Jayden Daniels Reflects on the Loss of Commanders: ‘How Can We Tackle the Adversity?’ | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats and Rumors

Washington Commanders star Jayden Daniels talks about how the team can use their recent woes to better their quest to make the playoffs.

To talk reporters After Thursday’s 26-18 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, Daniels asked rhetorically, “How do we deal with adversity?” he asked. Talking about what went wrong offensively in the last two games:

“For us? Man, we’ve got to be successful. We haven’t been performing the way we did in the first half of the season before. So we’ve got to go back and, like I said, look at ourselves. Mirror. How can we get better? How can we continue to improve? It’s a long season, so there’s going to be ups and downs.” But how can we meet the challenges?”

The No. 2 draft pick in 2024 took the NFL by storm and quickly became the frontrunner for Offensive Rookie of the Year. Daniels had 2,338 passing yards, 482 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns through 11 games.

Just four days ago, Washington was well into the NFC playoff race. He had a 7-2 record and was hanging with the Detroit Lions for home field advantage.

The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Commanders 28-27 on Sunday thanks to Russell Wilson’s 32-yard touchdown pass to Mike Williams late in the fourth quarter. Commanders made a quick turnaround by traveling to Philadelphia on Thursday night.

Now the Commanders have fallen to the final wild card spot in the NFC after back-to-back losses. Offensive players averaged 403.6 yards in eight games between weeks 2 and 9, but remained under 300 yards in both games.

Daniels has scored one goal in the last two games; He completed a five-yard touchdown pass to Zach Ertz with 31 seconds left against the Eagles. He suffered a rib injury in week 7 which clearly affected his performance.

Daniels set an NFL rookie record and a Commanders franchise record in a single game in Week 3 by completing 91.3 percent of his passes (21-of-23) against the Cincinnati Bengals. earning NFC Offensive Player of the Week honors. He also made one of the most memorable plays of the year with a game-winning Hail Mary touchdown pass in a win over the Chicago Bears and 2024 No. 1 pick Caleb Williams.

Even though Kliff Kingsbury is just the offensive coordinator and not Washington’s head coach, his teams have a history of falling off in the second half of the season dating back to his time at Texas Tech.

It would probably be too strong to assume that it is Kingsbury’s past troubles that are currently troubling the Commanders. The past two games were against defenses ranked second (Steelers) and sixth (Eagles) in points allowed per game.

Things will get even easier for the Commanders next week when they host the Dallas Cowboys on November 24th. If their offense struggles against the second-worst defense in the NFL, then it will be time to turn on the panic meter in Washington.