After an unbelievable rookie season for Jayden Daniels, is there even more room for improvement?
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00:00Let's start here.
00:02How can Jaden Daniels get better in year two than he was in year one?
00:08We just watched him have a rookie season, the likes of which nobody's really ever turned
00:13in before.
00:16It's hard to find flaws in his game.
00:19You'd be hard pressed to find areas where he wasn't prolific.
00:24The numbers speak for themselves, right?
00:26The team went 12 and 5.
00:28He completed almost 70% of his passes, right, at 69%, which is nice.
00:343,500 yards, 25 touchdowns, 9 interceptions, obviously ran all over the place, was their
00:42leading rusher as a team this season, had the best rookie rushing season of all time
00:51from the quarterback position.
00:53How does he get better next year?
00:55What can he do to improve?
00:57That's what we want to zone in on.
00:58It's a hard question, honestly.
00:59To me, one thing is out of his control, and we've talked about this a bunch, but it's
01:04maybe one more weapon, one more easy button, one more guy that he can throw to on third
01:09down and eight when everybody's covered, et cetera, that he's got no control over that.
01:13To me, this might be something that people disagree with.
01:17I'd actually like to see his completion percentage go down a hair.
01:21I want a couple throwaways.
01:22I want a couple.
01:23You know what?
01:24There's nothing here.
01:25I'm not going to dance around.
01:27I'm not going to take the 12 yard losses.
01:28I try to do something special or a run for, for zero instead of just say, you know what?
01:33This one ain't happening.
01:34They got the right defense called.
01:35They got us here.
01:36Let me before it breaks down and turns into chaos, let me just chuck it away.
01:41So if he's at 67% instead of 70%, you know what I mean?
01:45Like a few sacks, lower, a couple of lower sacks, a couple less turnover risks.
01:49When you're talking about a fumble, we were pretty fortunate this year in terms of his
01:52fumbles and fumbles lost.
01:54To me, I think that's kind of that next bit of growth to say, you know what?
01:57This one's DOA.
01:58This play is not going anywhere.
01:59And I think that's a hard thing for, for a guy with that kind of talent, frankly, to
02:03learn a guy with that kind of swag and confidence where you go, I'm Jayden Daniels.
02:08That play ain't dead.
02:10What I do is I make the play that isn't there.
02:12I make the transcendent one.
02:13And there's still time, time to do that.
02:15But I think that's kind of a maturity thing and experience thing called against us.
02:21I could scramble around and dance and do a whole bunch of different things with very
02:24little net result.
02:25Let me just fire this one out of bounds and we'll, we'll try again.
02:28I'm glad you brought up the fumbles because it was amazing to me how infrequently he fumbled.
02:36You know, he fumbled three times in the first game of the season and just twice over the
02:42final 16 weeks at the quarterback position.
02:46That's pretty astounding.
02:47It's very astounding.
02:48And where that comes from, I think is he almost never got hit from the blind side, like standing
02:54in the pocket.
02:55You think about quarterbacks that fumble a lot.
02:58It's often guys that stand in the pocket and stay there and they get hit as they're throwing
03:02or hit is there, you know, surveying and looking the field over.
03:06He is, you know, padding, padding, padding, got to go.
03:10And he's like out of the pocket.
03:11And most of the time, because of that, he's able to tuck the football, you know, as he's
03:16being tackled or he's getting grabbed from behind as he's falling forward or whatever.
03:20But even still, even by the standard of, he's not a pocket pass through, he's just going
03:24to get crunched in the pocket all the time from his blind side.
03:27The only fumble twice in the last 16 games of the year, you have five for the season.
03:31I'll sign up for that side unseen.
03:32Hilarious.
03:33And you add into that, by the way, some of the ball handling where it's not just turn
03:37around, hand it off.
03:38It's part handoff into the gut, pull it back.
03:40The RPO kind of game.
03:42That's an underrated skill that a lot of guys have.
03:44Jalen Hurts is incredible at it.
03:46Griffin was so good at it when he was here.
03:48You know, handling in that way where you're trying to be deceptive, there's got to be
03:52some side of hand to it.
03:53He's really good at it.
03:54So I've got a couple of things that I think he could do better.
03:58But I would start by saying, well, I'll play along with the question we're asking.
04:03I think his goal should not be to be better.
04:05His goal should be to not take a step back.
04:08I don't need him to be better.
04:09I mean, that's another question that could be fair to ask.
