Daily Slop – 30 Jun 25 – Rich Eisen projects Jayden Daniels’ 2025 stats: 4,500 yards, 35 touchdowns, 6 picks

A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East, the NFL and sports in general, and a sprinkling of other stuff

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Articles

Last Word on Sports

Colin Cowherd Places Jayden Daniels In Elite Company

Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels is coming off an impressive rookie season, and Colin Cowherd isn’t afraid to put him up against the league’s elite quarterbacks. Selected with the second-overall pick, the LSU product took the league by storm, guiding the Commanders to the NFC Championship Game while completing 69% of his passes for 3,568 yards, 25 touchdowns, nine interceptions, and a 90.6 PFF grade, the sixth-best mark in the league.

Now entering Year 2 and with Super Bowl aspirations, Colin Cowherd believes that Jayden Daniels is in the same tier as guys like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen when it comes to untradeable athletes. In a recent segment, the NFL analyst named Daniels as the seventh-most untradable athlete in all of sports, not just football.

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Pro Football Focus

10 late-career NFL veterans still playing at a high level

LB Bobby Wagner, Washington Commanders

Despite playing more than 14,000 snaps in his 13-year career, Wagner is showing no signs of slowing down. Offensive Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels received a lot of the headlines amid the Commanders’ impressive turnaround last season, and deservedly so, but Wagner’s impact on the defense in his first year with the team should not go unheralded.

Wagner’s 88.3 PFF overall grade ranked third out of 84 qualifying linebackers, and he led the position in PFF pass-rush grade (90.9) and ranked second in PFF run-defense grade (91.2). It was his third straight year of earning a PFF run-defense grade higher than 91.0.

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Riggo’s Rag

Commanders’ passing on Amon-Ra St. Brown was one of many draft errors by Ron Rivera

[O]ne can point the finger squarely at Rivera’s draft failings as a huge reason behind his demise.

There are too many examples of poor decision-making to count. One of the most notable centered on the Commanders’ decision to take wide receiver Dyami Brown over several other enticing options at No. 82 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft.

Brown was expected to be a deep threat capable of becoming the No. 2 option behind Terry McLaurin. This never materialized, and the Commanders felt he wasn’t worth the money to keep him around in free agency after the Jacksonville Jaguars came in with a decent offer.

Fans were clamoring for two names at the time, both of whom have enjoyed far more success. The most obvious was Amon-Ra St. Brown, who got discarded until the Detroit Lions ended his slide at No. 112 overall.

He’s been making everyone regret their lack of conviction ever since. And nobody was surprised when Damian Parson from The Bleacher Report named St. Brown among his biggest steals from the 2021 NFL Draft class.

“[Amon-Ra] St. Brown is one of the best pound-for-pound wide receivers in the league. He has outplayed his draft position and brought immediate reliability and consistency to the Lions’ passing attack. The Lions’ passing attack would be less efficient and effective without St. Brown’s high-end production. He is the engine for their offense and is a top-10 wide receiver in the league. St. Brown’s career has been outstanding, and he isn’t slowing down anytime soon.”

Damian Parson

Hindsight is a wonderful thing to have. St. Brown was arguably more NFL-ready and would have been taken a lot higher had it not been for an injury that restricted him to just six games at USC in 2020. That was enough for the Commanders and others to go in different directions, which ended up being a grave error in judgment.

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Podcasts & videos

Bram Weinstein: The list of available NFL free agents is surprising

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Rich Eisen on the Great Expectations for Jayden Daniels Coming Off His Stellar Rookie Season

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NFC East links

Pro Football Rumors

Offseason In Review: New York Giants

As Wilson attempts to stave off a younger challenger for the second straight year, he again received assurances (from Daboll) the starting job was his. The Steelers made that their party line last year, but Fields closed the gap to the point it took Tomlin until barely a week before the regular season to officially announce the decision.

For all the sack troubles Wilson has encountered — especially as his athleticism wanes — he has remained a viable starter. (Wilson sits 11 behind Rodgers for most sacks taken in NFL history, reaching this point despite playing in 49 fewer games.) How long will be be able to hold off a handpicked Daboll rookie?

Winston’s increasing popularity as one of the NFL’s most colorful characters aside, his turnover penchant — and perhaps Browns increased interest in protecting high draft real estate — led to a benching for an overmatched Dorian Thompson-Robinson. Winston’s two-year deal, though, gives him a better chance to be a Giant in 2026 compared to Wilson. Winston, 31, being a third-string option does not align with his present profile. Once Dart ascends to first-string duty, which will almost definitely happen this season, trade rumors involving Winston and/or Wilson — should the transition be made before the deadline — figure to emerge out of the Giants’ remade QB room.

