PicoBlog

It’s finally draft week! We’re just a few days away from the 2024 NFL Draft, which starts with the first round on Thursday night. The Washington Commanders hold the second overall pick and will likely select one of three quarterbacks. Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy are all in play to be selected and I suspect given the way speculation ramps up in the final week before the draft, we’ll hear a good amount of people linking each quarterback to Washington. This is obviously a huge first decision of the Commanders’ new regime so there’s a lot of pressure on GM Adam Peters to get it right. 

I wrote detailed breakdowns of each prospect back in January, but I thought I would give a quick recap of what each quarterback could bring to Washington and also what concerns there are with each player. This is just a recap post, so if you want the longer, more detailed breakdowns of each one, click here for Jayden Daniels, here for Drake Maye or here for J.J. McCarthy

LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels has been the presumptive pick for the Commanders for a while now, though the drama last week with the top 30 visits and Daniels’ agent liking tweets has caused some to doubt that original assumption. I’m sure we will hear more and more about it over the coming days too, but there is still a strong possibility he is the pick for Washington. So what makes Daniels such an enticing option? He has a unique blend of fantastic deep passing and electric rushing ability that make him a huge threat to create explosive plays from anywhere on the field. 

This clip shows two examples of how good Daniels is with his deep passing. On the first play of the clip, Daniels throws a slot fade from the edge of the red zone. As soon as Daniels reads the outside corner attaching to the outside hitch route, he knows he has his one-on-one with the slot receiver and pulls the trigger. He delivers a perfect throw with excellent touch, velocity and trajectory that allows the receiver to run onto the ball and make the catch in the back corner of the end zone for a touchdown. On the second play of the clip, Daniels reads the safety rotation down into the box as a response to the pre-snap motion. After the snap, he recognizes that the safety in the middle of the field isn’t replaced, so he should have his slot receiver wide open on a deep post. He makes another quick decision and again delivers a perfectly placed ball down the middle of the field for the receiver to run onto for a touchdown. 

Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury is known for drawing up shots down the field and creating one-on-one matchups to take those shots. Having a quarterback with the touch and accuracy down the field that Daniels displayed at LSU this year would certainly be very appealing to Kingsbury’s style of offense. Another hugely appealing trait from Daniels is his athleticism. Daniels is an explosive runner and a true home run threat from anywhere on the field. Make no mistake, he is a quarterback first and foremost, but in the modern NFL, quarterbacks also need to be athletic enough to scramble to either extend plays when protection breaks down or run when nothing is open. Daniels offers that in abundance. 

On this play against Florida, Daniels drops back to pass and starts looking to his left. He has a deep curl on the outside and a crossing route from the slot. As he drops back, neither route is available, with the crossing route cut off by the safety inside. Daniels begins to look to the other side of the field but notices his running back leaking out of the backfield as a checkdown open. He begins his throwing motion to dump the ball off, but spots a linebacker at the last second. The linebacker was actually assigned to spy Daniels because of his running threat, but he reads the throw to the running back and begins to work across to make a tackle. Daniels manages to pull the ball down and knows that the spying linebacker is no longer spying him, so he’s free to take off running. Once he takes off, Daniels is incredibly hard to stop. He weaves his way around multiple defenders as he sprints down the field and works his way all the way into the end zone for a 51-yard touchdown. 

Having that type of running ability at the quarterback position is hugely beneficial to an offense. For starters, the offensive coordinator can immediately upgrade the run game by installing a bunch of read-option concepts to incorporate the quarterback in the run game and even up the numbers, making it much harder for the defense to stop the run. That in turn makes the play-action game much more effective, as Washington fans will remember with Robert Griffin III back in 2012. But on top of that, it also limits what the defense can run from a coverage standpoint. Playing man coverage is extremely risky because all the defenders turn their backs to the quarterback in man coverage and if Daniels takes off running, he could have 20 or 30 yards before they’ve even noticed he’s left the pocket. It’s also tough to play match coverages because again, the focus for defenders is on the receivers and reading their routes rather than having eyes on the quarterback. That means Daniels will likely see plenty of basic zone coverages, which the offensive coordinator can then call a bunch of zone-beating concepts with the confidence he will get those zone coverages. 

Unfortunately, there is a downside to Daniels’ running ability. Now I don’t subscribe to the idea that quarterbacks who can run are more prone to injuries in general because there are plenty of quarterbacks that do a great job of sliding or stepping out of bounds to avoid taking unnecessary hits and protect themselves. However, there are quarterbacks that are too competitive for their own good and will cut back upfield to try and fight for an extra yard or two, exposing themselves to dangerous and unnecessary hits. Daniels falls into that category and some of the hits he exposed himself to in college were ridiculous. 

ncG1vNJzZmilkae4o8HLpaaco16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6rnK%2Bho57BqrrGZpmrnZGgsbDDzaxkqJ5dn666sMSnZJ2Znp6yrb8%3D