The second game of Jayden Daniels' NFL career delivered his first victory as quarterback of the Washington Commanders. It also came with six trips to the red zone, zero touchdowns and an important lesson.
“We’ve got to finish in the red zone; that’s the main thing we can take away from that," Daniels said. "Extremely frustrating. We moved the ball efficiently down the field and, not to say anything, but to go out there and leave points on the field, man, we work so hard to get down there — we want touchdowns.”
Instead, they got flags. Five false-start penalties stalled out drives and provided a reminder that this transformed offense with Daniels, a revamped line and new coordinator Kliff Kingsbury still has work to do to get on the same page.
“Luckily, those are things that we can control, so we can get that corrected,” said running back Austin Ekeler, one of more than 30 new players on Washington's 53-man roster. “We will definitely be emphasizing that going forward. It’s the details of going through practice and saying: ‘Hey, we’ve been through this. We can’t be doing this to ourselves, especially in the red zone.”
The Commanders, who are 1-1 going into a matchup at 0-2 Cincinnati next Monday night, reached the 20-yard line seven times Sunday against the New York Giants and could not crack the end zone. Rookie tight end Ben Sinnott false-started on fourth-and-1 on their opening possession; right guard Sam Cosmi moved early twice and left guard Nick Allegretti and left tackle Cornelius Lucas once each.
Allegretti, who started in two of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victories during his five seasons with Kansas City, said holdovers are usually able to provide tips on how a quarterback likes to do snap cadences at the line of scrimmage. That's not a luxury this unit has.
“With such a new offensive line and a new quarterback, none of us have those prior experiences from the year before, so there’s a lot of stuff that we have to learn from," Allegretti said.
New kicker Austin Seibert went 7 for 7 on field-goal attempts, the Giants lost kicker Graham Gano to injury on the opening kickoff and Washington won 21-18. But first-year coach Dan Quinn thought the penalties were the real story of the game.
“Those were things that we’ve got to be able to clean up,” Quinn said. "The combative ones, we’re going to continue to teach and go with. But pre- or post-snap, those are the ones that we've got to get out of our game, and so we’ll work hard to do that.”
Finally, the kicking game. The Commanders signed Seibert last week to replace Cade York, who missed both of his field-goal attempts in a season-opening loss at Tampa Bay.
The 27-year-old, who has bounced around the league and spent training camp with the Jets, was good from 27, 45, 26, 27, 29, 33 and 30 yards out, the final one putting Washington ahead as the clock expired.
“To come in and make all of the field goals and to close the game out, just a special performance,” six-time All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner said.
The fundamentals of tackling, for one, even though the defense showed some improvement by forcing a turnover and not falling apart late. It might have been a different story if Daniel Jones and the Giants could have played for field goals.
“We still have to clean up our tackling, still got to clean up some of our execution, but wins are hard to come by in this league, so we’ll take it,” Wagner said. "We’re professionals. There’s no excuses. We've just got to be better.”
Receiver Noah Brown joined the team on Aug. 29 after being cut by Houston and immediately began working with Daniels to get up to speed. After sitting out Week 1 against the Buccaneers, Brown caught three passes from Daniels for 56 yards and looks like he could be a significant contributor moving forward.
“That’s what I expected out of myself,” said Brown, who had 115 receptions for 1,547 yards and five touchdowns in his first six pro seasons with the Cowboys and Texans. “I am a professional, and I’ve been in this league for a while and when my number is called, I try to execute.”
Terry McLaurin will bust out for a big game soon, but for all the offseason talk of Washington's top receiver being Daniels' favorite option in the passing game, it has not played out that way so far. Daniels through two games has thrown only 12 times to McLaurin, who has a total of eight catches for 39 yards.
McLaurin has surpassed 1,000 yards receiving in each of the past four seasons.
The Commanders are so healthy it is making for some tough lineup decisions. Linebacker Jamin Davis, a first-round pick in 2021, and safety Darrick Forrest, who emerged as a key player under the previous regime, were healthy scratches because Clelin Ferrell and Quan Martin were able to play after being listed as questionable.
5 — The number of times Daniels was sacked by the Giants, including a few times he tried to scramble to make a play but lost yards.
Players get some extra time off before their prime-time visit to Joe Burrow and the Bengals, who opened as 7 1/2 point favorites on BetMGM Sportsbook.
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