Jayden Daniels is one game away from going where no rookie quarterback has gone before.
With a Commanders win over the Eagles on Sunday in the NFC Championship Game, he would become the first rookie passer in league history to lead his team to a Super Bowl.
Beating Philadelphia for the second time in six weeks and advancing to the title game would be the latest in a series of stunning accomplishments. It would also raise a question I’m not sure even the most optimistic of Washington fans would have expected to ask after the 2024 season:
Is Daniels having the best rookie season in NFL history, regardless of position?
While his season isn’t yet complete, it’s possible to compare the No. 2 pick to other great rookies from the past, many of whom were already on vacation by the time the NFL got down to the final four teams in the playoff bracket.
There’s a significant element of subjectivity in deciding where he stands, but there are a few objective performance measures to help gauge that.
Let’s break all that down. I’ll compare Daniels to great rookies from previous years, contextualize what has made this season so impressive and try to somehow decide where he ranks among the tens of thousands of other rookies in NFL history. All of that has to start somewhere, and I’ll begin by comparing him to the best rookie quarterbacks ever.
How Daniels stacks up vs. other rookie QBs
Daniels has been remarkably productive to start his career. During the regular season, he completed 69% of his passes, with 25 touchdowns against nine picks. His 70.5 Total QBR ranked fourth in the league and first among NFC signal-callers. He posted a passer rating of 100.1, which ranked 11th.
ESPN has QBR data stretching back through 2007. Since then, Daniels’ 70.5 ranks third among rookies, trailing only Dak Prescott in 2016 (77.6) and Russell Wilson in 2012 (74.8). It seems fair to argue that Prescott and Wilson had more help than Daniels, as they shared backfields with Ezekiel Elliott and Marshawn Lynch, respectively, who ran for a combined 3,221 yards during their quarterbacks’ rookie seasons. Daniels led the Commanders in rushing himself, with a figure that would have been even higher if a midseason rib injury hadn’t led the team to lessen his workload.
Let’s go back even further, though, enlisting the help of the index statistics from Pro Football Reference, which are adjusted for era and normalized so that 100 is always the league average. Daniels’ passer rating translates to a 114 Rating+, which is the fifth-best mark posted by a rookie with at least 300 pass attempts. He trails Prescott, Robert Griffin (2012), C.J. Stroud (2023) and Wilson, with USFL transplant Jim Kelly (1986) just behind. Pretty good company, although it’s missing one notable name we’ll get to in a moment.
Passer rating, though, doesn’t do a great job of contextualizing Daniels’ performance.
It doesn’t account for his propensity for taking sacks, his biggest weakness. His 8.9% sack rate is the 10th highest in the league among qualifying quarterbacks this season. Of course, he also ran for 891 yards and six scores, which passer rating also doesn’t consider.
Adjusted net yards per attempt index (ANY/A+) has Daniels ninth among rookies, with Kelly, Justin Herbert (2020) and Baker Mayfield (2018) moving narrowly ahead of him.
Given that the three of them barely made an impact with their legs on the ground as rookies, I’d feel comfortable saying Daniels was more valuable, adjusting for era, than those three. (Kelly also was a different sort of rookie, having played professionally elsewhere.)
Daniels’ strength this season has been that completion percentage.
Even adjusting for an era in which quarterbacks are completing passes at a higher rate than ever before, his 116 Cmp%+ is the third-best rate in league history for a rookie, trailing Prescott and Griffin. It’s reductive to chalk that up to screens and short passes, too. While 26% of his passes have been at or behind the line of scrimmage, that’s only the 12th-highest rate for a qualifying passer this season.
There’s one other player who needs to be mentioned here. Dan Marino narrowly missed the cutoff for pass attempts, as he threw 296 passes for the 1983 Dolphins.
He also blows away everybody else on this list for efficiency, as he led the league in adjusted net yards per attempt, owing to a low interception rate and a microscopic sack rate, a skill for which Marino remains highly underrated. (His 1% sack rate in 1988 is the best, adjusted for era, in NFL history.)
