JP Finlay was just sitting in the back corner of his little space out in Ashburn, and all of a sudden a knock on the door…and it’s FRED SMOOT!
And Smooty had a little issue with JP giving Deshaun Watson as a comp for Jayden Daniels?
“That’s so backwards and wrong,” Smoot said. “The thing about Deshaun is even at Clemson he broke the pocket to pass the ball. Is he a runner? Yes, he's a legit running threat, but he don't lean on it and weaponize it like Jayden Daniels did. I have never seen Deshaun Watson with a run over 50 yards.”
Instead, Fred thinks Jayden is reminiscent of another quarterback we saw a lot of locally a few decades ago.
“My true comp for him is prime Randall Cunningham,” Smoot said. “Both of them have an elongated throwing motion and a running style where they're really more gliding. It’s similar to how Randy Moss ran – he was gliding so fast that we looked at him and said, how fast does he move? Jayden has that same deceptive running style, very slippery.”
JP gave the tale of the tape and some of Cunningham’s stats, and thinks Jayden might actually surpass some of that, although offensive philosophies are a lot different now.
“Never say never, but in his Pro Bowl season, Randall threw 16 picks,” JP said. “I don't think Jayden's ever gonna throw that many.”
Probably good, given the Commanders’ defensive issues, at least this year.
“I’m seeing a team that has a new coordinator and 70 percent new players, and a team that’s only played eight quarters of football together, so we have to step back,” Smoot said. “This coaching staff and this ownership has nothing to do with the last 25 years of our post-traumatic stress. We want to be good now, but it takes time, and the only way we get better on defense is we problem solve together. I’m seeing the growth but it's not gonna happen overnight with all these new players; it’s gonna be up and down until they understand Joe Whitt’s philosophy and how he wants things done, and as they play together, they will get better.”