The NFL Draft’s Best QB Just Landed With the Commanders

Washington needs to treat Jayden Daniels like the gift that he is to this franchise, handing them the second chance of a lifetime.

Picking Daniels is a great start for a new ownership group and a new coaching staff in Washington. / Matthew Dobbins-USA TODAY Sports

Pick whichever motivational poster or daily stoic reading you like on the power of second chances. They all lead you to the inevitable conclusion that, if you’re lucky enough to get one, you shouldn’t screw it up. 

The Washington Commanders have spent months setting the stage for a complete erasure of their darkest period in franchise history. While the on-field product wavered between destructively bad and painfully middling, the off-field product warranted congressional attention, ruined lives and, finally, forced one of the most reviled owners in American sports to sell. 

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And now, after receiving a new ownership group, after drawing a top general manager, after making a strong and sober selection of a head coach, they have found themselves selecting a quarterback at No. 2 for the first time since the drafting of Robert Griffin III in 2012. 

Indeed, there is a poetic rhythm to all of this. 

Nevermind the fact that Jayden Daniels may very well be the best quarterback in this draft. Smart coaches around the NFL have wondered why the Heisman Trophy winner was so immediately eclipsed by Caleb Williams during the run up to the 2024 NFL draft and why there was no more forceful argument for Daniels to be selected with the No. 1 pick. For once, and perhaps for a long time, good fortune seems to be finding the tortured fanbase in Washington. 

While the Josh Harris ownership group didn’t start this smoldering fire, they are now the stewards of a project that includes putting it out and building something atop the ashes. Picking Daniels, a 23-year-old with serious homecoming king vibes, a biomechanical chain that can produce a 70-yard toss with little effort and Randall Cunningham-like mobility is a great start. Unlike Harris’s predecessor, it didn’t cost the team a trove of picks that went directly against the advice of Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist. 

Now, the Harris group must avoid another Daniel Snyder-era mistake, which ultimately derailed Griffin’s career with a mix of hubris and, later, nonconcern. 

Ignoring for a moment the scattershot pre-draft rumblings related to Daniels not wanting to play for the Commanders—a potential byproduct of some clumsier members of the player’s camp trying to deal with the media—the Commanders must now pour everything they have into facilitating something healthy and sustainable. This is not a fool-proof process and even the most well-meaning attempts have failed, but the common biomarkers associated with failing a player of Daniels’s caliber are well known. 

This is a plea for the Commanders to avoid destructive internal politics. This is a plea for the Commanders to avoid a rapid turnover at the head coaching and offensive coordinator spots (the Detroit Lions have held onto Ben Johnson for two consecutive offseasons; the Commanders, even with success on Daniels’s part, should do what they can to keep Kliff Kingsbury installed). This is a plea for the Commanders to allow for organic growth and progress in lieu of clumsily piling on high-priced wide receivers to microwave the process. This is a plea for the Commanders to find the Jayden Daniels offense. This is a plea for the Commanders to avoid the quest for personal credit, avoid disparaging the quarterback anonymously to reporters in order to save careers if Daniels struggles (kind of like they did to Johnson when he decided not to be the team’s head coach this past winter), avoid his personal life becoming his public life. This is a plea to treat Daniels like the gift that he is to this franchise and to understand that, while everyone has a job to do, the Commanders’ main priority is to not allow that stinging embarrassment, that all-consuming indifference and apathy, that forget-about-it hopelessness to begin coursing through the fanbase again. 

It’s possible, especially now that the planets have aligned, that the Bears may have passed on the draft’s best quarterback and handed the Commanders the second chance of a lifetime.