Hogs Haven
A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East, the NFL and sports in general, and a sprinkling of other stuff
[T]he Commanders brass’s first move was to start talking with Taylor Kelly, the coach at 3DQB (and former Arizona State quarterback) whom Daniels works with in Orange County.
The goal was to establish, first and foremost, a commonality in language. In other words, Washington wanted Kelly to dovetail the way he talks with how Kingsbury talks, so as they worked through Daniels’s rookie year and fundamental work, Kelly would be able to talk to Daniels on his level, and Daniels would eventually be able to take his work back to D.C. with him without a hitch.
There were also some of the normal mechanical things everyone felt like Daniels would benefit from working on. Refining his lower body movement on certain throws—something quarterbacks are always working on—was one thing. Working on some specifics on throws to Daniels’s left, and his arm angle on those throws, was another.
Meanwhile, Kingsbury and the rest of the offensive staff resolved to condense the offense and grow the things the Commanders did well, and throw out some of the things they didn’t in 2024. The idea was to get razor sharp, rather than too complex, with the offense’s strengths, giving the players the spring to hone that.
The byproduct of that process, as spring began, was giving Daniels added command with his teammates, since he’d already mastered what had been taught, which naturally allowed him to take another step forward from a leadership standpoint. Furthering that was the team’s ability to hang on to Kingsbury, pass-game coordinator Brian Johnson and QBs coach Tavita Pritchard, as well as backup Marcus Mariota, making it easy for the entire quarterbacks room to hit the ground running when the offseason program started in April and OTAs began in May.
On top of that, Daniels had teammates out to Oregon for a passing camp before all that, and plans to have them in California for another one before training camp starts.
The overarching idea here is pretty obvious, of course—for everyone to be firing on all cylinders when the pads go on five weeks from now. And judging by how fast everything’s gone to this point with Daniels, that should be something to see.
During the last week of OTAs, the Commanders suffered an unfortunate injury to wide receiver Noah Brown. Brown was reportedly carted off the practice field but there’s been no update regarding the injury. Being carted off the field led to a lot of speculation about who might replace Brown if he is seriously injured, but reports suggest the injury may...
