Why Jayden Daniels is Daniel Dopp’s QB1 in Week 6 for fantasy (0:59)Daniel Dopp breaks down why Jayden Daniels is his top fantasy quarterback ahead of a matchup against the Chicago Bears. (0:59)
How did last year’s game impact Daniels and Williams?
What has worked for Daniels and why has Williams been less consistent?
What stats best reflect where each QB is this season?
What has been the biggest surprise from each compared to your predraft notes?
Did the Bears talk to Daniels before the 2024 draft?
What does having Johnson as his coach mean to Williams?
Daniels, the Washington Commanders star who was drafted No. 2 in 2024, threw the winning Hail Mary and walked into a spotlight that kept getting brighter as he won Offensive Rookie of the Year and led the Commanders to the NFC Championship Game. It was one of the greatest seasons in NFL history for a rookie quarterback.
Williams, the top pick in ’24, walked into a mess. It was the first of 10 straight losses for the Bears, who would fire head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron along the way.
Daniels and Williams meet again Monday night (8:15 p.m., ABC) against the backdrop of Washington’s 18-15 win last Oct. 27.
The Commanders (3-2) are trying to keep pace in the NFC East while the Bears (2-2) have won two in a row and are coming off their bye.
Keim: Daniels did not change. Network morning shows reached out to have him on; he declined. Several days later he said he was “onto the new week.” He showed up to work at the same time each day: around 5:30 a.m.
But for others, it created a legend: franchise savior heaves 52-yard scoring pass with a broken rib that knocked him out of the previous game in the first quarter. “He’s unfazed by those things and will do anything to win,” quarterbacks coach Tavita Pritchard said.
Daniels already was the front-runner for Offensive Rookie of the Year before solidifying his status in that game with a career-high 326 yards. In his six full games before facing the Bears, he’d thrown six touchdown passes and rushed for four. After that game, he threw 18 touchdown passes.
“Whenever you do something like that,” said punter Tress Way, the franchise’s longest-tenured player, “coming off some of these incredible performances … there’s just this sense of we always have a shot. We’ve got him. You never know what he’s going to do, and he’s in our uniform.”
Cronin: Lost in the chaos was what Williams did on the possession before the Commanders’ game-winning drive. Chicago took the lead for the first time when Williams led a 10-play, 62-yard touchdown drive capped off by a successful 2-point conversion. It would have gone down as the first fourth-quarter comeback of his NFL career.
Four days after the Washington game, Commanders defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. blamed himself for putting the team in position to have to win on a Hail Mary. Williams’ father, Carl, quote-tweeted a video clip from Whitt’s news conference with the hashtags: #accountability and #realcoach. He quickly deleted the post.
Closing out games was a struggle for the Bears throughout Williams’ rookie season. Weeks after the Washington loss, Chicago had chances to win in the fourth quarter and overtime in consecutive games against the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions, and lost them all.
Williams struggled to get his team off the mat in back-to-back losses at Arizona and against New England following the Washington game. Williams was sacked a season-high nine times by a Patriots pass rush that was one of the NFL’s worst.
Cameras caught an awkward interaction between Waldron and Williams on the sideline at the end of the New England game when the offensive coordinator seemed to be smiling while the quarterback looked frustrated. Waldron was fired two days later.
Williams ended his season with a walk-off win in Green Bay — snapping the 10-game skid — and a declaration for what he wanted in his next head coach.
“A coach that challenges us,” Williams said. “A man of his word. A disciplined coach … Just helping us and finding ways to win.”
Keim: Washington offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury often repeats one quote to his staff and his players: “The biggest hindrance to success is not failure, it’s boredom.” Those who succeed embrace that boredom — when it comes to making decisions and how they approach each work day — which partly explains why Daniels has been consistent.
He shows up at the same time each day, goes through the same routines — whether it’s walk-throughs with coaches at 6 a.m. or his pregame routine — and, despite having flash in his play, is OK making routine throws.
“I like the saying of don’t get bored making the right decisions,” Pritchard said. “Routines can feel monotonous and ho-hum, but that’s what allows you to keep coming back, good bad or indifferent. That’s him.”
