There is Magic to Jayden Daniels

There is Magic to Jayden Daniels

GuyWhoLikesSport

In the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft, something magical happened.

It wasn’t the generational players that were drafted like Ndamukong Suh or Trent Williams, nor was it the busts like CJ Spiller.

It was the quarterback out of Florida, drafted by the Denver Broncos at pick 25: Tim Tebow.

Tebow was not a good player, but he was a cultural phenomenon.

He completed less than half of his pass attempts and had a 35% success rate as a passer.

He was allegedly a dual threat, but he wasn’t lightning fast by any stretch, moving like a slower Josh Allen, preferring to go through guys than go around them.

But for half of the 2011 NFL season, none of that mattered.

Tebow started 13 games in 2011, going 8-5 with a playoff win.

He was one of the worst passers in the league through three quarters, then the fourth quarter came and he was one of the best.

In the final 7 minutes of games, Tebow had a 96.3 Total QBR, which was highest among all quarterbacks.

During the Broncos 7-1 run, he threw for more yards in the fourth quarter than he did in the first three combined.

Tebow had a game-winning drive every week from weeks 10-13.

Even if Tebow was terrible at playing quarterback for three quarters, his teammates and his city believed in him coming through and he usually did.

Because of that belief, his defence – which was replete with stars like prime Von Miller, Champ Bailey and Elvis Dumervil – knew they just had to keep their guy in the game and he’d to pull it out.

The most unbelievable win was the one against the Bears, Tebow scored to make it 10-7 with 2:08 left on the clock and no timeouts meaning all the Bears had to do was run it three times and punt.

But the Bears didn’t just shoot themselves in the foot, they blew it clean off as Marion Barber ran out of bounds before the two-minute warning and Denver got the ball back 50 seconds left on the clock.

Tebow marched the ball down and got his team in position to kick a 59-yarder, which Matt Prater nailed and then it was overtime.

Then Marion Barber fumbled the ball right on the edge of field-goal range (this was before they changed the overtime rules), and Tebow drove the ball down for a Broncos won.

It was magic, Tebow was mic’d.

As I watched Jayden Daniels complete a Hail Mary to also beat the Bears, I couldn’t help but think of Tebow.

Daniels is obviously a dramatically better player than Tebow.

He is a more elusive runner and efficient rusher and is in another stratosphere to Tebow as a thrower, sitting second in EPA/play and sixth in completion percentage while piloting the best offence in the NFL by EPA/play.

Daniels is a perimeter dominant passer who is just okay at throwing over the middle.

While he’s not a creative thrower like Matt Stafford or Patrick Mahomes, he is good at finding a way to deliver his normal throwing motion through gaps with his movement.

He’s also incredibly slippery as a runner and he has that thing that I’ve only ever seen Lamar Jackson do where he looks like he’s about to give himself up on a run but then scampers forward at roughly the speed of light to pick up an extra three yards.

The comparison to Tebow is just in the magic.

Had Jayden Daniels been drafted last season, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this wouldn’t have happened.

The Commanders were then owned by Dan Snyder, who was a comically evil and reviled figure for the Commanders.

Over the 2023 season, Snyder sold the team before the 2024 NFL Draft.

All of a sudden there was promise for the Commanders with a new owner, a new quarterback and hopefully a fresh start.

Daniels has delivered on the promise, with his specific form of magic.

Dropping Daniels in there when they did was like dropping the kid from Little Miss Sunshine into the world of Se7en just before Gwyneth Paltrow got killed.

Immediately after, Kevin Spacey would suddenly have been in jail, Morgan Freeman would be doing bits, and Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow would married happily ever after.

Like Tebow, you can see the magic in the defence.

Based solely on personnel, this Commanders defence does not hold a candle the Broncos defence in 2011.

Coming into the season, there was a case to be made that this is the single worst defence in the league and definitely the worst secondary.

But so much of defence is about attitude and belief, a want-to.

Head coach and defensive play-caller Dan Quinn is a genius at instilling that, but it has to be easier when you believe in the guy at the controls on the other side of the ball.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the Commanders are the 2000 Ravens reincarnate, but they are lower middle-class, currently ranking as the 22nd best defence by EPA/play and 29th in success rate.

Even if they’re pretty poor down-to-down, they blitz at a top-10 rate and hurry the quarterback at the sixth best rate, introducing just enough volatility to be somewhat viable.

The player himself is magical too, he showed it most clearly this week, when he played the number 1 pick of the 2024 draft Caleb Williams and Williams’ Bears.

Everyone was excited to see them go head-to-head for the first time. Both had shown serious promise, especially Daniels, and the hope heading into the game was that this was the first of the league’s new Manning v Brady rivalry.

But Daniels came into the week with injured ribs and he was 50/50 to play, he worked around the clock to start, and he was ready to go at gametime.

It was one of his less impressive games of the season by passer rating and he had his equal third fewest rushing attempts, clearly he was a bit limited.

On the call, Tony Romo even suggested putting Marcus Mariota in to throw the Hail Mary at the end of the game.

Quinn stuck with Daniels, whose rib cage simply must have impacted his ability to throw a deep ball but it didn’t matter.

He got it juuuust far enough to be tipped up in the air and into Noah Brown’s waiting arms.

That’s the Tebow thing, the ability to do it when you really shouldn’t be able to, the ability to elevate everyone around you because they believe in you.

Daniels seems to have it in spades and for a player as talented as Jayden Daniels, the league seems to be witnessing the start of something special.

Something that won’t end in whimper like Tebow did.

 

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