04:12Does he even need to be better?
04:14I thought he played well enough to get to the Super Bowl in the NFC Championship game.
04:19I didn't think he was a strength or dynamite or prolific or anything like that in that
04:24final game.
04:25But he was fine.
04:26He didn't cost them the game.
04:28He didn't do anything that was awful.
04:30The interception late was when the game was already lost and he was just trying to make
04:34something happen.
04:35I think if he plays at the exact same level next year with more talent around him, you
04:40could get to the Super Bowl.
04:42And so for me, the goal should actually be to avoid a regression.
04:46That sophomore slump.
04:47Yeah.
04:48The C.J.
04:49Stroud second year where everything kind of got a little bit worse on his resume, on his
04:54numbers.
04:55And some of it might have been that he wasn't on the same page with his coordinator or they've
04:58blown out Bobby Sloat.
05:00Some of it may have been the injuries around him.
05:02But the fact is, all of those things can happen.
05:05Your relationship in a building with a coach can change, right?
05:09Or elite players around you like Nico Collins was out for several weeks.
05:14C.J.
05:15Stroud just had to deal with that.
05:16That's like if Terry McLaurin wasn't available to Jaden Daniels for a few weeks, you think
05:20he'd be a little worse?
05:21Probably so.
05:22Tank Dell got hurt.
05:23It was one of their explosive guys where they can move all over the place and get big plays
05:28out of in the slot.
05:29You think they'd be worse off if one of their better pass catching weapons down the depth
05:33chart went down?
05:35I bet you they would.
05:36And so, to me, the goal should be just not taking a step back.
05:41With the film that's out there and coordinators game planning for you all offseason and finding
05:46all your tendencies like when you pull the ball down and roll right, you still might
05:50throw it.
05:51When you pull the ball down and roll left, you're almost certainly going to run it.
05:55Little things like that, that now are known tendencies, I think you've got to try to go
06:01back and self-scout and try to just change as many of those things where the book's out
06:06on you as possible, just to solidify where you were this year, because it's a massive
06:11win to me if he is the exact same year next year.
06:14I think that's a smart way to put it, right?
06:15Because if you add your toolbox, you can now fight some of the tendencies, right?
06:21As you said, like a defensive coordinator who's really, really bright and they get paid
06:25to figure out how to stop you, studies all offseason and says, OK, for example, the one
06:29you picked on or grabbed, hey, if he rolls right, it's X.
06:32If he rolls left, it's Y.
06:34And then there were a couple of times I know, like, for example, that I think it was against
06:37Atlanta when they had a play where he was rolling left and the whole world thought he
06:40was running it and he kind of threw across his body for a touchdown to Zaccheaus or maybe
06:44it was Crowder in the end zone for a TD on one of those goal line plays.
06:47That was a smart tendency breaker, right?
06:49Where nobody was expecting that.
06:51More of those things will go a long way.
06:52So maybe working on throwing while rolling to his left.
06:55So you add a little bit to be able to counter, but you're right, statistically.
06:59And in terms of the impact, these unbelievable clutch plays or the, you know, if you're within
07:03a score in the last handful of minutes, you feel like you're going to win.
07:06Don't change those things.
07:07But you still want to be adding your toolkit because everyone else going up against you
07:10is as well.
07:11I guess if I'm actually answering the question, though, and I say, where can Jaden Daniels
07:16be better improve?
07:18What do you what should he hone in on going into this coming year?
07:22The first thing I'm going to say, and I thought he got a lot better at this as the year went
07:25on, but there's just always room for growth.
07:28And this is going to be the number one thing I harp on with him for years and years to
07:31come.
07:32It's going to be.
07:34Leaving the pocket to reset, to throw, not to run, because that's where the huge plays
07:39are when you leave the pocket and you scramble, you might get four, you might get six.
07:43And because he's electric and make someone miss, maybe he gets 12 or 14.
07:47But if you reset before the line of scrimmage and throw and the defenders are now sucked
07:52up to try to stop you, that's where you can get 20 or 30 or 50 and a touchdown.
07:57It happens around the league once every couple of weeks.
08:00You see it from the mobile playmaking quarterbacks early in the year.
08:04And I mean, the first couple of weeks, it just wasn't a part of his game at all.
08:07As soon as he got flustered and left the pocket, eyes were down.
08:11He's taken off the run.
08:13By the middle of the season, I think that had been fixed.
