Former LSU QB Jayden Daniels continues to pile national praise

Jayden Daniels put the full national audience on notice last week with a fittingly primetime performance against Cincinnati on Monday Night Football

And the praise for LSU’s record-setting and Heisman-winning quarterback has continued to pile up on the heels of his Washington Commanders’ rout of Arizona this weekend.

The rookie has now completed 87 of his 106 pass attempts (82.1%) for 987 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, while rushing 46 times for another 218 yards and four scores.

Washington has won three straight, including the back-to-back road victories.

And one eye-popping statistic after another — such as Daniels leading more scoring drives (23) than he’s thrown incompletions (19) thus far — has been followed by one line of glowing praise from a notable national voices after another.

“He looks almost like a faster Lamar (Jackson)” — Bill Simmons

“Daniels doesn’t miss,” Ringer founder Bill Simmons said on his Monday podcast recapping the weekend. “And when he rolls out, he’s faster and quicker than everybody. He looks almost like faster Lamar. There’s guys open everywhere. Their chemistry’s great. And it looks like in the span of a week they’ve completed reinvented themselves.”

His guest, Sal “Cousin Sal” Iacono, responded: “And he’s so in control, too. He’s so not a spazz. There’s running quarterbacks who are a little spastic and nervous. He’s like, ‘I know what I’m gonna do. I know where I’m gonna put the ball.’ Even his interception was like, ‘Ah, man, I see what he was doing there. Really could’ve had that there.’ But he is so solid converting third downs.”

“He just doesn’t look like a rookie QB at all” — Colleen Wolfe, NFL Network

“NFL Daily” on NFL Network focused a segment Wednesday on whether Daniels was already, just four games into his career, a top-12 quarterback in the league.

Colleen Wolfe raised the topic and pointed out that while Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury deserves some credit for his work with Daniels, the start to this season looks much different from the start of Kyler Murray’s career working with Kingsbury in Arizona in 2019.

“He’s looked fantastic,” Wolfe said. “All of his runs, I feel like so many of his runs, go for first downs, too. So he’s making good decisions. He’s making good reads. He just doesn’t look like a rookie quarterback at all. And I know (offensive coordinator) Kliff Kingsbury is putting him in a great position, but it feels like Kliff Kingsbury is doing things a little different than he had done in Arizona with Kyler Murray, and this just works. This marriage is so perfect.”

“This kid scares the sh*t out of me” — Chris Long, former Eagles DE

Podcast host Ryen Russillo asked former Eagles defensive end Chris Long during a live show Tuesday in Philadelphia whether fans should be concerned about the emergence of the talented young quarterback in the NFC East division.

“Yes!” Long nearly cut off Russillo to respond emphatically, then addressing the audience. “I love y’all. I absolutely love y’all, and I hate to see you not smile. And I hate to tell you something and not sound like a homer, because I am. I’m a damn homer. But this kid scares the sh*t out of me. He really does. I feel like I’m trying to rally a group of people behind a fear. You should be afraid of this guy.”

Long, the son of Hall-of-Famer Howie Long, went on to share that he first realized that Daniels might be in for a huge rookie season when speaking to veteran tight end Zach Ertz, a former Eagles teammate now in Washington.

“When I talked to Zach Ertz before the season, he told me this guy was going to be very good and very quickly very good,” Long said. “And when you have a guy that’s been around a lot of damn quarterbacks, that’s why I’m comfortable jumping out of the gym Week 3 and Week 4. My jaw was on the floor in that Cincinnati game.”

Long had another opportunity later in the evening to circle back to Daniels based on a question he was asked at the end of the live show.

“If you’re watching the Jayden Daniels tape and you don’t think he’s real, I don’t mean to be reductive, but you don’t know ball,” he said. “What I’m saying is it’s not just about who he’s playing against, it didn’t matter who he was playing against when he threw that third-and-7 ball with the game on the line. It didn’t matter who he was playing against when it’s fourth-and-2 and he’s playing a game with Luke McCaffrey and he’s using his eyes. It doesn’t matter who they’re playing against because they’re that much better than everybody right now in second and third down.”

