Hogs Haven
Following the unexpectedly successful start to the Quinn/Peters era, the Commanders entered the second year of the rebuild with a few major questions to answer:
Sunday’s dominant victory over the New York Giants provided answers to some of these questions and encouraging signs regarding others. The sloppy, mistake-filled game showed clear signs of early season cobwebs being shaken off. Nevertheless, the Commanders led from the first score to final whistle, without ever being seriously threatened.
While the Giants are likely to be one of the weaker teams on the schedule, they are not without some strengths. In particular, their championship calibre defensive line provided an early test for the new look OL. And defending Russell Wilson’s deep ball to Malik Nabers would stretch most secondaries, let alone one starting a rookie outside CB.
The 21-6 score line provides some indication that the answers to most of the outstanding questions were affirmative. The improved roster faces a stronger challenge against the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night.
Before we turn our attention to the Commanders’ prime-time debut, let’s review what we learned from their third consecutive victory of the division rival Giants.
JD5 played the whole game, sparing fans from worrying about how his third string backup would fare. But he did seem to pick up a wrist injury, according to the Monday injury report.
It was a rusty and uncharacteristically mistake-prone outing, compared to what we have come to expect. Daniels completed 19/30 passing attempts (63.3%) at an ADOT of 9.3 yds for 233 yds, 1 TD, and 14 first downs. He also ended a red zone opportunity with an intentional grounding penalty. Daniels faced pressure on 24.3% of dropbacks and took 3 sacks (33.3% P2S%). According to PFF, 3 of his pass attempts were dropped by receivers.
Daniels also added 68 yards and 3 first downs on 11 rushing attempts (6.2 Y/A).
Daniels recorded a fairly mediocre QBR of 54.9 (Week 1 rank 19th). By that metric, it was his fifth weakest performance as a Commander.
Austin Ekeler was credited with the start, and took the most snaps at RB, but rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt had the most rushing attempts (10) among RBs, and led the team in rushing yards (82) and rushing average (8.2 Y/A), while picking up his first NFL rushing TD. In his first NFL game, he achieved a 60.0% Rushing Success Rate. He was targeted once as a receiver, but did not make the catch.
Croskey-Merritt averaged 4.2 YAC/attempt. Unfortunately, his numbers are skewed by the single 42 yard run in the fourth quarter, making it difficult to get a meaningful estimate of his average Yards Before Contact. Including the...
