You may have heard that Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels ran the ball 16 times in his NFL debut Sunday at Tampa.
That number – which was identical to the carries reigning MVP Lamar Jackson happened to have in the season opener last Thursday – raised a great deal of concern among Washington media and the fan base.
But that number isn’t accurate. Simply, the number is wrong. In a game predicated on numbers – downs, distance, time on the clock, points – blew the accounting on this when reality interacted with the stat sheet.
The real number for Daniels in his debut is 14 carries. Why the discrepancy? The first-half kneel-down counted as a rush attempt as did the QB’s first snap: a fumble on a backward pass he threw errantly in the direction of running back Brian Robinson Jr.
So do you feel better knowing the rookie really only carried the ball 14 times for 90 yards (an average of 6.4 yards per attempt) and two scores in his debut game?
Well, the odds are no, most of you are having a Frank Costanza ‘In my mind, there's a war still going on’ thinking about 2012. Because the number of carries wasn’t really your main concern with Daniels' running. It was the hits. It is always about the hits.
Yes, this is football and the hits are really the part that makes everyone queasy whenever somebody important carries the football. This concern, of course, does not apply to the ‘bell cow' running back, the players we have come to view rather callously as interchangeable cogs at best and disposable pawns at worse, and should be fed the ball as many times as it is deemed effective for a given year.
But digging into the 14 actual runs from Daniels – one more than Pittsburgh’s Justin Fields and three more than Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts had in Week 1 – the number of hits on the quarterback shouldn't raise alarm bells on his seven scrambles and seven designed/option runs.
Overall, Daniels avoided contact on nine rushes – five times going out of bounds – and took minimal contact on a 10th run as he entered his seemingly signature head-first tumble. And those rushes account for six of the seven times the rookie scrambled out of the pocket.
On the four rushes where Daniels took contact, one came on a designed QB run play by offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, two were on read-options at the goal line and the fourth was the scramble that resulted in a penalty for unnecessary roughness.
In fact, all seven of the designed runs – plays where Daniels is the primary carrier (three) and when he has the option to give to a running back (four) – happened in the second half. So, if the Commanders had felt that Daniels' five first-half scrambles were too many – the last of which resulted in him losing his helmet – it certainly didn't impact their play calling.
"Some of the ones we like where he could extend the plays with his legs, that's what does make him unique,” Dan Quinn said after the game Sunday. “But, yeah, we certainly don't want the ones that are inside and where the helmet gets knocked around. Those are things that we can work through for sure."
The head coach is right: you don’t draft a player with a that dynamic of a skillset – explosive speed and the ability to make something out of nothing by running with the football when nothing is there – just to have him not use the ability that makes defense’s sweat.
And as for the runs inside where the rookie was ‘knocked around,’ two came on designed runs – the third true designed run was the 4th-and-1 bootleg that saw Daniels get out of bounds.
On the two occasions when Washington called QB power out of an empty set, both coming on 1st-and-10 situations, they netted a grand total of six yards, the first with Daniels tackled in a large pile. If there is an area in Daniels' game where the juice might not be worth the squeeze it is calling a play that was a hallmark of the thicker Cam Newton for the more slender, angular Daniels.
And Kingsbury will be judicious about calling those types of QB runs, as he shouldn’t have carte blanche to enter the former No. 2 overall pick in a demolition derby of designed runs.
Most likely, Daniels will settle into a rhythm of Kingsbury’s offense and, as the receivers and tight ends become more comfortable with him, he will be more constantly breaking the pocket and finding an open man because he kept his eyes down the field and didn’t take off at the first sight of open space. That’s something Baltimore’s Jackson has become quite adept at doing, with several highlight touchdown passes in crucial moments – a long touchdown to Isaiah Likely last Thursday, the most recent example.
"I think he'd be the first to say... 'I had a chance to go rip it to somebody else,'" Quinn said on Monday. "Sometimes you can see a rush or a pattern break and there's open space for you go. For him, create it when it's there when you can get outside the pocket. We'd love to see him remain a passer first, and I think it's going to come with more experience, honestly."
That’s coming next, keeping his eyes down the field looking for the explosive play through the air. It comes with time for every rookie quarterback. Soon he will find his balance and likely rush between six and 11 times a game, a pace which would put him a bit behind what Jackson has done the last few years.
But the injuries! 'Jackson got hurt in two of the past three seasons.' Yes, from hits that occurred in the pocket when he was looking to pass, not run. There is a bit of selective memory going on with what is ingrained in the Washington fan’s psyche.
The image of Haloti Ngata lunging headlong into Robert Griffin III’s knee most gets tagged to Daniels, but not the two more gruesome, horrific, life-altering and career-ending injuries sustained by Joe Theismann and Alex Smith. Both of which came in the pocket.
And the pocket is where Daniels is going to take more awkward hits, which he did on the sack-fumble Sunday against the Buccaneers. The pocket is where Daniels must be at his most nimble. And when he does break out, make decisive, quick decisions. Aaron Rodgers lost his 2017 campaign because he held onto the ball for a beat too long looking to go deep after moving to his right.
"I'm going to do whatever it takes to try to win the football game,” Daniels said Sunday in Tampa. “I don't put a number on anything on how many times I'm going to run and stuff like that, but I just try to do whatever it takes to help the team win the game."
The plan is simple: Get the ball in your most dangerous offensive weapon's hand at all times. With Daniels at quarterback, it is mission accomplished every time he takes a snap.
You don't go on vacation with counted money. You don't tell your best playmakers that they can't do the things that make them game-changers. You have to let their talent shine or you will flatten the unique ones into the ordinary.
Don't hold your breath every time Daniels moves to run downfield, you won't have any air left to cheer when he breaks loose.