“I’m ready to give him a gold jacket” — Gregg Rosenthal, NFL Network

NFL Network analyst Greg Rosenthal broke down the impressive awareness and game management Daniels already possesses in just his first professional season and shared an anecdote from one of the Washington coaches.

“You know Kliff,” Rosenthal said. “He loves having screaming free-runners coming at his quarterback. Even on that touchdown pass to ‘Scary Terry’ (McLaurin), that was a clean blitz off the corner by the Bengals, but he saw it coming.

“And speaking to a coach on that staff there, he will tell you, ‘Look, in practice, we tried to trick him in training camp. We ran double three-techniques, right?’ So they played their defensive tackles wide. He said he saw it, saw two inside linebackers, he moved the running back out to make the linebacker follow the running back, so now the middle of the field is wide-open, and he calls a quarterback draw. He’s like, ‘The fact that a rookie quarterback saw this two or three weeks into training camp, recognized everything, that’s all the football he’s played collegiately, he’s been coached well.'”

Rosenthal said coach Dan Quinn shared that Daniels is making the most of his 24-hour access to the Commanders’ training facility — much as LSU coach Brian Kelly and quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan consistently shared of Daniels during his time in Baton Rouge.

And the results of that foundation and work ethic have been staggering for a team that entered the season not expected from the outside to be much of a factor in the NFC playoff race.

“I don’t think to the people in that building this is really coming as a surprise,” Rosenthal said. “But, to me, I’m ready to give him a gold jacket because he has the Commanders at 3-1 in first place. Even for a minute with what that organization has been through, I mean.”

“He’s so advanced beyond a rookie QB” — Todd McShay, NFL Draft expert

Russillo called the Cincinnati game “the wake-up call of ‘Oh my God'” on his episode Monday as he asked NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay about what he saw leading up to this springs draft that began to make him consider Daniels on equal footing — if not above — The Bears’ No. 1 pick Caleb Williams out of USC.

McShay pointed to a visible change in Daniels’ play from LSU’s loss to Tennessee midway through the 2022 season through the rest of his college career.

“The light kind of turned on in that game,” he said. “And from that point on, he started to trust his reads and trust himself, and I saw so much progress in his development. And it happened in that year and a half span.

“Last year, his tape was significantly better than Caleb Williams. And so when I was done with the tape, I remember being on with you and being like, ‘I don’t know, man. It’s tough because what I’m seeing, it’s tangible, versus Caleb, the special moments are so special. It’s more of a toss-up.’ And then I started making the calls, as you alluded to, and there was real debate. And there were some teams I told you flat-out ‘Jayden would be our guy if we were in position to draft him, but we’re not.'”

McShay pointed to Daniels’ wealth of experience at Arizona State and LSU and the opportunity for a smooth transition for the Tigers’ system under then-offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock, Sloan and company to a similar system in the NFL as the biggest reasons for the early success this season.

“That experience shows up,” McShay said. “That lack of a huge transition from one system in college to the NFL, it shows up. And it allows and affords success. But then just Jayden himself, if he can protect himself and stay healthy, it’s only going to continue on this arc. And I’m not saying every week’s going to be perfect and all that, but, like, he’s arrived.

“This is who he is. He’s comfortable with his weapons, he’s comfortable with the system, his accuracy, his ball placement, his movement inside the pocket and his running skills, that’s all real. That’s not going to change.”

The only question mark is staying healthy, McShay said, although he also pointed out the same can be said for any athlete.

“Scouts get so mad when you’re like, ‘Well, if he stays healthy —,'” McShay said. “‘No shit, if he stays healthy,'” right? That’s always the response. I have it ringing in my head because every time I talk to a scout, they’re like, ‘Well, you said if he stays healthy. No shit, if he stays healthy. We all think that.’ But there are certain guys that are more prone to injuries in terms of their play style, their body type. I worry about that. But I don’t worry about anything that I’m seeing on tape right now. It’s like he’s so advanced beyond a rookie quarterback, it’s like this is his second or third year.”