08:15And we talked about this when they went back to Tampa and you saw it a couple of times
08:19in the playoff game week one.
08:21He's just taking off week 19, as it were.
08:25He's throwing.
08:26He's resetting.
08:27He's planting.
08:28He's surveying.
08:30He's a great guy.
08:31He got so much better at that.
08:32I want that growth to continue.
08:34The more of that, like if he's now at 50% of the time he resets and throws, let's turn
08:39that into 75%.
08:40Because to me, that's the secret sauce with the dual threat quarterback.
08:44The other thing I'm going to say is in the second half of the season, as they started
08:49to push the ball down the field a little bit more and just ask him to do more in the passing
08:54game, it felt like he turned the ball over a little bit more.
08:58Not alarmingly so ever, but as an example, in the final seven games of the regular season,
09:02he threw seven interceptions.
09:04In the first seven games of the regular season, he threw two interceptions.
09:09And I think if you even extrapolate that out to like the first 10 games, I think it was
09:12still two interceptions.
09:14But you saw it against the Falcons where he gets fooled.
09:17It happens.
09:18Young quarterback.
09:19But I do think that this, unless they get a lot more talented and it's a different makeup
09:25of their team, this operation is going to be as good as them not turning the ball over.
09:30Because when you're one of these ball controlled, run the football, ideally, I think they want
09:35to be a let's win 20 to 17 games kind of outfit.
09:38You can't throw two picks and win a lot of those games.
09:42Or as it were in the playoffs, you can't turn the ball over four times with three fumbles.
09:45Right?
09:46That's not a Daniel's issue.
09:47But that's one thing I would say too.
09:49We didn't talk about a lot down the stretch, but there was that string of two picks against
09:54the Eagles, two against the Cowboys, one against the Titans, one against the Falcons.
09:58We didn't really see that early in the year.
10:00Not a big deal.
10:01In fact, I would even say expected, and he was amazing in that regard this year.
10:05But if we're talking about areas where he could improve next year, let's make sure that
10:08you nip that in the bud.
10:09Yeah.
10:10It's all within the caveat of this was one of the best rookie seasons, if not the best
10:13of all time.
10:14Yeah.
10:15So that's that.
10:16That's the baseline.
10:17So we're picking Nick.
10:18Yeah.
10:19So people don't tune in.
10:20They're just bashing Daniels.
10:21That's not the case.
10:22Well, they'll say that anyway, because we're not doing another segment where we talk about
10:23and if you do anything with this fan base other than saying he's the greatest quarterback
10:27of all time and you wouldn't trade him for Patrick Holmes, then you're a hater, though.
10:32But yeah, I mean, I think adults can have a conversation about it's going to be tough
10:35to replicate this year.
10:37So what kind of things when he goes back to the drawing board does he want to think about?
10:41And so the final thing for me is this was, again, not commonplace, but you saw it a few
10:45times in the last game against Philadelphia, where it's funny to call someone that athletic,
10:49that quick, that strong, everything lazy.
10:51So the lazy is not the right word, but the occasional feet or former lazy where you guys
10:56open and you're just flipping it to him instead of getting your feet swung around and you
11:01hit the running back.
11:02So it's not a low throw.
11:03So, you know, so Crowder's not digging it out of the dirt for one that's incomplete
11:05or Zaccheaus isn't reaching down or Eckler's not reaching down.
11:08I didn't think that was an issue throughout the year.
11:10It wasn't.
11:11There was a major problem in the Eagles game like recency because I thought about saying
11:14that and I'm like, well, really, I don't remember that being a problem for this season.
11:19And again, it wasn't one of the things I'd go unless he fixes that he ain't going anywhere
11:22by no means the case.
11:24Do you remember another game where like that many throws around the line of that many?
11:27No, but there's, there's, you know, one or two per week.
11:30And that's what we're talking about here is like to go from really good to the best in
11:34the league to go to like, cause that's his ceiling is the bleep and MVP.
11:37I guess we're talking about like, how do you win an MVP?
11:39You clean up two throws a game, you reset one time for one more big play and you know,
11:45get lucky and hurt the touchdown passes.
11:46I even think if he replicates his performance this season, it does it next year with the
11:53addition in talent that they're going to spike and, and have added to this roster.
11:58And now you're not surprising anyone.
11:59You come in, you were just the number one selling Jersey in sports this past football
12:03season, like the narratives behind you anyway.
12:06Right?
12:07So there'll be in that mix.