Nick Akridge, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.
In this week’s Pro Football Focus rankings, Jayden Daniels, who completed 83 percent of his passes for 206 yards and three scores and ran one more in, got a grade of…68? Worse than Will Levis, who he beat and was definitely no better (18-for-37, 220 yards, 2 TD) statistically?
Akridge takes some culpability there, but as he joined Grant & Danny’s Beltway Blitz on Wednesday, Grant said he doesn’t understand the consternation, and Nick’s grade seems to agree with GP’s synopsis that while Jayden played well, he didn’t do anything ‘extreme or crazy,’ he really just did his job.
“We've seen a lot better games from Jayden, and I also did not think that it was going to be something extremely controversial,” Akridge said. “I think the biggest key from that game is that Tennessee kept giving them the ball in situations where they didn't have to stretch the field too much, so they could live with kind of the underneath throws an attack that really well against the Titans defense.”
That said, Akridge was pleased to see what the Commanders did to bounce back against Tennessee.
“I thought it was great; they got back to the basics, back to what they did that made them so successful in the first half of the season. And, it also helps when the other team continues to give you the ball within the 30-yard line,” Akridge said. “But I think getting back to what they did successfully – a lot of counter schemes where you're getting downhill with your running game, and just a great plan in terms of how they executed the running game. That’s what led to a lot of the success, and again, you didn't have to do much with the other team giving you the ball consistently.”
But, again, how a PFF grade is calculated is different than what you see in a box score, or even, in this case, on several short fields.
“I think the big thing with these kinds of PFF grades is whenever you kind of try to compare it to your typical box score stats, sometimes it's gonna look off; an incompletion is an incompletion in the box score and there's no context behind that, but an incompletion could be a positive grade for us,” Akridge said. “Or, a completion could be a zero grade or a negative grade, but in a box score, you think a completion is good. So basically what that grade came down to is Jayden completed three passes of over 10 yards, and two of them were inaccurate that cost his receivers some yards after the catch. He was efficient, but that’s when you would use stats like EPA or yards per play and stuff like that, and that’s where he really excelled. But yeah, I think the grade was quite a bit overblown.”
Oh, and one other thought: what about the offense moving Terry McLaurin around?
“I think Kliff was kind of trolling us a little bit with immediately putting Terry on the right side there giving him the ball, but I think it's something that needed to happen, and even if it is a troll, I think you got to keep doing it,” Akridge said. “A lot of times with his offense, it's not about who is getting those targets, it’s about where, and so a lot of times you see these screen passes to Dyami Brown and these quick passes to Noah Brown and stuff like that, and instead, you could be using guys like McLaurin who are better after the catch and better in those situations. So I think he got back to that right away, and you saw Terry have a big day instantly. It’s what you wanted to see; you have to manufacture him some touches, and it was great to see, and hopefully we see a lot more of it.”