Jayden Daniels shines in victory over Eagles

Breaking down the top plays from Jayden Daniels in the Commanders win over the Eagles

The Washington Commanders provided their fans with an outstanding Christmas present, pulling off a remarkable victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The game couldn’t have started any worse for Washington, giving the Eagles a two touchdown lead and proceeding to turn the ball over five times throughout the game. Yet despite the deficit and the insane number of turnovers, rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels was able to lead the team to an incredible comeback against the top defense in the NFL with a last second touchdown to win 36-33.

Daniels completed 24 of 39 passes for 258 yards and five touchdowns, with two interceptions too. He also had an additional 81 yards rushing on nine carries, most of which came on scrambles. Now he was far from perfect in this game and had plenty to clean up, but he did show a lot of the reasons why the Commanders drafted him second overall. He showed tremendous poise in the biggest moments and made critical plays every time the team needed one. So instead of focusing on the negatives, I thought as a Christmas week treat, I would focus this post on the big plays that Daniels made in this game. Let’s start with his first touchdown pass.

Having turned the ball over on downs on their opening possession, fumbled on their second possession and gone three-and-out on their third, the Commanders desperately needed a spark to get the team going. Frankie Luvu came up with a big interception towards the end of the first quarter to give the Commanders great field position and a chance to get back into the game. A few plays later, the Commanders got into a third and goal situation from the six yard line. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury calls a nice concept here. The idea is to fake a quick screen to Dyami Brown in the flat with Terry McLaurin and Jamison Crowder blocking for him on the edge. However, that screen is actually a fake, with McLaurin and Crowder faking blocks before releasing into their actual routes.

Jamison Crowder sells his route perfectly here. He’s always been an excellent route runner with great burst in the slot, but he gets the tempo of this route spot on. He can’t go too fast or the defense will be alert to him running an actual route, but too slow and it will look suspicious too. He gets the tempo just right, making it really look like he’s trying to block a defender on the screen. After holding the fake block for just long enough, Crowder then shows that burst to accelerate up the seam. Daniels spots the safety inside working towards the flat on the fake screen and with the defender not facing him. Daniels knows he can just throw the ball behind him for Crowder to run onto. That’s exactly what Crowder does and the Commanders score a touchdown to keep themselves in the game after a horrific start.

The Commanders ended up fumbling in the red zone on their next possession, but they did put together a solid drive to get there before turning the ball over. One of the key plays that put them in a good position before the turnover was an audible from Jayden Daniels on third and eight.

On this play, the Commanders face a tough third and eight situation. They respond by going to an empty formation with just Daniels in the backfield. This is something Kingsbury likes to do a lot in order to spread out the defense and try to present a cleaner look for Daniels. With the Eagles fully expecting a pass in this situation, they play with two safeties back deep and both linebackers slightly deeper and wider than they would be on first or second down. This leaves them with six defenders in the box. Now this doesn’t matter against most teams, but most teams don’t have a quarterback like Jayden Daniels.

Daniels spots the defense in this look and walks up to the line of scrimmage to check the play. On the TV broadcast, you could hear him shout “Remington”. I couldn’t tell you why they use that word for this play other than the R means the direction is to the right. What Daniels checks the Commanders into is a trap run scheme with Daniels as the runner. Right tackle Andrew Wylie and right guard Sam Cosmi both sell a fake block on Eagles star defensive tackle Jalen Carter before peeling off and working up to the second level to their actual blocks. Left guard Nick Allegretti then pulls and traps Carter. This provides a nice lane right up the middle of the defense for Daniels to run the ball into. He follows that hole and picks up 13 yards and a first down. Not many teams can convert a run on third and long, even fewer can do it out of empty.

Having fumbled on that drive despite a great conversion from Daniels, the Commanders desperately needed another spark to get the team going in the second quarter. On their sixth drive of the game, Daniels put the team on his back and made three fantastic plays.