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Watching “Monday Night Football,” Aaron Rodgers saw it.
En route to a prime-time upset of the Cincinnati Bengals, sure, Jayden Daniels had used his legs some to pick up 39 yards and a touchdown. But in a 38-33 Washington Commanders win, the second overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft did not primarily look to escape the pocket to advance the ball.
Daniels instead completed 21 of 23 pass attempts for 254 passing yards and two touchdowns, breaking a rookie record in the process.
Consider the four-time MVP quarterback of the New York Jets impressed.
“What I loved about him is he played from the pocket on time,” Rodgers said Tuesday on the “Pat McAfee Show.”
“When you can do that, you can stick around the league for a long time.”
The Commanders want their franchise quarterback to avail himself of his diverse athletic abilities. But what impressed talent evaluators about Daniels’ college career and Heisman Trophy season at LSU went beyond the 2,019 rushing yards and 21 rushing touchdowns he collected in his two LSU seasons.
Daniels also threw for 6,725 yards in that stretch, connecting on 57 touchdowns to just seven interceptions in two years.
So a vision developed in Washington.
“He’s definitely a dual-threat player, but he’s definitely a passer first,” Commanders head coach Dan Quinn told Yahoo Sports during a June sit-down. “When you’re evaluating his accuracy, arm strength and all of those things, it’s even more than that because it’s speeding up the throws and when the play goes bad, blitz pickup.”
“He has a coolness about him that stays with it and that it doesn’t turn into a bad play.”
Daniels has steadily grown in his early pro stretch, Washington scoring on its last 14 possessions that did not end in a kneel down (at the end of the first half or end of the game). And yet Daniels entered his third game without a passing touchdown. He averaged 5.2 air yards per attempt in Week 1 and 4.3 in Week 2.
Bengals cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt didn’t…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/most-impressive-part-of-jayden-daniels-performance-in-a-commanders-prime-time-win-let-aaron-rodgers-explain-225759559.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-09-24 22:57:59
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