Column by Barry SvrlugaHey, Jayden Daniels. You don’t have to stand on the goal line, exhorting the Northwest Stadium crowd to get to its feet. The fans are there with you. You’ve got them wrapped around your finger. You earned it. Fire them up by thrusting your arms in the air? They’re fired up already, brother. For Sunday. And for the future.
The holidays feel different in Washington, now and next year and a decade hence, because Daniels plays for the hometown football team. That was true before Sunday afternoon. But after the final seconds of Sunday’s absolutely improbable, he-didn’t-just-do-that-did-he 36-33 victory over the hated Philadelphia Eagles, what’s clear is this: With Daniels, the Commanders always have a chance. With Daniels, everything is possible.
“If you give him moments, he really lights up in those spots,” Commanders Coach Dan Quinn said. “Today, he became a heavy hitter. He really did.”
(Artur Galocha/The Washington Post)
It was just the latest data point. It is now the most important. With his team down by five points and 1:52 remaining — and only a single timeout to spare — Daniels and the Commanders took over at their 43-yard line. Nine plays later, they were in the end zone, where Daniels found wide receiver Jamison Crowder for his fifth touchdown pass of the day. With six seconds showing on the clock, Daniels gave Washington its most significant regular season win since … when?
That’s a great bar stool debate. What’s important is that there could be more to come, because Daniels leads the way. He’s only a rookie, just 15 games into his career. Already, it’s his team. It’s damn near his town.
“He’s so poised,” star wide receiver Terry McLaurin said. “No matter if we’re making plays or we’re missing plays, he just has a way to stay even-keeled. And I’ve never seen that from a rookie at any position, let alone quarterback. ...
“He has a way of just making the right plays when it’s time. You can’t teach that. And I feel like his ability to continue to get better each and every week and learn from his mistakes is why I feel like he has a chance to be one of the great ones.”
That’s not hyperbole. It’s only a chance. But it’s a real one.
This victory — which gives the Commanders 10 wins in a season for the first time since 2012 and allows them to clinch a playoff spot next Sunday at home against Atlanta — was far from clean. But the fact that Daniels pulled this out is an extension of the complete flip-flop of reality for this franchise.
Think about it a few different ways for this game specifically. The Commanders committed five turnovers — and won. They were down 14-0 less than eight minutes in — and won. They allowed Eagles running back Saquon Barkley to gain 109 yards and two touchdowns on his first seven carries — and won.
That’s in part because Daniels overcame two interceptions — just his second two-pick game of the year — and accounted for 339 yards of offense (258 through the air, 81 on the ground). Daniels’s speed is blazing, his arm strong and accurate, his shiftiness more like a salsa dancer’s than a quarterback’s. But his greatest strength is actually to take one play and — regardless of its result — think about the next one, not the previous one. Quinn said he’s “able to clear.” His teammates all notice that trait is hardwired.
“I think the biggest thing people don’t really see: It’s like, hey, if he throws an interception or something like that, it doesn’t faze him,” offensive lineman Sam Cosmi said. “And a lot of QBs, that can really get into their heads. He doesn’t allow it. He just keeps going.
“So that’s a really hard characteristic to have. And him being so young and being able to do that, with the experience that he has, it’s pretty impressive.”
Daniels is at the center of this entire transformation, and it’s clear the Commanders wouldn’t have come back Sunday, wouldn’t have overcome all the turnovers, if not for him. (It’s also fair to point out the Eagles lost quarterback Jalen Hurts to a concussion in the first quarter, and while Kenny Pickett was fine as a backup, he’s not Hurts.)
But Daniels aside, the Commanders could overcome all they faced because this team, in its first year with a roster built by grown-up general manager Adam Peters and coached by the we-play-as-one Quinn, has shifted in attitude and ability. It’s palpable. Early on in this overhaul of an organization, the Commanders have won games they should have lost and lost games they should have won. Those experiences are invaluable as the calendar marches on.
“It builds a little callus, you know what I mean?” McLaurin said. “They get you ready for the next moment. … You look at everybody on that sideline today — they were square-jawed, looking you dead in the eye, ready to make the play to try to win the game.”
Whatever the play necessary, it’s almost certain to involve Daniels. He kept alive one second-half drive by turning a this-play-is-dead fourth and 11 into a squiggling, dizzying 29-yard conversion, leading to the touchdown that pulled Washington back from 13 down to within 27-21. He put them ahead by recognizing the Eagles had 12 men on the field, understanding he had a free play and patiently waiting for wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus to break wide open before flicking him a 49-yard scoring pass.
And when he arrived in the huddle for that final possession, trailing 33-28 because the Eagles had kicked two field goals, the interception he threw to end the Commanders’ previous possession might as well have come in his junior year of high school. It seemed that far in the past. Pick? What pick?
“There’s no, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Cosmi said. “There’s just no panic. And that keeps the rest of the offense calm.”
One timeout, 112 seconds and 57 yards to victory. Got Jayden? No problem.
“I love those type of situations when it’s on thin ice and plays need to be made,” Daniels said. “That’s what you live for if you really love this sport — for those big-time moments where it comes down to the end.”
It’s not yet Christmas. The Commanders are closing in on the playoffs.
Keep reading those sentences over and over. Then thank Jayden Daniels.
“When you’re moving at a pace the way we are, the past you can leave in the past,” McLaurin said. “We’re taking the necessary steps to continue to move forward. I don’t even think about the past anymore, to be honest. I’m living in the present — and looking forward to the future.”
That’s simply not what it has been like to be a Washington NFL player — a Washington NFL fan — for a decade or more. What will Daniels do next? There are so many possibilities. What we know: The next game is on “Sunday Night Football,” in the lights of prime time. A win clinches a postseason berth.
Thank Jayden Daniels for it all
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