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
Daniels produced one of the best rookie seasons ever — if not the best rookie season ever — by a quarterback. He was preternaturally calm. He processed defenses like a 10-year veteran. His physical gifts were as advertised, and perhaps even better.
The following notes, hence, are not really criticisms, but simply nits to pick — maybe the difference between a star, which he already is, and a superstar, a surefire MVP candidate.
First, we’d like to see Daniels improve his accuracy from inside the pocket. Though accurate in general and incredibly accurate outside the pocket, Daniels had an 11.2% off-target rate on throws in the pocket, 25th out of 36 qualifying quarterbacks. While the misses weren’t way off, Daniels did leave some open throws on the field when his mobility wasn’t a factor.
This generally occurred over two settings: when the defense did a good job keeping him hemmed in or for a small stretch after Daniels’ rib injury. In the four-week stretch after Daniels’ injury against the Panthers, he scrambled on just 9.5% of his dropbacks, down from his 12.5% rate for the season as a whole. He didn’t have a single scramble against the Steelers. And in those games, he had lots of misses from the pocket. Daniels’ worst game from the pocket was his single half against the Cowboys in Week 18, when he knew he was only going to play one half and was purposely mostly confined to the pocket for safety purposes. (The Commanders had already clinched a playoff berth.)