It’s difficult to compare nine starts from Marino to full seasons from just about everybody else on this list, but it’s clear that observers at the time didn’t see Marino as some part-time marvel. The future Hall of Famer finished third in the MVP voting, trailing Joe Theismann and Eric Dickerson.
The next year, Marino won the award with what was likely the best season by a quarterback to that point in league history, and the Dolphins made it to Super Bowl XIX. It would be difficult to place Daniels ahead of Marino based on their respective regular-season performance, even though Daniels started nearly twice as many games.
Daniels isn’t going to win MVP this season, but where will his accolades fall among those of the great rookies in NFL history? After all, I’ve started by comparing him to quarterbacks, but there are players at other positions who factor into this conversation, too.
Which rookies have won awards?
I’ll start with the biggest honor of them all.
Daniels isn’t expected to figure into MVP consideration, which leaves him behind a handful of other rookies who have in the past. Fourteen rookies have received MVP votes, albeit across different formats and with varying-sized voter pools. With The Associated Press moving from a single-player format to a five-player ballot in 2022, Stroud received four fifth-place votes last season.
It’s fair to say some of those votes from history feel a little out of place today. Sure, Jim Brown winning MVP after the 1957 season or Randy Moss earning four votes for his 1998 campaign make sense, but Packers kicker Chester Marcol landing two votes when he hit less than 70% of his attempts in 1972? Niners running back Ken Willard, who ranked fourth in rushing and eighth in yards from scrimmage in 1965, receiving a vote? I’m willing to suggest Daniels has been more valuable than those last two players.
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These aren’t all players from decades ago, either. Former Titans speedster Chris Johnson landed a vote for his 2008 rookie campaign, and while you might remember him putting together a 2,000-rushing-yard season, that performance actually came the following season, when he failed to receive a single MVP vote.
Johnson had a solid rookie season, with 1,488 yards from scrimmage and 10 touchdowns, but he didn’t even win Offensive Rookie of the Year. Was he really more valuable than Daniels, even though the latter isn’t likely to land a first-place MVP vote?
There are a handful of players whose success makes them stand out from the rest of the pack. Brown won MVP. Earl Campbell won Offensive Player of the Year and was second in the MVP race in 1978. Dickerson had 18 MVP votes and ranked second in 1983 behind Theismann. Marino was third.
Marcus Allen scored a league-high 14 touchdowns during the nine-game strike-shortened season in 1981 and finished third in MVP balloting. Moss had one of the greatest big-play seasons in league history as a rookie and was third in MVP balloting.
The other players receiving MVP votes, though? I’m not sure they’re clearly better than Daniels. Edgerrin James racked up 2,139 yards from scrimmage and 17 touchdowns in 1999, but he was on a team with multiple superstars, one of whom (Peyton Manning) received eight MVP votes.
Willard, Gale Sayers (1965), Calvin Hill (1969) and Franco Harris (1972) all had great seasons, but they weren’t even clearly the best running backs in the league during their respective rookie campaigns, while playing against fewer potential opponents in smaller versions of the NFL.
Ronnie Lott landed an MVP vote, but he didn’t even win 1981 Defensive Rookie of the Year. The guy who did win was Lawrence Taylor, who claimed both the Defensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors, though he somehow didn’t get an MVP vote.
With that Defensive Player of the Year award under his belt, Taylor should rank ahead of Daniels on the list. Campbell was the only other rookie to win Offensive or Defensive Player of the Year.
While Daniels was named to the NFC Pro Bowl team, the presence of Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen cut off any path he might have had to be a first-team All-Pro.
By my count, 26 rookies have been named first-team AP All-Pros on offense or defense, with Sauce Gardner and Micah Parsons as the most recent examples. Many of them were already mentioned above in reviewing potential MVP and Offensive/Defensive Rookie of the Year nominees.
