On Sunday, in the first game of his NFL career, Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels ran the ball 16 times.
Guest column by Thomas Boswell
Combined. All of them. In their whole professional lives.
One time!
In 1,487 games, including the playoffs.
Is offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury the seer who, late in a 37-13 game, had this rookie run off tackle twice, including a goal-line collision where his helmet was blasted off — for the second time? Do you guys need to cut your margin of mockery that desperately?
What Daniels was both assigned to do, and allowed to do, on Sunday in Tampa was coaching malfeasance on a franchicide scale. That’s a new technical term for when you try to murder the franchise — like when Mike Shanahan put RGIII back in for the second half of the Seattle playoff game because he was determined to show the NFL.
In the history of the NFL, only one quarterback has carried the ball 10 times per game on a consistent basis and survived: Lamar Jackson. And even the tough, elusive Baltimore Raven seldom runs the ball 16 times. His career average is 10.2 carries per game. He’s also gotten hurt plenty.
The gap down in usage from Jackson to every other running quarterback is huge. Of quarterbacks with 500 career carries, the top five in carries per game (after Jackson) are the powerful Jalen Hurts (8.5), the 245-pound Newton (7.6), the 237-pound Allen (7.0), Vick (6.1) and Wilson (5.2).
Daniels, at a willowy 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, probably shouldn’t be carrying the ball any more than the 6-4, 212-pound Cunningham, who averaged 4.8 carries. Cunningham played decades ago, when players were smaller, and he only carried the ball more than 12 times twice in his 16-year career.
My biggest fear is that those 16 insane carries reflect a lack of organizational control over a glamorous rookie who was the second pick in the draft. For a $37.7 million contract, you can tell a young player that he is a professional now and it is not okay for him to express himself, just as he always has.
Quinn’s most self-incriminating comment after Sunday’s loss was that Daniels “got to fully express all the things that he has.”
Oh, please: We don’t want to hinder his self-expression just so, for the first time in 50 years, Washington might have an NFL quarterback with a longer life expectancy than a car lease.
The Commanders’ let-Jayden-be-Jayden game plan, their tolerance for Daniels heading downfield on scrambles through traffic as often as he would have at LSU and Quinn’s comments afterward point toward No Adult in the Room Yet. How many times did ex-owner-from-hell Daniel Snyder empower a rookie “star” quarterback long before he had earned that status?
All the shifty, swift mobility that Daniels showed when he was behind the line of scrimmage Sunday was wonderful. Evading sacks, avoiding big hits, buying time in the pocket and rolling out so receivers can improvise a second (or third) route are all a big plus for a quarterback. Even running out of bounds for yardage before anyone can clobber you is usually good — unless you judge wrongly and pay the price. But finishing the play in the middle of the field, as Daniels did nine times Sunday, is career self-immolation. Only in children’s fiction is a sliding quarterback at midfield a “protected” person.
Calling quarterback runs, just for a garbage-time scoring drive or to make Daniels feel good, is irresponsible coaching. Around half of the 16 runs appeared to be called plays. Not once in all his improvised scrambles did Daniels even consider resetting the pocket behind the line of scrimmage. Don’t Quinn and Kingsbury teach this skill: how to create a second and third pocket and invent a new play after you’ve escaped pressure and reset the pocket?
The modern NFL is a mobile quarterback’s league. The broken play, the improvised play or the athletic-magician play is as central to the game as the name Patrick Mahomes.
But how many times does Mahomes run downfield?
Less than four times a game.
Maybe Daniels will be more Jackson than Mahomes. But that is unlikely. Jackson is the only elite quarterback — ever — who has been able to run so often. Mahomes is a variation on many other mobile, exciting quarterbacks before him, from Fran Tarkenton through Roger Staubach and Elway to Rodgers, who could drive defenses insane as they rambled around all the available acreage — while looking downfield searching for a big play, not a seven-yard scramble and a cart ride to the hospital.
Every time Daniels rushes the ball a dozen times in a game in these early years of his career, it will be another defeat for the best possible development of his superb ability. And it will increase the chance that there will be no “later years” of his career.
If Week 1 of this Commanders season is remembered for anything, let it be the game when the team’s fans — and its coaches — grasp the historical frame of reference for how many times a tall, lean quarterback, or any quarterback, should run the ball.
In their different ways, Newton and Allen, built like big linebackers, and the dash-fast Vick, built like a 6-foot, 210-pound running back, give us the parameters. Allen (so far) and Vick, in their careers, each had just four games when they carried the ball more than 12 times. Newton, who ran more often than any quarterback ever, only surpassed 12 carries 11 times in his 155-game career, including the playoffs.
Jayden Daniels has 16 carries after one game. For that, the Commanders’ coaches should have their heads examined. Otherwise, Daniels soon will.
