Hogs Haven
A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders
All signs point to Washington Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels playing Sunday against the Chicago Bears, league sources told ESPN.
The Commanders still will need to see how Daniels is feeling Sunday in pregame warmups before making any final determination about whether he can start. But as one team official told ESPN said about Daniels: “He’s one tough-ass dude.”
If Daniels does push through his rib injury and play, as he is trying to do, it would set up a battle between this season’s respective No. 1 and No. 2 draft picks — Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams and Daniels.
Daniels is said to recognize the importance and significance of a game against Williams as well as what the contest will mean to Washington’s season. The Commanders (5-2) enter Sunday in first place in the NFC East, one-half game ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles (4-2).
“He’d want to play if he were missing his right leg,” the team official told ESPN.
Sunday’s 40-7 win over Carolina with backup quarterback Marcus Mariota behind center was validation for McLaurin that the standards and expectations that coach Dan Quinn spelled out shortly after his arrival are real, and not just coach-speak platitudes.
“I think that’s the standard we set for ourselves no matter who is in there,” McLaurin continued. “There is no drop-off. We expect ourselves to execute at a very high level. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. It gets to a point in the game where it is really us versus us and we just have to continue to execute.”
It is a testament to Quinn and his coaching staff that the message they delivered to his team – a roster with more than half of them newcomers, a group that had to learn to come together – resonates in the locker room from the leaders like McLaurin.
“We did create a standard as a team together and that was from the players and that began way back in the spring the week before the draft,” Quinn said. “And we put some things down on paper of who we wanted to be and how we wanted to do business together. We felt it was important to establish that before those 20, maybe it was 24, 25 rookies arrived to say this is how we do things here at the Commanders. This is how we practice, this is the way you go, this is what you do for a walkthrough. And so, having these guys get connected early, that was very important.
“So that’s the standard and it’s called the “Commanders’ standard” that they wrote together, and that expectation is just us constantly searching for...
