Last week, Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels threw for 233 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions over 30 passes in a 21-6 win over the New York Giants. When you dig a little closer into the game flow, though, his stats weren’t as impressive as they seemed.
For whatever reason, the Giants thought it was a good idea to play a lot of man coverage against Daniels, a bold call against a mobile quarterback who can break the pocket with defenders’ backs turned to the passer. On the day,
New York played 35 percent of their plays in some form of man, disproportionately playing those types of snaps earlier on in the game.
For perspective, Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who will be facing off against Daniels on Thursday, played the second-lowest rate of man coverage in the league in Week 1 at just nine percent. For the most part, Hafley teams will play Cover 2 and Cover 3, utilizing disguises and blitzes to keep teams honest.
In the first two drives against the Giants, Daniels, mostly against man coverage, went five of seven for 71 yards passing and a touchdown. He added three carries for 20 yards on the ground. His adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A), which includes sack yards and attributes bonuses for touchdowns and minuses for interceptions, on those drives was 13. As a reference, the league-leader in ANY/A last year was Lamar Jackson at 9.38, the only passer over 8.02. There’s no doubt about it, Daniels was hot to start the game.
ANY/A has a higher correlation to winning football games than passer rating, for what it’s worth, and that’s why I’m choosing to look at that stat.
Once the Giants adjusted, though, Daniels looked far less efficient going against zone-heavy defenses. For the remainder of the game, Daniels was just 14 of 23 for 162 yards with three sacks for 21 yards and eight carries for 48. His ANY/A was just 5.4, which would have ranked 26th in the NFL last year among qualifying quarterbacks.
The Commanders only scored 14 more points for the rest of the game. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur has never scored fewer than 30 points in any matchups against his former head coach in Atlanta, Washington’s Dan Quinn. That should give Green Bay some confidence going into the game.
From an EPA per-play perspective, Daniels earned 0.372 points per play against man coverage, but only 0.096 against zone coverage in Week 1. So he was four times as effective against man, per play, as versus zone against New York.
If you watched last week’s Giants-Commanders matchup, what you saw was the Commanders jumping to an early lead by torching man coverage, something the Packers hardly ever play, and then a slog of a game between Washington and a team much less talented than Green Bay. As long as the Packers don’t decide to throw out all their tendencies under Hafley in Week 2, they should be able to slow Daniels down better than New York did last week, at least early.
Hafley’s zone defense has done a good job of holding mobile quarterbacks to low rushing yards, too. In two matchups with the Philadelphia Eagles last year, Jalen Hurts was held to 17 carries for 69 yards combined (4 yards a carry). The Indianapolis Colts’ Anthony Richardson only ran for 37 yards. The Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray was held to seven carries for 14 yards (2 yards a carry).
Daniels can’t expect the coverage players to have their backs to him on Thursday, as that’s simply not the way the Packers have played football over the last year.
