Jayden Daniels Was Great in Key Moments vs. Buccaneers

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Jayden Daniels looked completely unflappable in the most critical moments of Sunday’s game.

Against the Buccaneers in his first career playoff start, Daniels completed 9 of 15 passes on third and fourth down for 108 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 8 first downs. The Commanders didn’t punt once throughout the night.

A rookie quarterback is not supposed to be doing this.

While Daniels was great in these moments from start to finish, let’s fast forward to the 4th quarter with 9:40 remaining.

Washington trailed 17-13 and faced a 4th-and-1 from Tampa’s 5-yard line. They had failed to score on 4th down from Tampa’s 3-yard line on their previous possession, and with time running out, they needed to convert here.

The Commanders aligned in a 3x1 formation with Terry McLaurin to the backside. As Daniels said after the game, “everybody was pushed” and “essentially it was four over three” to the 3-receiver side:

Daniels looked to that side initially to quickly check and see if the slant-flat combo would be open (There was a bit of a pick element to the concept):

Tampa had it covered, so Daniels came back to McLaurin running an in-breaker from the back side. I’ll let him describe what he saw:

“Terry…it wasn’t necessarily 1-on-1. But you know, he had a corner [with] outside leverage, [and] you have the safety [with] inside leverage to take away anything [in the middle].”