OPINION:
There must be no more room to stick pins on the Dan Quinn doll, and sticking pins in the David Blough doll is boring, so the attention has turned to sticking pins in Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Daniels earned slings and arrows with two weeks of bone-headed plays that you don’t expect your quarterback and team leader to make — failing to recognize the game clock ticking away and with it the opportunity for a game-winning field goal in the New York Giants game and then throwing the ball away on fourth down in the San Francisco 49ers game.
But the field has widened to question Daniels’ heart. Critics believe that Daniels is playing it safe with his passing decisions and is unwilling to risk taking chances pushing the ball down the field to help his team win.
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This is what he gets for being so good at protecting the ball: No interceptions this year in five starts and 116 pass attempts, and a track record in his first two years of not turning the ball over.
There was a time when this was a virtue.
“I think he (Daniels) has a real consciousness for security of the ball,” Quinn said in 2024. “That is one of the things about him coming out of college, to have that many touchdowns (40 in 2023) and that few interceptions (4). He has a real mindset about it, and it’s an important thing for us to take care of the ball.”
Now? After a 1-4-1 start, compounded by a 5-12 record the year before, the beatdown of Quinn, his coaches and general manager Adam Peters’ roster has grown old. Every week, the same old song.
Time for a fresh sound — Daniels now is too focused on ball security. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner appears to be leading the charge, calling Daniels out in a video last week.
“The point of this video is I want to see Jayden Daniels stay aggressive in every situation and believe that he is going to make the defense pay every single time they make a mistake,” Warner said. “There were a number of times in this game (49ers) where I didn’t feel like he had that mentality.”
Bold talk from a quarterback who, for most of his career, let it rip to Hall of Fame and Pro Bowl receivers.
Much of the time Warner was being aggressive with the ball while with the St. Louis Rams and later Arizona Cardinals, he wa throwing to Issac Bruce, Torry Holt, Marshall Faulk, Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin — three Hall of Famers and 32 Pro Bowls between them. Over a 12-year career, Warner threw 208 touchdown passes — 124 of them to those five receivers.
Daniels? Once you get past Terry McClaurin, a two-time Pro Bowler, here are some of the receivers Daniels has — Zach Ertz, Olamide Zaccheaus, Noah Brown, Dyami Brown, Luke McCaffrey, Jamison Crowder, Deebo Samuel, Jaylin Lane, Chris Moore, Treylon Burks, Ben Sinnott and John Bates, among other forgettables.
If Warner had to let it fly with that group, he would have found himself back bagging groceries and stocking shelves.
Quinn suggested to reporters this week that there may be some merit to this school of thought: “I think in certain games it is accurate,” he said. “That’s kind of the blessing and the curse of when do I scramble? When do I move out? When do I go? So, I think those are fair comparisons when you see a window like, ’Hey, man, this is the time to go let it rip.’
“One of the things I appreciate from Jay is he puts the ball in the right location when it’s contested or when it’s not,” Quinn said. “And certainly, on some of the deep ball shots, I think that’s one of the sweet spots for him in terms of where he can throw. But, if you’re putting the whole thing together, I think, let’s call it the three games or so, three and a half games, which ones did we like, which ones do we want to improve on, and where we’re growing. I think that’s true with Jay, that’s true with David [Blough], ourselves, kind of offensively, these are the things we like and these are the things that now we get to go tweak to move forward. There’s no more trial and error. This is how we got to go get it done. But with Jayden, I always like his accuracy. As far as contested throws, that a lot of times happens on the man-to-mans, the pressures when you’re trying to deny the ball. It’s something that we all work at hard. But yeah, I think if you’re looking at the whole body of work, when’s your shot, when isn’t? That’s what comes to my mind first.”
What comes to mind first for me is that if you really believe Daniels has become gunshy of sorts, it is likely because he has been under fire from all directions — a shaky offensive line, no run game other than Daniels himself, a new play caller in Blough and a $100 million defense that has played like a bargain basement unit.
I’m not sure even Rex Grossman would let it rip.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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