With the Washington Commanders preparing for a Week 2 matchup against an NFC East rival of the New York Giants, the team is looking for their first win of the season. While people will look to point the blame at anybody on the Commanders for their opening loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the focus should be on the improvements they can make against the Giants.
This season for the Commanders was never going to be an easy ride as they are led by the first year under head coach Dan Quinn and a rookie quarterback, albeit ultra-talented in Jayden Daniels who was selected with the second overall pick in the last draft. In the quest to get their first win, they do get a matchup against the Giants who have suffered immense disappointment to where Washington could be in the driver's seat of getting their first win of the season at home.
Giants head coach impressed with the skill set of Commanders rookie Jayden Daniels
How will they get the victory? It will be detailed in the predictions to come, but it is likely that this will be a much closer game for the Commanders to achieve victory than facing a well-coached team in Tampa Bay. Once again, it will be Daniels who will have to come up huge as even Giants head coach Brian Daboll acknowledges the talent that the LSU product has via Sports Illustrated.
“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. (Terry) McLaurin is an exceptional receiver. Speed. (Brian) Robinson is a tough runner. They brought Austin (Ekeler) over there from LA. Again, it's the biggest team sport there is, and that's where we'll focus. 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.”
Let's move on to our bold predictions for the Commanders in Week 2.
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Jayden Daniels to have a spectacular rushing day for the Commanders
Focusing on one aspect of Daniels, his rushing ability makes him one of the more dangeours quarterbacks in the league even as a rookie and it was on full display last Sunday. He rushed for 88 yards to go with two touchdowns as he's coming off a Heisman Award winning season where for LSU, he put up 1,134 yards on the ground with 10 scores.
Expect to see the rushing numbers explode even more Sunday against the Giants as Daniels will show off his ability, scramble out od the pocket, and take advantage of open fields for massive yardage. As Commanders head coach Dan Quinn mentioned, there was a ton of “designed quarterback runs” for Daniels which should continue in Week 2 according to NFL.com.
“Certainly, not all of those are designed quarterback runs,” Quinn said. “I think that's important to say, but I think he'd be the first to say the same thing. To say, ‘I had a chance to go rip it to somebody else.' Sometimes, you can see a rush or a pattern break, and there's open space, and you go. For him, create it when it's there when you can get outside the pocket.”
The amount of times Daniels rushed though could be “survival mode” as Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury said according to The Athletic which could result in more positive explosive plays Sunday.
“The reigning MVP of the league (Jackson) had the same amount of rushes, right?” Kingsbury said. “I’m not saying (Daniels is) the same guy, but your first game as a rookie, you’re gonna have some survival mode, fight or flight going on.”
Jayden Daniels will thrive as a passer against Giants
Continuing on with Daniels, not only will fans of Washington see a massive day on the ground, but they will also see why he has the chance of being one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in the game. He also has immense talent in throwing the ball which he will for sure do against a susceptible Giants defense, especially in the secondary.
Commanders' Dan Quinn wants Jayden Daniels to “remain a passer first”
Against the Giants, he threw for 184 yards while completing 17 of his 24 pass attempts as it's expected those numbers to reach closer to 300 in what will be Daniels best game in the pros with obviously a small sample size. Even Quinn said to the media that while Daniels' rushing ability should be used, they want to see the rookie “remain a passer first.”
“We’d love to see him remain a passer first,” Quinn said. “I think it’s going to come with more experience, honestly. When I can go extend it to throw it, when, ‘Hey, this plays over, I’ll get rid of it and move on to the next play.’ So, I think you’ll see that trajectory continue as we go. Certainly, [16] carries is not the model that we’re looking for, certainly with Brian [Robinson] and Austin [Ekeler] and others here. But at the end of it, I do think we’ll continue to grow in that spot. But certainly not by design to have that many.”
“I think if you'd asked him, there'll probably be a few throws that he would either like to rip or where the progression may have taken him,” Quinn continued. “But by and large, I felt from the competitor side, that was it. Those were some things I saw even on some of the runs. We didn't have a lot of design quarterback runs, but some of the ones that he did, I think if he'd asked him again, he'd probably want to let it rip to one of the guys on some missed opportunities. Those are the hard ones.”
Commanders defense will dominate Giants led by Daniel Jones
Looking at the other side of the ball, the Commanders defense had a horrid start by giving up 37 points to the Buccaneers where it was through the air that hurt them as Baker Mayfield threw for 289 yards and a whopping four touchdowns. Commanders defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. spoke about the disappointing performance and how they look to get it “corrected.”
“It wasn’t how we wanted to start,” Whitt Jr. said via The Athletic. “And I’m not going to get into one game out of 17. You only have 17 opportunities, and we can’t waste any opportunities. And so let’s let teams beat us. Let’s not beat ourselves. We worked hard this week to get it corrected, and that’s what we’re doing.”
If there is a game to come back defensively, it would be against the Giants as they are led by quarterback Daniel Jones who has been struggling along with a lack of talent at skill positions aside from wide receiver Malik Nabers who is a rookie. While there are still severe holes within Washington's defense, look for them to have an opportunistic day against Jones and the Giants who only scored six points against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 1.
It may not be six points, but the Commanders will hold them to little as a shootout should be prevented. At the end of the day, it will be Daniels and Commanders that get their first win of the season at home.
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