flowers.

This discussion is a key into a lot of what I write about. You can understand why teams fall in love with guys like Richardson and Lance, because if they can hit those throws enough, the ceiling is massive. It’s why for example Colin Kaepernick both played in a Super Bowl and has people who swear he always sucked (he obviously didn’t).

You can see where the upside could still be there for a Caleb Williams, but you understand that part of his issue was the scheme doing him no favors, and part was that he did miss those throws at way too high of a rate, for a guy who was supposed to have Mahomes-ian arm talent. You can understand what I’m saying about Drake Maye, who showed the really good rushing ability in addition to consistency on those throws when they needed to be there. The ceiling is sky high for him.

You can understand the sophomore slump of Stroud, if only in that it does relate back to him just not consistently getting the ball into those spots. For a guy like him, or a Mahomes or even more pocket passers, there isn’t so much mobility to change the defensive look, so hitting those throws is that much more important. And if you’re wondering whether Daniels could have a Year 2 like Stroud — and thinking about how I was this high on Stroud after last year — what I’ll say is Stroud was lethal at that stuff as a rookie, and he lost it to some degree in Year 2 (perhaps because the protection stuff really just sped everything up for him all year), but that Stroud is a different animal. He looked unique in his ability to always hit those throws, which was going to be so fun for fantasy especially because there’s not as much rushing and it’s all big, explosive passing plays, when that style of play works. Daniels looks like he has that plus the elite mobility. Again, that’s a thing that changes how defenses can attack him, and where the numbers can be, and increases the margin for error, a margin inside of which Stroud’s play might have succumbed to, and where Daniels could perhaps still succeed even with some sort of sophomore slump. Though as I said recently, Stroud is one example, and people will overreact to his sophomore season.

The only issue I see with Daniels is his frame, and that he does still take a lot of hits. We saw the midseason injury this year, and how it impacted him for several weeks after he returned, particularly with that all-important downfield passing, which just wasn’t there for a stretch this season and we saw it really impact everything for Washington as a team. There’s not much I’m hoping for more in the next several years of NFL football than Jayden Daniels staying healthy, because this dude is the truth.

I took the Commanders over at Stealing Lines this week, and in my writeup explaining that betting pick I offered this paragraph:

But Jayden Daniels is a superstar. I’ve been saying it since the first month of the season, and it’s remained true. One of my tenets as a bettor is not being afraid to back young players playing at levels equal to multi-year vets; the market and the world frankly overvalues this idea that true stars need some amount of seasoning and buildup that isn’t always true. That doesn’t mean I’m always right; I was overconfident in the Broncos being undervalued last week, for example. But I do strongly believe you have to be willing to see a player for what he is, even if he hasn’t done it at a given stage before.

Apart from the not-so-humblebrag, I share that because everything I’m writing here is why I “strongly believe you have to be willing to see a player for what he is.” The defenses have to account for all this stuff. He’s already such a schematic nightmare — that’s just how the sport works. Sometimes guys are at the very peak of what they offer as rookies, because some sort of health thing or whatever can limit them later in their career, or there’s some other unexplainable sort of downturn, like they lost a fearlessness or something (I’m really hoping this is not some kind of explanation for Stroud, down the line). But the point of this piece is to square it all back on Daniels. This team is under-talented, they are solidly coached but nothing earth-shattering, and yet they are in the Conference Championship, and they are there almost exclusively because they have one of the five very best football players on the planet as their quarterback. Right now, as a rookie. It’s so, so cool to watch.