There’s no better feeling as a fan of a football team than knowing your QB is “the guy.”
CJ Stroud awarded Texans fans this comfort last season. Packers fans have seemingly never not known the feeling. Chiefs fans are drowning in it.
But for the Washington Commanders, it has been over a decade since they’ve experienced the warm embrace of a generational QB. Even their most recent run with Robert Griffin III winning Offensive Rookie of the Year was cut painfully short when Griffin tore up his knee in the 2013 Wild Card game.
You have to go all the way back to before Dan Snyder took over the team in 1999 to find the last time a Washington QB threw a touchdown pass in a playoff game that they won.
But almost as if by fate, in the franchise’s second year under the Josh Harris administration (and more importantly not under Dan Snyder), Washington has found its guy in Jayden Daniels.
ESPN All Over JD
The dual-threat QB out of LSU has had a meteoric rise to the top of NFL discourse. According to ESPN’s Mike Greenberg, through his first four career games, he has the highest completion percentage of any QB in any four-game stretch in NFL history. With Daniels under center, the Commanders have punted four times all season and once in their last three games. He has caused such an uproar that ESPN’s talking heads have weighed in on him as a potential MVP this year and even the current best QB in the NFC.
Commanders fans should soak every bit of this hysteria in, and it’s safe to assume they are. Not only is the sky the limit for the Commanders if Jayden continues to develop, or frankly carries on at this level, but it provides year-in-year-out stability for Washington as playoff and Super Bowl contenders.
Scarily Similar Starts
Things could not be better for football fans in the DMV right now, however, one uncanny comparison lingers like a rain cloud in the minds of Commanders fans.
Both Robert Griffin III and Jayden Daniels won the Heisman the year before they were drafted. Both are dual-threat QBs. Washington drafted both with the second-overall pick. Griffin won Offensive Rookie of the Year and took his team to the playoffs in his first season. Daniels looks poised to do the same.
The one thing Commanders fans can take supreme solace in is the fact that Dan Snyder is gone. This is a new era of Washington football, led by a new QB Prince. But for what it’s worth, maybe Harris and Co. invest in a new field sooner rather than later, just to be safe.
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