Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys are hosting their NFC East rival, the Washington Commanders, on Sunday. We checked in with our sister site, Hogs Haven, for a little knowledge on the enemy. We asked five questions and got five answers.
Blogging The Boys: How has Year 2 looked for Jayden Daniels? What has he improved on over his rookie year, and what does he still need to work on?
Hogs Haven: We have somewhat of a small sample size because he missed weeks 3 & 4 due to injury. However, I’d say he’s following a similar pattern to last year of starting the season looking a bit rusty. Last year, he started the season with a poor QBR of 31.3 and 37.8 (which was borne out by the eye test), before rebounding with a QBR of 94.8 and 92.4 in weeks 3 & 4. This year, he started out with a QBR of 51.6 and 20.3 in weeks 1 & 2, but bounced back with QBRs of 72.6 & 69.6 in weeks 5 & 6 and I think he’s back in his groove now.
He honestly looks very similar to last year, not significantly better or worse. He reportedly worked a lot on his footwork during the offseason, which should result in more accuracy and consistency on his passes, though he looked pretty accurate last year and I can’t say I see too much difference. He also added some muscle and I do think I see a bit more zip on his throws. According to PFF, his biggest weakness is making plays when moving to the left or backward, as he’s more likely to take a sack in that situation. I suspect that means he needs to be better at having awareness of pressure (particularly up the middle) and throwing the ball away before taking a sack. He relies a lot on scrambling when under pressure, but it’s harder to scramble away from pressure up the gut.
BTB: Let’s do the same question, but apply it to Dan Quinn.
HH: Honestly, I think the coaching has looked very similar to last year, with a lot of the same buy-in and effort from players, but also a lot of the same mistakes. It wasn’t just Jayden Daniels, a lot of the team looked like they were shaking off rust in weeks 1 & 2, which is probably partly due to Dan Quinn’s preference for light practices over training camp and resting starters in preseason games to keep them healthy. It’s also probably partly due to having lots of roster turnover in the offseason the last 2 years, as this roster is still very much being rebuilt from a terrible state in the Ron Rivera years.
It’s clear the defensive coaching staff (including Quinn) want to play primarily man coverage, but don’t have the personnel for it. Both last year and this year the secondary got torched in the first few games by trying to play man coverage...