A post-draft report indicated the Giants, between the 2024 season and the extensive pre-draft process, spent more time on Sanders than any team spent on any prospect. Daboll weighing in late in that process looks to have accelerated Sanders’ historic freefall. The fourth-year Giants HC and second-generation NFL prospect are believed to have clashed during the draft run-up; this certainly was not the only Sanders dustup during a process, by just about every account, he did not handle properly. That said, the Giants’ coaching staff — with Daboll at the wheel — looks to have made the Dart-over-Sanders call, as a post-draft report pointed to the front office preferring Sanders.

As Sanders’ infamous weekend involved a No. 144 investment, Dart became the primary beneficiary. The Ole Miss prospect was believed to sit above Sanders on some draft boards, and Daboll’s Dart interest became a talking point in the days leading up to the draft. The Giants contacted teams after the Steelers’ No. 21 choice, correctly predicting Pittsburgh would — as Rodgers’ wait created drama — pass on a QB. The Giants later feared the Browns could outflank them for Dart, but they managed to trade up without surrendering a future first in the way the Jaguars (for Hunter) and Falcons (for James Pearce Jr.) did.

Impressing in an RPO-heavy offense, Dart will face pressure to develop into an NFL-level processor soon. Daboll and Schoen’s jobs may depend on it. Dart brings a better run-game toolbox (1,498 yards from 2022-24) and deep-ball game than Sanders, and the Giants are hoping his work in a QB-friendly Rebels offense can translate into immediate NFL promise. A USC recruit who transferred after Caleb Williams followed Lincoln Riley to L.A., Dart led FBS passers with 10.8 yards per attempt and paced the SEC with 4,279 and a 69.3% completion rate.

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Blogging the Boys

Cowboys win projection for 2025 is the lowest it’s been in over 20 years

This isn’t going to be a good year for the Dallas Cowboys. We might as well just pack up shop and head home because there won’t be much to cheer for this upcoming season. At least, that’s the mindset of many of the NFL so-called experts when it comes to their season predictions.

The NFL oddsmakers aren’t putting a lot of faith in the Cowboys, offering up 50 to 1 odds for them to win the Super Bowl. A ten-dollar dart throw bet could be worth 500 bones should the Cowboys shock the world and take home that long-coveted sixth Lombardi trophy.

While winning the Super Bowl might seem outlandish, they have the Cowboys’ win total projection at a mere 7.5 games this season. If that seems low to you, that’s because it is. In fact, you’d have to go back over 20 years to find a season where they had a win total projection this low.

Examining what it would take for the Cowboys to start entertaining life without Dak Prescott

Before he got hurt last year, Prescott was having his worst season as a pro. His completion percentage, yards per completion, and QB rating were the lowest of his career. He’s just a year removed from leading the NFL in interceptions. His recent playoff performances have featured far too many instances of bad decisions with the football, resulting in costly mistakes.

Prescott turns 32 years old next month. He’s entering his 10th season as the team’s starting quarterback. You might remember that it was Tony Romo’s 10th season as the team’s starter when he got hurt twice and only played in four games that year. That was the dreaded 2015 season, which ended up being the last year Romo started a game for the Cowboys. After never missing a game his first four years in the league, Prescott has now missed games in four of his last five seasons. In three of those seasons, he missed at least five games. It’s not unreasonable to say he’s reached a point in his career where every time he goes to the ground, we cringe.

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NFL league links

Articles

Pro Football Focus

Top 10 NFL quarterbacks by time to throw in 2024

While there’s more than one way to succeed in the NFL, one of the largest factors in a quarterback’s success is how much time they have to throw.

Holding onto the ball can be a double-edged sword. Doing so allows a passer to diagnose defenses and let plays develop downfield, or even extend plays to make something out of nothing. But some schemes operate best when the ball is coming out quickly, avoiding potent pass rushers and allowing targets more opportunities to produce with the ball in their hands.

Either way you slice it, there are positives and negatives to each approach. Let’s take a look at the quarterbacks who excelled most on both ends of that spectrum during the 2024 NFL season.

Editor’s Note: Quarterbacks needed a minimum of 100 dropbacks to qualify

Under 2.5 seconds

Over 2.5 seconds

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All aTwitter

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