Jayden Daniels' running style is reckless? Kevin Sheehan refutes that claim

In Washington, the football fans have a particular fear, one born out of the reasonably bad experience of watching the promising rookie season – and career – of a quarterback taken with the No. 2 overall pick go awry because of the accumulation of hits he took and, seemingly, his inability to slide and avoid needless contact when running with the football.

What happened to Robert Griffin III during the 2012 season is still burned into the collective psyches of Commanders fans as they prepare to watch the start of Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels' career when the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft goes under center as the Week 1 starting quarterback.

With that in mind, Sam Fortier at The Washington Post did a deep dive on all of the hits the 6-foot-4, 210-pound quarterback took during his career at LSU. "There's some interesting information in here," Kevin Sheehan said of Fortier's study of 3,600 plays from Daniels' Heisman Trophy-winning career and some from high school as well.

Fortier's conclusion: The Commanders' starting QB's reputation as a reckless runner is "overstated." He writes that the "huge hits overshadowed hundreds of slides, steps out of bounds or athletic moves to lessen contact," on the 500 some runs.

Sheehan added, "He's a visual spacial athlete. Like he has great vision and feel. This is not Griffin."

Of course, it all comes down to this, Fortier noted: Will Daniels "exercise discipline" and avoid needless hits and control the competitiveness that defines him, as Daniels' former head coach Brian Kelly noted. Sheehan added: "You just want that competitiveness to be applied to right-time, right place. Not wrong-time, wrong-place."

When you combine the dropbacks, scrambles and designed runs, there will be plenty of chances for defenders to get a hit on the rookie passer.

"This is where [Dan Quinn] and [Kliff Kingsbury] have to do a good job and they've gotta emphasis and then Jayden's gonna have to do it as well – and it's gonna have to be excellent judgment used – he should not take the hits that he doesn't need to take," Sheehan said. "I think we all know this as football fans, ironically, it's the pocket that is more dangerous for quarterbacks than being out on the edge and being out on the run, especially if you're a quarterback that has that vision and the ability to avoid some of the big hits. It's in the pocket where you take some of the most dangerous hits."

Sheehan added the truism that applies to every team in the NFL whether your quarterback is Aaron Rogers, Lamar Jackson, Brock Purdy, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Dak Prescott, Mathew Stafford, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts or Kirk Cousins: "You should be concerned about injury for any quarterback. Every quarterback is gonna take hits. Every quarterback gets hits a bunch after they throw the football in the pocket. Any one of those hits, especially the awkward ones down around the ankles and the knees, they are high-risk plays and hits."

Read the full story in The Washington Post here.