How Kliff Kingsbury is setting Jayden Daniels up for success

Breaking down the things Kingsbury is doing to help set up his rookie QB for success

Jayden Daniels performance on Monday Night Football has sparked many conversations this week about the rookie quarterback class and how they are being supported. Those conversations are somewhat premature because this time next week, Daniels could have had a terrible game and Caleb Williams could have had an amazing game and the narrative will flip in the space of a few days. However, I thought I would use that conversation as a way to dive into the details of how exactly Commanders’ offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and his offensive staff have done a nice job setting Daniels up for success so far this season.

Box Counts

If you watch some of the best offenses in the league, like Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers or Sean McVay’s Rams, you’ll often see them call multiple plays on any given snap and trust the quarterback to get them into the right play at the line of scrimmage. This is a good tactic, but it puts a lot on the quarterback. The quarterback not only has to know their formations, motions, shifts, concepts, coverages and potential blitzes, they also have to be able to identify the looks they want to run the ball into. Each coach will have ideal looks to run certain concepts into. Shanahan might prefer to run wide zone schemes to the strong side to try and create more horizontal movement while McVay might prefer to run the ball to the weak side to try and create more double teams up front. On any given week, Shanahan or McVay might have game plan specific things to identify too, like wanting to run the ball away from a particular defender or attack a defensive tackle that is weak against particular run schemes. 

That’s a lot to put on the plate of a quarterback. A veteran like Matthew Stafford can obviously handle all of that at this point in his career and he does a terrific job identifying fronts that are weak to certain run schemes and checking to those runs to take advantage. He’s also just as good at identifying bad looks to run into and checking out of runs into passes instead. Brock Purdy does a good job with this too, which enables Shanahan and McVay to call multiple plays in the huddle and trust their quarterbacks to make the necessary adjustments at the line of scrimmage to get into the right play against each look the defense gives them. 

But for a rookie quarterback, that’s a lot to try and handle on top of everything else they’re trying to learn and adjust to. So for the Commanders, Kliff Kingsbury hasn’t been overloading Daniels with that type of information. Instead, he asks Daniels to do basic math. One of the first things that stands out with the Kingsbury offense is how many run-pass options (RPOs) they’re using to generate favorable looks for the offense regardless of what the defense shows them. 

Here are two RPOs that Kingsbury called on the Commanders opening drive against the Giants. Both of these are run plays packaged with a tunnel screen on the outside. On the first play of the clip, you can see the Giants initially have four defenders over the tunnel screen outside, which means the screen is outnumbered. However, just before the snap, one of those defenders drops down off the edge, leaving just three defenders outside, one of those being a deep safety. With the math changing, Daniels knows it’s better for him to pull the ball and throw the screen outside. He snaps the ball and throws the tunnel screen outside and the Commanders pick up a solid gain leading to a first down. 

The second play of the clip is quite similar. It’s a slightly different look inside with the run scheme, but the tunnel screen on the outside is the same. This time the Giants start with just three defenders out over the screen while loading up the box to stop the run, so again Daniels pulls the ball and throws the screen and the Commanders again pick up the first down. 

Those screens might look like boring plays for minimal gains, but they serve a greater purpose. By consistently picking up solid gains on those screens, the Commanders force the defense to choose between continuing to give up easy small chunks on the screens, or try to stop the screens and risk being light in the box against the run. In that game, the Giants got tired of giving up the easy screens, so they adjusted in the second half. 

This is another RPO from later in that game. You can see the adjustment from the Giants before the snap. They keep four defenders outside over the potential tunnel screen, ensuring they can keep any gain to a minimum. However, to do that, the Giants leave themselves light in the box against the run. You can see they have four down lineman and one linebacker in the box, and then a cornerback and a safety sitting deeper. Every offense in the league would love to be able to run the ball into this type of look and box count. With that favorable look, Daniels hands the ball off and running back Brian Robinson picks up 32 yards on the carry. 

By calling these RPOs for Daniels, Kingsbury is getting to the same end result that Shanahan and McVay get to - favorable looks to run the ball into - but he does it in a way that makes it much simpler for the quarterback to figure out. As a result, Daniels isn’t overloaded with information and is able to diagnose good and bad looks simply by counting where the defenders are. This doesn’t just apply to run plays either. Late on in the Bengals game, Daniels used this same principle to make a check at the line of scrimmage on his own.

On the Commanders final drive of the game, Daniels faced a critical third and 12 situation. The Commanders were near midfield, outside of field goal range, and needed to convert or at least get close to try and go for it on fourth down. Sensing an opportunity to make Daniels crack under pressure and create a big play, the Bengals call a Cover-0 blitz. For those that don’t know, a Cover-0 blitz is an all out blitz with every available defender rushing and no safety help deep.

Prior to the snap and before the Bengals even get fully aligned, Daniels can see a hint of Cover-0. The Bengals have almost their entire defense in the box, with just three defensive backs walked out over the three receivers to the right. With this look, Daniels can do the math and identifies early that this is likely a Cover-0 blitz. So he quickly steps up and changes the play. He signals to his receivers first, and then his offensive line second, that he wants to run a screen outside. As we saw earlier with the RPOs, tunnel screens can work well against even number looks outside like this. So Daniels checks into a tunnel screen. Once he snaps the ball, Daniels hits the tunnel screen immediately, taking out the majority of the defense from the play as they all rush up field only to have the ball thrown over them. 

