Jayden Daniels Gives Definitive Answer On If He’d Be OK Being Drafted by Commanders
The 2024 NFL draft is just a day away so there's barely enough time remaining to circulate a good smokescreen. The time has come for teams to get down to brass tacks and either make moves or picks. Meanwhile, potential draftees have to come to grips with maybe going wherever the latest mock drafts are sending them.
For LSU's Jayden Daniels that means addressing the very real possibility that he's going to be selected by the Washington Commanders with the second pick in the draft. Just a week ago Adam Schefter made it sound like the quarterback wasn't too fond of that idea, but on the eve of the draft he was asked bluntly if he would play for the Commanders and Daniels said he was 100% okay with being taken by Washington. Hooray!
Just to clarify to make sure we're all on the same page here, but we're all talking about the Washaington Commanders, the NFL football team owned by Josh Harris? Used to have the controversial name? Play in or around the nation's capital? Those Washington Commanders?
This must be a great relief to the Commanders (if they really do want to draft Daniels) because this quote comes on the heels of a Dianna Russini column on The Athletic where McDaniels sounded like he did have some issues following the team's TopGolf experiment.
Peters gained an appreciation for the value of such outings during the draft process while working with John Lynch, Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers, but many league executives were shocked and confused by the move. So was Daniels’ agent. He wasn’t too happy about it on social media because most top QB prospects are getting a significant amount of one-on-one time with the important people in the organizations that are scouting them. While Daniels did in fact have a chance to do that, it wasn’t the same as other traditional visits.
Daniels and his camp were so thrown off that there were whispers that he was hoping to land elsewhere.
Since the visit, league sources have said Daniels has told people in his “dream world” he could reunite with Las Vegas Raiders coach Antonio Pierce, who was an assistant coach at Arizona State during Daniels’ time with the Sun Devils, or play under Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota. The belief around the league is the Commanders and Daniels will get past this bogey, and he’s expected to be the team’s QB of the future.
In a perfect world he'd rather play for his college team's defensive coordinator or one of the many quality coaches who already left Washington years ago. But this isn't a perfect world so that's why there's "belief around the league" that they'll work it out.
Again, it is an interesting time of the year. Most teams probably know who they want to draft at this point. Many reporters have probably heard some very concrete stuff. But no one can say anything without couching it with little seeds of doubt to maintain some plausible deniability. You can't burn a source. You can't tip off another team. This is professional football. It requires handling information like it's classified. Potential draft picks must be protected like nuclear codes. While Washington is used to that, after the draft they'll have to turn their attention to protecting an actual quarterback for once. Good luck to whoever that is.
