After an injury-plagued Year 2 letdown, Washington’s star quarterback has a new offensive coordinator and plenty to prove.
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After the losses and the injuries and the disappointment of a ruined second NFL season that was supposed to make him an even bigger star, there was, finally, another football practice for Jayden Daniels on Wednesday.
It was only the first day of the Washington Commanders’ offseason practices, a voluntary session with the players in shorts, not pads. Rain had forced the session inside the team’s practice bubble, but with music pounding off the wall and the lights glistening off Daniels’s helmet as he warmed up, the moment felt like something more, especially as the first-team offense lined up and Daniels walked toward the line.
So much had happened since the last snap he took in an early December loss to the Minnesota Vikings: the recovery from a second left elbow injury; the hiring of a new offensive coordinator, David Blough; the learning of a new offense; and the news he would be lining up more under center. The Commanders hope to build a powerful running game behind Daniels’s passing and his impulse to take off running himself.
Almost to prove the point, the first play was a handoff for a run up the middle.
There would be more passes as the practice went along. There were deep throws down the sideline nabbed by top receiver Terry McLaurin. There were quick throws over the middle. There even were checkdowns to running backs. There also were plenty of runs, but by the running backs. Not by him.
The new offense, run by a newly rebuilt and supposedly stronger Daniels, will take time to develop. Undoubtedly, there will be more of the scrambles that made him such a sensation as a rookie in 2024 and led to his parade of injuries in 2025. But the word everyone used on the first day of offseason practices was “balance.”
Last season, Daniels said, “left a bad taste in my mouth” forcing him to go into the winter trying to figure out “ways to mentally get better, physically and emotionally” and “focus on what I can control.”
He spent those months lifting weights, watching film and waiting to see who the Commanders hired as offensive coordinator. Then, when Blough was announced, he and Blough talked a lot. Not even about football “but just about life in general,” Daniels said.
He also spent a lot of time throwing. McLaurin came out to California for a couple days to run routes with Daniels, as did other players. Daniels enjoyed that.
“But the offseason was kind of just me, building myself up from the ground up, building my foundation,” he said.
Asked if he has something to prove this season, he said, “In this profession, if you don’t feel like you got something to prove, you shouldn’t be doing it.” After the knee and hamstring and elbow injuries, he’ll first need to prove he’s durable. He has to prove he is more the player who threw for 3.568 yards and had 25 touchdown passes with six more running in 2024 than the one who played just seven games last year.
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More importantly, Daniels must prove he’s the leader Washington needs if it hopes to contend for a Super Bowl, as it did his rookie year.
So much optimism boomed through the practice bubble on Wednesday. The practice was voluntary, but the key players were all there, including McLaurin, whose holdout last spring and summer seemed to send the team into a tailspin from which it never recovered. Even left tackle Laremy Tunsil, who does not like to participate in such workouts, came for practice.
Their presence appeared to be a sign that the Commanders and more unified and determined and that Daniels’s influence remains strong among the players.
“He’s worked incredibly hard on his skills for the offseason,” Washington Coach Dan Quinn said. “It’s more of his ability to communicate with everybody else and really get like all of them on the same page quickly. He’s one of the fastest learners, so he’ll pick up on things most quickly. And then, how can he get that to everyone else in that space?”
For a day, everything looked fast. And efficient. The offense snapped into position, Daniels’s throws were smooth and crisp. The ball rocketed out of his hands, almost always on a true, perfect line. The music pounded. Everyone smiled. Tackling and hitting were forbidden. But even for a glorified walkthrough, Wednesday’s practice felt good. Like a big first step back.
Daniels seemed to know it. He kept talking about the “passion” he has for football and how much he hated last season and not being able to play for weeks at a time.
“The passion didn’t change but [last season] made it more kind of, I guess, not being able to go out there,” he said.
Finally, the first practice was over, the music was turned off and eventually the players all left the bubble. Everyone except for Van Jefferson, a veteran wide receiver signed this offseason as a free agent. Jefferson stood a few feet from a machine that kept flinging balls to him. The machine made a ratcheting noise that rattled through the bubble.
No one else on the team was there to hear it, except for Daniels, who stood on a small ledge watching as Jefferson caught each of the footballs the machine shot toward his hands. Neither man said a word. And only when Jefferson was at last done did Daniels, the man who will be throwing him real passes next fall, head to the bubble’s door and walk away.
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