This play was so close to being a huge touchdown. The two inside receivers get blocks on the outside corners and right guard Sam Cosmi works up to the second level to try and block the remaining defensive back. If he makes that block, Dyami Brown likely runs this all the way in for a touchdown. Unfortunately Cosmi can’t quite make the block and Brown is tackled, but still picks up eight yards on the play, setting up a much more manageable fourth and four situation that the Commanders ended up converting. 

It’s not often you see rookie quarterbacks taking complete control at the line of scrimmage and checking into good plays against certain looks as Daniels did here. But he’s given the confidence and ability to do so thanks to Kingsbury keeping things simple and allowing him to do basic math instead of having to study a wide variety of defensive looks and figuring out the perfect play against each one. 

Daniels Rushing Ability

One of the most appealing traits Daniels had coming out of college was his athleticism. Much has been made in the opening few games about Daniels running too much and learning to play from the pocket, but his running ability has great value in critical situations. Against the Bengals, Kingsbury didn’t call too many runs for Daniels, but he saved them for critical situations where they had the most impact. 

Short yardage situations like this third and one are the perfect situations for Daniels’ running ability to shine because he makes things so difficult for the defense to account for every possible option. The Commanders call a read-option run here, with the edge defender being left unblocked for Daniels to read. Daniels can either hand the ball off inside to Robinson or pull the ball and keep it himself based on the reaction of the defender. 

The defender initially begins to crash down inside, telling Daniels to pull the ball and keep it himself. However, the defender quickly adjusts and gets back outside, putting Daniels in trouble. Daniels doesn’t panic though, he sticks his foot in the ground and makes an incredible cut to leave the defender in the dirt as he bursts through the line of scrimmage untouched on his way to a first down before then sliding to protect himself. 

That’s extremely tough and frustrating for a defense. It’s hard enough to defend a read-option play in a short yardage situation, but here they defended it perfectly and Daniels was still good enough to make an unblocked defender miss and pick up the first down. Unfortunately for the Bengals, it wasn’t the only key situation that Daniels did this in. 

This time the Commanders face a fourth down situation and again, they call upon Jayden Daniels and his rushing ability. They call another read-option run, with a slightly different look. Tight end aligns in the slot to the left and motions into the formation to block. The Commanders smartly anticipate the linebacker working down to replace the edge defender on this play, so instead of leaving the edge defender unblocked, the Commanders leave the linebacker unblocked and have Daniels read him. The linebacker dives inside to try and stop the run, giving Daniels an easy pull read.. Daniels sprints to the line and dives forward to pick up the first down, taking a hit to ensure he moves the chains and keeps the drive alive. 

These read-option runs in short yardage situations are almost a cheat code for the offense. They’re just so difficult to defend. That’s why Kliff Kingsbury kept going back to them in key situations, including down on the goal line. 

Once more we have another read-option play, this time down in the red zone. The Commanders are looking to run the ball into the end zone after the deep shot to McLaurin sparked them into life. Kingsbury calls a read-option run, with Daniels reading the unblocked defensive end while tight end arcs around him to block the edge. The defender crashes inside to stop the run so Daniels pulls the ball and has a nice easy jog into the end zone for a touchdown. 

It’s just so hard for a defense to play these run schemes soundly and not give up yards. Even when Daniels doesn’t keep the ball, it presents a good look for the offense. 

This time the Commanders use an unbalanced offensive line, with Brandon Coleman lining up as a tight end to the right side outside of right tackle Andrew Wylie, while tight end John Bates lines up as the left tackle. Second tight end Ben Sinnott lines up in the backfield at fullback to the right of Daniels, who is in the pistol. Despite those changes, the scheme remains largely the same. Daniels reads the unblocked edge defender while Sinnott sifts across and arcs around him to lead the way if Daniels decides to keep it. You can see the unblocked defender recognize the potential issue here, so he peels off and tries to occupy Sinnott to prevent him from leading the way for Daniels to the edge. But that just makes it easy for Daniels to hand the ball off and then for Robinson to cut back into the space vacated by the defender. Robinson then powers his way into the end zone for a touchdown. 

This is the threat Daniels poses to a defense as a runner. Kingsbury has done a good job leaning on that, but not overusing it, to help pick up key conversions in short yardage and goal line situations, but also to help create good looks for the running backs too. Being able to essentially block a defensive end with the quarterback allows the offense to get an extra blocker out in front of the back, providing more stress to the defense. 

Run Game

The old cliche in the NFL is that the run game is the best friend of any young quarterback. Being able to run the ball reliably takes pressure off the quarterback from having to carry the offense and also enables the offense to build off the run game into play-action. All of this helps insulate the quarterback and protect him from having to do too much pure drop back passing. Of course, Daniels running ability helps play into this as well, but while Kingsbury has used Daniels to help the run game, especially in critical situations, he’s also schemed up some nice looks in the run game in his own right.