Jayden Daniels

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• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Jayden Daniels Camp Update — August 23: Three snaps, one sack, plan intact

  Daniels's second preseason outing was three snaps by design — a three-and-out with a ten-yard sack — and Dan Quinn called him a quarterback "throwing an excellent camp." The bigger change is behind him: Marcus Mariota is out for the preseason and Washington is not adding a veteran.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Jayden Daniels Camp Update — August 16: Five Red-Zone Touchdowns in One Practice

  Daniels carved up Miami in the joint practice, eleven of sixteen with five red-zone touchdown throws, and the two interceptions on his line both came off a tipped ball and a receiver's slip. The elbow is a non-story and the new scheme looks lived-in.

• 2026 PreviewJun 15, 2026

  Jayden Daniels 2026 Season Preview — a rushing floor, priced for the injury

  Daniels played just 7 games in 2025, finishing as the QB34 with 114.3 half-PPR points and a 16.3 per-game average that suggested the underlying talent remained intact when healthy. A season built almost entirely on a small sample makes it difficult to separate what was real from what was noise, and the injury that ended his year removed the volume inputs — attempts, carries, opportunity — that would otherwise tell us whether his role was sustainable.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Jayden Daniels was the sixth-best fantasy quarterback in football as a rookie. Last year a dislocated elbow held him to seven games. He's the fifth quarterback off the board — priced for the injury, not the player. The Muffed 2026 preview.

  Separate the two seasons, because they tell different stories. The 2025 line was just seven games — a dislocated elbow he re-injured, which ended his year — and in them he averaged 16-three a game with 278 rushing yards. The rookie season is the real reference point: in 2024 he was the QB6, 20.9 a game over a full 17, a dual-threat phenom from day one.

  Here's the engine, and it's the one that matters most at the position. Our research is blunt about which quarterback seasons repeat: the ones built on rushing — a quarter or more of fantasy points from the ground — repeat as top-six at 61 percent, versus 24 for pocket passers. Even in his injury-shortened year, 35 percent of Daniels's points came from his legs. He sits squarely in the rushing-floor tier, the safest profile there is — the same structural reason Lamar and Josh Allen are reliable. The legs travel; the down year was a hurt elbow, not a changed player.

  The arc, then, is one elite rookie season and one injury year, and the question is which one 2026 resembles. The data leans toward the rookie: the rushing usage that drives his value was intact when he played, and a quarter-plus rushing share is the stickiest thing a quarterback can own.

  The situation, per the reports, is built for the bounce — with a new play-caller wrinkle: Daniels avoided surgery on the dislocated elbow (scans showed no ligament damage), GM Adam Peters says he's had "an incredible offseason" with his throwing coach, and the stated project of that work is durability — "building his body armor," in his private coach's words. He ran the starting offense at June minicamp looking fluid. The wrinkle: Washington fired Kliff Kingsbury and promoted 30-year-old David Blough — a first-time play-caller installing a more under-center, play-action offense — and added pieces around Daniels, including Rachaad White in the backfield. Daniels himself says he's "still got a long way to go" learning it. New scheme noise is real; none of it touches the rushing floor.

  The price: pick 58, the fifth quarterback. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. A QB6-as-a-rookie dual-threat with a genuine rushing floor, priced fifth because of a seven-game injury year, is the market over-weighting the injury and under-weighting the profile. The counter: the elbow is a real durability flag, a running quarterback takes hits, and now there's a first-time coordinator in the mix — but that's exactly why the price is here, and the floor underneath it is the league's safest kind.

  September watch: his health first — the elbow is the whole risk; then the rushing volume, the engine that makes him a top-five quarterback when he's right. Your whole roster gets this treatment every week — that's the show.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Jayden Daniels 2025 Season in Review

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  Show notes & transcript

  Jayden Daniels finished 2025 as the number 34 quarterback in total PPR scoring but the number 17 quarterback in PPR per game. That gap tells the whole story in one breath: when Daniels was on the field, he was a usable starter — he was only on the field for seven games. This was an injury-shortened, what-could-have-been year for the Commanders' second-year quarterback. Washington's offense never found rhythm without him, the team finished five and 12, and Daniels never got the runway to build on his rookie campaign. For draft prep, this season is less a referendum on Daniels the player and more a reminder of how thin the margin is when a dual-threat quarterback can't stay healthy.

  Now let's dig into the numbers. Across seven games, Daniels averaged 16.3 PPR points on 1,262 passing yards, 8 passing touchdowns, and 3 interceptions, plus 278 rushing yards and 2 rushing scores on 58 carries. That rushing floor — roughly 40 yards a game on the ground — kept his per-game number respectable even when passing volume was modest. And here's the consistency read: in his first six games, Daniels posted 20.1, 19.7, 17.1, 21.6, 17.7, and 15.2 PPR. Six straight outings between 15 and 22 points. That is a genuinely steady floor for a quarterback. Then came Week 14 at Minnesota — Washington got shut out 31 to nothing, Daniels managed 78 passing yards, an interception, and 2.7 PPR before exiting for the year. Strip that final game and you're looking at a quarterback producing like a top-15 fantasy option every healthy week.

  The defining trait of Daniels's season was the dual-threat scoring profile in the games he actually finished. Against Dallas in Week 7, in a 22 to 44 loss, Daniels still smashed 17.7 PPR by adding a rushing touchdown to his passing line — proof of the archetype. Even when the team script falls apart, the rushing floor and red-zone scoring keep the point total alive. 2025 didn't give us a full sample, but it confirmed the per-game profile that made him a high-end fantasy quarterback as a rookie is still intact.