Giants HC Brian Daboll Offers High Praise to Commanders QB Jayden Daniels

Daboll made no secret of how he felt about Daniels during the airing of Hard Knocks.

Sep 8, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels (5) drops back to pass against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the third quarter at Raymond James Stadium. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

There was something about LSU’s top draft prospects this year that appealed to the New York Giants.

As is well known by now, the Giants selected receiver Malik Nabers in the first round of the draft, but things might have gone differently had Jayden Daniels, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, made it past the Washington Commanders, who held the second overall pick in the 2024 draft.

That’s one of many things we learned from the Giants' appearance on Hard Knocks, that little nugget courtesy of head coach Brian Daboll, who, when asked if he’d consider trading up to land Daniels in the draft, said he would.

“I think he's a good football player,” Daboll said when asked what he liked so much about Daniels. “He's athletic. He's dynamic with the ball in his hands, whether it's a passer or a runner.

“He's a rookie quarterback that definitely did some good things that you saw from college on tape. He had 88 yards, 70 yards on scrambles, throws the ball well.”

This weekend, the Giants will get their first up-close look at Daniels, now with the Commanders, since watching him during LSU’s pro day earlier in the spring. Daboll continued to heap praise on Daniels when asked if the LSU product looked like a rookie in his first game, a 37-20 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

Daniels, in that game, finished 17 of 24 for 184 yards, with no touchdowns or interceptions and two sacks for a 93.1 passer rating. His 88 rushing yards came on 16 carries and resulted in two touchdowns, all of which led the Commanders’ ground game in Week 1.  

“Looks like a good football player to me,” Daboll said. “Again, I'm sure there are plays he would like to have back, just like all of us, but I think he's a good football player. I think he's a good quarterback. I think they've got a lot of good pieces around him.

“(Commanders Wide Receiver Terry) McLaurin is an exceptional receiver. Speed. (Commanders Running Back Brian) Robinson is a tough runner. They brought (Commanders Running Back) Austin (Ekeler) over there from LA. Again, it's the biggest team sport there is, and that's where we'll focus.”

Preparing for a rookie quarterback can be challenging, especially early in the season, even though Daboll and the Giants did a fair amount of research in evaluating Daniels this year. Daboll said that preparing for a rookie quarterback with a brand-new coaching staff, as is the case with the Commanders and Dan Quinn, makes it even more challenging.

“The quarterback is in his second start, so there's not a lot of tape other than you go back, and there's plenty of tape that we watched at LSU. Again, it's still early in the season, so there's a lot of tape to sift through some of the preparation and the things you go through. You make sure you hit the big details.”

Those details come from the cutups Daboll viewed when evaluating Daniels before the draft.

“There are cutups that I've made that I can refer to or go back and talk with the defensive staff about. There's a little bit more time on some other things, but I put a lot of work into that,” he said. “Again, he's played in one game in a regular season, so we'll use that. It's really more about us and how we do things.”

While Daboll respects Daniels’s game, he has a brewing mess with his own quarterback, Daniel Jones, who has picked up where he left off prior to his season-ending ACL injury last year, and not in a good way.

Daboll tried to downplay any brewing feelings he might have about Jones, who, in the second year of his four-year, $160 million contract, has continued to look skittish, off-target, and unsure of himself out there. 

While it’s only one game in a new season, there are already questions as to when Daboll, who tried to gloss over any awkwardness that might exist with the quarterback after the coach aired his feelings about Daniels on Hard Knocks, will pull the plug on Jones if he doesn’t get back to looking like he did in 2022.

“I'd say I've had that conversation weeks ago or whenever that happened,” Daboll said of a conversation he had with Jones. “Our focus right now is on what we're doing in the moment, which is getting ready to play a game.”

It just so happens that game will be against a quarterback that likely had Daboll wondering, “”What if?”

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