TAMPA, Fla. – Being a veteran, Zach Ertz has perspective.
“The only thing this means is we’re not going undefeated. The Miami Dolphins are safe from us,” the 33-year-old tight end said after the Commanders got smoked by the Buccaneers, 37-20, in their 2024 opener at Raymond James Stadium.
That got a laugh, but trust me, Ertz was extremely disappointed afterward, as hot as Adam Peters and Dan Quinn were through the hallways going to the locker room. The anger, in getting pummeled by a Bucs team that no one believes is a legit NFC contender, was palpable. Yes, it’s a rebuilding season for Washington, no matter how much the roster was turned over, no matter how much success Peters has had evaluating talent in his front-office career, or that Quinn has had in putting good defenses together. This was a 4-13 team last season, on merit.
Anyone who thought this year wasn’t going to be filled with fits and starts doesn’t understand the realities of pro football, or going up against a defensive savant like Todd Bowles on opening day.
But, there stood Jayden Daniels at the visiting team podium afterward, looking and sounding exactly the same as he does every time he answers the same questions, over and over. Calm. Unrattled. Certain that the next time will go better. Time will tell if the second overall pick of the 2024 draft lives up to that confidence, and all the hype that has come with his arrival in D.C. But strap in. The franchise, finally, has a franchise quarterback who isn’t going anywhere, unless he gets hurt (see below, and hold your breath while you read).
GO DEEPER
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Win or lose, Daniels is the guy around here. And he’s going to keep being the guy. And that’s the only good takeaway the Commanders can draw from Sunday, on a day when exactly none of the big free agent signings and/or draft picks on defense did anything impactful. That’s on Quinn, defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr., and everyone else on that side of the building. Daniels had enough problems dealing with Bowles’ never-ending changes in looks and coverages.
“The last play don’t matter, no matter if it’s a touchdown, interception, incompletion, it doesn’t matter,” said Daniels, who went 17 of 24 for 184 yards, with two rushing TDs, in his NFL debut. “You’ve got to be able to have a short-term memory and focus on the next play.”
Daniels’ first NFL pass technically wasn’t a pass at all; he looked to find running back Brian Robinson Jr. out of the backfield, but threw the ball behind his target, making it a lateral — and a live ball. Robinson knocked the ball out of bounds just before a Bucs’ defender could snatch up the would-be turnover, resulting in a 13-yard loss.
Things didn’t get a whole lot better for Daniels from there. He didn’t display much chemistry with his receivers room. The Bucs lost three defensive backs during the game to injuries, yet Daniels’ longest completion to a wide receiver in the first 50 minutes of the game (before a cosmetic scoring drive in the last two minutes of play) was for eight yards, on a bubble screen to Luke McCaffrey. And Daniels missed a wide-open McLaurin on a deep shot down the left sideline on the first play of the third quarter, on what would have been a momentum-turning score.
“I missed Terry, one I wish I could have back,” Daniels said. “But it’s a long season, man. We’re going to hit a couple of those.”
And it’s going to take a lot more bad afternoons before Washington’s locker room gets down on its new leader. When Sam Cosmi signed his four-year extension last week, he spoke glowingly about the franchise’s new ownership, and management, and coaching as factors that led him to want to stay rather than test free agency at the end of the season. And, he said one other thing: “I think we’ve got a special dude here, who I have to protect.”
The hamster wheel of mediocrity that has bedeviled Washington at the sport’s premier position has, finally, stopped.
“You don’t want your quarterback having to look over their shoulders, and sometimes in the past, guys may have felt they had to look over their shoulder,” McLaurin said. “The good thing about him is, the only way he’s going to get better is with these live reps. He’s done great in practice. He’s done great in the joint practices. But it’s different in the game. The great thing about it is, he’s young, and he puts the work and the time in. I think he’s going to make an even bigger jump next week.”
Here’s what can’t happen, though, going forward: Daniels being both the Commanders’ leading rusher in attempts (16) and yards (88) in a game. That’s a recipe for QB1 being in street clothes before the bye week; see Robert Griffin III, whose first big NFL ding, well before his knee injuries, was a concussion suffered against the Falcons in early October of 2011, less than five full games into his NFL career. And, like RGIII, Daniels was dazzling when he took off and ran on Sunday. His ability to get to the edge and past defenders is amazing. And, most of the time, he got down before he got hit — not always elegantly.
But, when the quarterback keeps taking off, it’s just a matter of time before he, and his team, pay a terrible price. In the second quarter, Daniels got got, taking a hit to the head by Buccaneers cornerback Bryce Hall on an 11-yard scramble, a shot that knocked the quarterback’s helmet off. Daniels stayed in the game. It may not end so benignly next time.
Washington’s defense could help its young quarterback by not getting gashed on multiple consecutive drives by the opposition. The Commanders did nothing to keep Baker Mayfield and Tampa Bay’s offense from taking whatever it wanted, mostly in large chunks, all afternoon.
Mike Evans, a future Hall of Fame wide receiver, and Chris Godwin, a hell of a tough receiver in his own right, ran clear and open all day. Mayfield missed two wide-open guys for walk-in touchdowns in the first quarter; he didn’t miss much of anything the rest of the day, going 24 of 30 for 289 yards and four touchdowns. The Bucs had two scoring drives of more than seven minutes, and on the rare occasions Mayfield didn’t find someone running free, he eluded Washington’s front time and again for back-breaking scrambles.
It wasn’t that long ago that Mayfield was a young can’t-miss QB, doing national commercials for an insurance company and looking like a sure thing for a Browns franchise that had also been searching for a savior behind center for decades. But the tide turned on Mayfield in Cleveland faster than you could blink, and he was sent on his way to Carolina soon after his 27th birthday. Only after bouncing from Carolina to the Rams to the Buccaneers has he been able to stabilize his career and become a solid quarterback. Nothing is promised in this league.
But the Commanders have to sail on, full steam ahead, hoping Daniels’ vast potential meets their own as an organization someday soon.
“Obviously, the goal is to win football games, and we did not get that done,” Ertz said. “He’s going to put a lot of pressure on himself to be better, just like I’m going to put a lot of pressure on myself to get better. But I think going against a Todd Bowles defense in your first start is probably the hardest matchup you can have in this league … For (Daniels) to be able to execute as he did — we didn’t finish in the red zone with touchdowns like we needed to, which came back to bite us in the end. But I know this whole team is excited to play with Jayden, and I think he’s going to be really good for a really long time.”
(Top photo: Kevin Sabitus / Getty Images)
