In the first half of Washington’s Monday night game against the San Francisco 49ers, Jayden Daniels completed 7-of-10 passes for 88 yards and no touchdowns. As the 49ers put a whupping on the Commanders defense, the halftime score of 20-3 in San Francisco’s favor indicated that the then 1-3-1 Commanders were going to endure yet another disappointment.
But, in the second half, Daniels went off.
He looked much like he did back in 2024, when he had perhaps the greatest rookie quarterback season of all
time. In the final 30 minutes, he completed 22-of-30 passes for 212 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and big plays all over the place. This despite Terry McLaurin’s season-ending torn patellar tendon, which happened with 2 minutes, 16 seconds left in the first quarter. The 49ers transitioned from zone to more man and hybrid coverages as the game moved along, and in the game, Daniels was able to exploit some real coverage busts with big-time throws to McLaurin, tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo and receivers Antonio Williams and Treylon Burks.
From a pure quarterback perspective, Daniels did about as well as you could … to a point. We’ll get to the whole “to a point” thing in a minute.
In Week 5 against the New York Giants, Daniels returned from a two-week break as he recovered from an elbow injury. While his passing numbers were nothing to write home about (17 of 25 for 199 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 91.9), he ran the ball nine times for 103 yards and two touchdowns. The Giants, under defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson, are highly aggressive with their coverage concepts (they’ve had at least one cornerback in press coverage on 83% of their snaps this season, and two cornerbacks in press coverage 40% of the time), and Daniels was perfectly happy to make them pay for that with his wheels.
So, between the scrambles against the Giants and the second-half passing against the 49ers, Daniels appears to be pretty much the guy he was in 2024 — a fully functional quarterback who can beat you in any way possible. Of course, the “beat you” part of that equation is hypothetical, because the Commanders lost and tied those two games.
We know that the situational awareness thing is a major problem for this organization right now — it really showed up when the clock ran out in overtime in the 27-27 tie with the Giants — and it reared its ugly head more than once against the 49ers.
With two minutes left in the game and down six points, the Commanders had the ball at the San Francisco 17-yard line. It was fourth-and-3, so there was no need to go for the gusto here. If you get the first down, it’s all good. The decision by offensive coordinator David Blough to call a series of vertical and upfield routes, and Daniels’ decision to try to hit Burks at the edge of the end zone on a low-percentage throw as opposed to throwing to running back Rachaad White in the left flat, or just running the ball himself… well, that was questionable when the 49ers had Daniels’ downfield targets locked down in man coverage.
Then, there was what happened with 21 seconds left. The Commanders had second-and-10 from the San Francisco 28-yard line, Blough called for four verts, with all four targets running nowhere near the sideline. Even if Daniels had completed a pass to anybody, if anybody didn’t get in the end zone, it’s highly questionable as to whether the team could have run up to snap the ball before the clock ran out, and Washington was out of timeouts.
Instead, Daniels threw the ball away, which got him an intentional grounding penalty, a 12-yard loss, and a 10-second runoff.
Washington’s final play came with six seconds left. Now, the Commanders were in obvious Hail Mary territory, but Daniels never got the ball off, because 49ers defensive linemen Romello Height and Keion White split the sack… on a three-man rush.
Ouch.
Given previous mismanagements, there was also a lot of discussion regarding Daniels’ throwaway on fourth-and-2 from the San Francisco 13-yard line with 13:08 left in the first half. On the play, Daniels was flushed from the pocket, and he had three defenders — the aforementioned Keion White, along with linebackers Fred Warner and Jaden Dugger — with eyes on him to the sideline. Daniels’ targets were covered, so instead of trying to run to the sticks, he threw the ball away. There was a post-snap flag thrown, but Daniels couldn’t have known that the penalty was an illegal shift on the Commanders.
As Daniels said postgame, “I didn’t know. It could have been offside, it could have been on us.”
On Tuesday, head coach Dan Quinn went through all the communications with Daniels.
Yeah, I talked to him. I’ll go work backwards. On the penalty, even when you know there’s a penalty, you still take your shot, man, to go throw it, complete it. You don’t know if it’s gonna get picked up. So that was what I expressed to him and as he’s going through seasons and learning, these are all the ones that I don’t wanna wait till the next day to talk to him about. Like, you hit right into the moment where we’re gonna hit. I thought, like most things with him, there’s some plays that you said, ‘That’s an incredible throw.’ And there’s other ones I’d love him to stay through the look to go.
I knew in this game that with the team speed, this was gonna be a more scramble-to-throw game against San Francisco. They played more zone, they’d be back deeper to go. So I was hoping to see more of that, but as he’s growing into it, more reps with David, more into the system, I’m expecting his out-of-pocket plays to continue. For him to run keepers off our play action game, that’s a big part of things for us, and I’m looking forward to seeing him continue to develop with that. He always can make some throws that just kinda leave you thinking, ‘Man, there it is. There’s only a few guys that can make that throw or that play,’ and he can do that.
But I’m looking forward to working with him as we’re gonna grow through it. And part of this self-scout is looking to see the things and communicate with him too, to say, ‘All right, these are things that we wanna do more of, and these are things potentially to do less of.’
Right now, there does seem to be a disconnect when it comes to head coach, the offensive coordinator, and the quarterback. Blough has never been an OC before, and while he appears to have a pretty decent playbook, there’s the time it takes to learn what’s best for your quarterback and how to sequence plays for your entire offense. Blough certainly knows Daniels from his time as the team’s assistant quarterbacks coach in 2024 and 2025, but it’s different when you’re in charge of the whole thing.
So, it could well be that the 2026 season will be more about ironing out all the schisms, and less about Daniels letting it fly as he reclaims his powers after the injuries in 2025 and 2026 that held him back. That he does have those powers back is exciting. How they’ll be utilized, however, is still a very large question mark.
And at 1-4-1 with a Week 7 bye, the Commanders don’t have time to raise more questions. That extra time should (and must) be spent finding answers.
