Jayden Daniels leads Commanders to playoff win over Bucs

Breaking down Jayden Daniels outstanding performance against the Bucs.

I’m running out of positive things to say about Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. I’m almost certainly repeating myself at this point, but Daniels just continues to step up and play his best football when the pressure is at its highest point. No moment is too big for him and he proved that yet again as he led the Commanders to a playoff victory over the Buccaneers on Sunday night. Daniels completed 24 of 35 passes for 268 yards and two touchdowns. He also had an additional 36 yards rushing, taking his total yards over 300 in the game.

The stats don’t tell the full story though. Right from the start, Daniels stepped up in the biggest moments to make plays and keep the Commanders in the game. He had so many clutch conversions on third and fourth down, moving the chains and keeping drives going just when it looked like the Bucs were about to get a stop. It started on the Commanders opening possession.

On the opening drive of the game, Daniels showed he was ready for the big moment. On third and six, the Commanders are in a situation the Bucs wanted to live in, where they can tee off with their blitz packages. The Bucs have three down lineman and two edge rushers up on the line of scrimmage. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. walks up to the edge on the left side of the line as well, while linebacker Lavonte David stays a bit further back off the right side of the line. With so many defenders up on the line of scrimmage, the Bucs are obviously threatening to bring pressure here, but it’s never clear exactly who will and won’t rush. In the end, the Bucs opt for a five-man rush, sending their three down defensive lineman along with Winfield off the edge and David from the second level. To enable that, both edge rushers step forward at the snap but then peel off and drop into coverage.

This is a tough blitz to pick up on the third snap of the game for the offense, but Daniels does a good job identifying it. You can see center Tyler Biadasz communicating things with his offensive lineman and you could tell throughout the game, he was the one taking the lead on the protection schemes, but Daniels opts to take control here. He walks up to the line and calls for a full slide to the right, anticipating a blitz coming from that side. Once he gets back to his original position, Daniels then signals to running back Jeremy McNichols to block Winfield off the edge to the left side.

Having correctly identified the blitz and adjusted the protection, Daniels can focus on the coverage. With a blitz, quarterbacks are taught to expect some form of man coverage behind it. With Winfield blitzing, Daniels knows there's only one safety left in the deep middle of the field, leaving Terry McLaurin one-on-one on the outside. He looks to his left off the snap and spots McLaurin taking an inside release and immediately gaining a step on the defender. Daniels feels pressure off his left side with Winfield getting the better of McNichols, so he shortens up his drop and quickly delivers a great throw down the sideline for McLaurin to run under. McLaurin does his part too, tracking the ball superbly as he runs under the pass and secures the catch as he dives to pick up 35 yards on third down and move the chains.

Unfortunately, the Commanders ended up turning the ball over on downs after a failed conversion on fourth and two later in the drive, but after the defense picked up the offense by making a stop, Daniels got right back to work making multiple key plays on the second drive of the game.

Backed up near their own end zone, the Commanders find themselves in a bit of a rough spot. It’s third and six again with the drive struggling to get going and the Bucs having the opportunity to get off the field with good field position for their offense. With the game 3-0 at this point, this was a surprisingly big moment in the game so early on. The Commanders come out in an empty set with four receivers to the left and just Luke McCaffrey isolated to the right. The two receivers tight to either side of the formation both chip to help support the pass protection while the three receivers in the bunch set switch their releases to try and confuse the Bucs coverage unit.

However, the Bucs catch the Commanders by surprise here. Their tendency against empty sets is to blitz, but instead they break that tendency here by rushing just three and dropping the rest into coverage. With the extra bodies in coverage, the Bucs are able to muddy the field and make it hard for the receivers to find space. On top of that, despite just rushing three, the Bucs manage to generate pressure with left tackle Brandon Coleman losing his block pretty early in the play. The defender stunts inside of him and Daniels is forced to roll out to his right to avoid the pressure. As he rolls right, he’s met by the other edge rusher working against Andrew Wylie. Wylie isn’t doing a bad job but with Daniels scrambling towards him, it’s hard to keep the defender in front of him, which prevents Daniels from going into full scramble mode.

As a result, Daniels rolls out to his right and keeps scanning the field to look for a passing option. Fortunately, tight end Zach Ertz, who initially ran a curl route on the other side of the field, spotted Daniels in trouble and began to run across the field to try and give his quarterback an option. At the last second, Daniels spots him and fires back across his body over the middle of the field. That’s typically a cardinal sin of playing quarterback, but Daniels can see there is no threat around Ertz and Ertz secures the pass for a first down, moving the chains to kickstart the Commanders opening touchdown drive.

Later on that drive, the Commanders nearly stalled out again. On third and three from the Bucs 14 yard line, the Commanders had another key situation they needed to convert.