Three Ways the Commanders Can Get Jayden Daniels Back on Track

Two seasons ago, Jayden Daniels ran away with the offensive rookie of the year award and led an imperfect Washington Commanders team to the NFC championship game. In his second season, injuries limited him to seven games, and Washington sputtered to a 5-12 record.

Daniels’ health is the primary concern for most Commanders fans. But even when the quarterback was on the field in 2025, his performance didn’t come close to that of his rookie season. In 2024, Daniels ranked seventh among all quarterbacks in expected points added per play — a good measure of a QB’s impact on his team’s chances of winning. He fell all the way to 27th last season, per TruMedia.

That shift has set up a pivotal third campaign for Daniels, one that will feature a new offense under first-time coordinator David Blough (replacing Kliff Kingsbury, who was shown the door following the team’s offensive struggles). We don’t yet know how the 30-year-old Blough will design Washington’s offense. But it seems likely he will draw on systems he played in, including those of Bears coach Ben Johnson and Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell — two of the most respected offensive minds in the league.

Here are a few things the Commanders can do to get Daniels back on track:

Get Under Center

Both Blough and coach Dan Quinn have already alluded to this change. Over his two NFL seasons, Daniels has one of the lowest rates in the league in snaps under center — meaning he has operated out of the shotgun formation on the vast majority of plays.

It might sound counterintuitive, but having a quarterback operate from under center can actually create more opportunities to extend plays, find deep throwing lanes downfield and scramble for big gains — all things that rank among Daniels’ biggest strengths.

Running plays from under center offers several advantages. For starters, it allows for a running game that is much more diverse. The extended time from snap to handoff gives the running back more time to read the line of scrimmage or potentially find wider lanes on the outside.

But the biggest difference comes in the play-action passing game. Last season, there was a big efficiency boost on play-action passes under center league-wide, when compared to play-action from the shotgun.

Blough could take a page or two from former systems and coaches he’s played under, such as Johnson. Last year, the Bears had the highest EPA per rush on early-down running back carries from under center. Part of that was due to a powerful offensive line, but the attention to detail in blocking and execution made those runs work.

That success spread to the play-action game. Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams — who was drafted one pick ahead of Daniels in 2024, and similarly thrives on his ability to create big plays out of structure — went from 28.8% of his snaps under center as a rookie to 48.4% in his second season, while his play-action rate went from 16.5% to 31.9%. The under-center play-action game created space for Williams in the pocket. That allowed Williams to find more open throwing windows deeper in the middle of the field, and also left room for Williams to scramble if things broke down.

Playing more under center would be a transition for Daniels, but others have done it. Baltimore Ravens star Lamar Jackson has increased his use of under-center plays nearly every year of his career, going from sub-10% rates over his first few seasons to 29% and 33% in the past two. He has become one of the league’s best quarterbacks on play-action plays from under center.

All of this can play into Daniels’s strengths, giving him more freedom to create on longer-developing plays and from deeper pockets.

Establish the Pocket

Daniels is always dangerous on the move, but a quarterback’s most reliable plays come from a clean pocket. Quarterbacks with 200 or more dropbacks in 2025 averaged 0.06 EPA per play with a 45.5% success rate. From a clean pocket, that same group averaged 0.23 EPA per play with a 51.5% success rate. That’s about equivalent to a jump from a middling quarterback (i.e. 2025 Baker Mayfield) to an MVP candidate (i.e. 2025 Drake Maye).

There were two problems with Daniels’ 2025 performance from the pocket. For one, less than half (49.6%) of his plays came from a clean pocket, which ranked 35th in the league. He ranked 32nd in EPA per play in those situations.

The blame for this should be spread around. His drop rate (the percentage of catchable passes that were dropped by receivers) more than doubled, from a league-average 4.1% in 2024 to a league-high 9.8% in 2025. Dropped passes can erode a quarterback’s trust in the offense and his receivers, causing him to try to make more plays on his own. Unsurprisingly, Daniels led the league in plays outside the pocket (31.4%) and scramble rate (15.7%) last season, both of which increased from 2024.

Setting up Daniels to play more from the pocket should create more opportunities for success within structure and allow him to be more deliberate about making plays with his legs, rather than running out of necessity.

Reconnect With Terry McLaurin

The Commanders’ struggles with dropped passes last fall underscores a bigger issue: They lack offensive firepower and desperately need star wide receiver Terry McLaurin to bounce back from a down season.

During the 2024 season, the Daniels-McLaurin connection was one of the most electric in the league. McLaurin was the rookie’s trusted target for big plays and the need-to-have-it downs. Daniels completed 67.3% of his passes to McLaurin, totaling 944 yards on 104 targets.

But in 2025, the pair played just 138 snaps together, as McLaurin (who missed a chunk of training camp due to a contract dispute) struggled through a quad injury and Daniels also missed time. Daniels completed 52.6% of his throws to McLaurin on 19 targets.

Blough has said he wants to build Washington’s offense around feeding McLaurin, with the goal of creating explosive plays. Washington needs the receiver to find something close to his 2024 form in order for Daniels to return to his perch as one of the league’s best quarterbacks.