Backup QB Marcus Mariota said the Commanders didn’t ask Daniels to be something he wasn’t, nor did they want to force leadership on him before he was ready.
“A lot of times when guys are drafted high, they’re asked to be formed into maybe a player the staff had previously been with,” Mariota said. “More times than not it doesn’t work out well.
“This team has done a great job of allowing him to be himself and put him in position where he’s comfortable and confident and can go play at a high level.”
Cronin: Before the Bears drafted Williams, general manager Ryan Poles described quarterbacks as being either “artists” or “surgeons.” The artists are the creative types who don’t “draw within the lines” such as Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, whereas surgeons are the Tom Brady and Peyton Manning types who operate from the pocket and play within structure.
Getting Williams to adhere to the surgeon role was a priority for Johnson and his staff during the offseason.
Some of Williams’ inconsistencies in the early portion of his career were related to being late on throws, often the byproduct of holding onto the ball too long, passing up the checkdown — all things Williams has acknowledged over the past 18 months.
After back-to-back wins against Dallas and Las Vegas before Chicago’s Week 5 bye, Williams noticed improvement.
“I would just say my footwork, and then just being more comfortable with everything that Ben and the guys have thrown at me,” he said, “just being able to grasp it all, but also be able to go out there and play a game and play it well for the team.”
Walder on Williams: I’ll give you two related ones from this season: 23% off-target rate and minus-10% completion percentage over expectation (per NFL Next Gen Stats). Those are both the worst in the league among QBR-qualifying quarterbacks, and they tell the same story — accuracy problems.
Granted, it’s a small-ish sample, but both numbers are a step back from where he was a year ago (21% and minus-1%, respectively) during his disappointing rookie campaign. Williams has to sort out his accuracy woes because they are the top factor holding back the passing offense from greatness.
I mean that last part sincerely, because Williams is being very well supported. He’s getting good pass protection (Bears rank fourth in pass block win rate) and has receivers who are consistently getting open in Johnson’s offense. If he could simply get his passes to sail off course only at an average rate, I think the conversation around him would change in a hurry.
On Daniels: Whether this is a sign of Daniels’ instant growth as a rookie, regression as a sophomore or simply random variance remains to be seen, but a stat I am watching with him is his efficiency on late downs.
In his rookie season (including playoffs), Daniels’ production on early downs was actually quite pedestrian, with a 53.5 QBR that ranked 15th best. But on late downs, that jumped to 94.9 — best among all quarterbacks. The latter number drove his overall efficiency numbers to the moon because late downs are where the leverage lies. Which was the true Daniels?
On one hand, that split could have been seen as a red flag, since the sample of early-down plays was almost twice as large as the late-down plays. On the other hand, those third and fourth downs are probably a better indicator of skill because they occur when the opponent often knows the quarterback is dropping back to pass.
Reid: With Williams, it was how he struggled with his ball placement to start this season. One of his best attributes coming into the 2024 draft was his precise accuracy. Yes, he needed to show more discipline within structure, but when he trusted the process of playing inside of the pocket, his completion percentage was always well above average.
Fowler: The Bears did “due diligence” on Daniels before the draft, according to a source involved in the process. They met with Daniels at the NFL combine.
Those interviews are typically 15 minutes in length, during which teams can quiz the prospect on football strategy or get to know him personally.
Going No. 1 was not a focus for Daniels, the source added, so he didn’t stump for Chicago in the process. He liked the Washington situation and was comfortable with his spot in the draft.
Schatz: The range of possibilities for Daniels is still very wide. Based on my DYAR (defense-adjusted yards above replacement) metric, Daniels had the fourth-most-valuable rookie quarterback season since 1978.
Comparing Daniels to the other players around him on the top-10 list shows how many paths his career could still take. Daniels’ passing value as a rookie was roughly equivalent to Peyton Manning’s in 1998. Imagine a passer as good as Manning who was also a great mobile scrambler. That’s a slim possibility, but it’s one end of the range.
Daniels’ season was also similar to Robert Griffin III’s rookie season. There are a lot of variables that could send a player’s career off course, including injuries, coaching decisions and roster moves. Griffin suffered torn ligaments in his right knee in the 2012 playoffs, and he believes trying to play through injury altered his career.