One player who might have a strong case is Barry Sanders, who won 69 of 70 Offensive Rookie of the Year votes and was first-team All-Pro in 1989.
You don’t need me to tell you how brilliant Sanders could be at his best, but he had nearly as many fumbles (10) as touchdowns (14) that season. He would have more spectacular seasons in his future, but I’m not sure the rookie version was clearly better than Daniels. Mike Ditka set records in 1961 that lasted well into the 21st century, but he wasn’t even the first-team All-Pro tight end as a rookie, which seems foolish.
The other player who has a reasonable case doesn’t have the same sort of legacy as Sanders, in part because his rookie season was clearly his best campaign.
Jevon Kearse racked up 14.5 sacks and a league-high eight forced fumbles in 1999, helping transform a Titans defense that had combined to generate only 30 sacks the previous season.
Kearse landed 49 of 50 votes for Defensive Rookie of the Year, with Champ Bailey landing the only other nod. He was second in a tight Defensive Player of the Year ballot behind Warren Sapp, and he added three more sacks in the postseason as Tennessee went on a run to Super Bowl XXXIV.
Kearse’s rookie season absolutely deserves to be in the conversation for best ever, even if he didn’t build upon that campaign over the years that followed.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, Daniels is one win away from getting there, which should be part of the discussion.
Which rookies have led their teams to success?
One of the factors strengthening Daniels’ case is that he could be the first rookie quarterback to start a Super Bowl.
A win over the Eagles would dramatically shift the conversation surrounding him. Other quarterbacks have had great numbers as rookies — and some have earned more hardware in their debut campaigns — but Daniels taking his team to the Super Bowl in Year 1 would be unprecedented.
If you’re a Commanders fan, you might want to skip this paragraph. Six other rookie quarterbacks have started conference title games, and as you can probably infer from what you just read, they’ve gone 0-6.
Collectively, they’ve thrown five touchdown passes against 12 interceptions, completed just under 46% of their passes and posted a combined passer rating of 45.6. Gulp.
Several of those quarterbacks were being dragged to a deep playoff run by great defenses, including Shaun King (1999), Joe Flacco (2008) and Mark Sanchez (2009).
Pat Haden had split time during the regular season with the 1976 Rams, while Dieter Brock was a 34-year-old rookie out of the CFL playing his one and only NFL season for the 1986 Rams.
Ben Roethlisberger has managed to escape mention so far. Like Marino, he just missed the 300-attempt cutoff, as the longtime Pittsburgh quarterback threw the ball 295 times in 14 regular-season games in 2004, an average of just 21 pass attempts per game.
On the other hand, when he did throw it, he completed two-thirds of his throws and averaged a staggering 8.9 yards per attempt, albeit with higher-than-average sack and interception rates.
Stephen A. Smith praises Jayden Daniels for his performance in the Commanders 45-31 win over the Lions.
Roethlisberger’s biggest talking point, though, was his record: After the Steelers split their first two games, he went 13-0 as a starter. He added a narrow win over the Jets in the divisional round to make it 14 consecutive victories, only to be felled by Tom Brady and the Patriots in the AFC title game.
Even given his modestattempt totals, had Roethlisberger won 15 straight games and made it to the Super Bowl, it would have been tough to put any rookie quarterback ahead of him. Coming up one game short leaves the door open for Daniels.
And while there have been plenty of rookies who have made it to the Super Bowl and played well, there haven’t been many who have been cornerstone players on conference champions.
Among them, Ja’Marr Chase (2021), Tristan Wirfs (2020) and Nick Bosa (2019) would qualify as recent Super Bowl attendees, with Bosa being particularly transformative for the 49ers’ defense.
Running backs such as Joseph Addai (2006), Jamal Lewis (2000) and Tony Dorsett (1977) were essential for their teams, while Lott was hugely valuable at cornerback for a 49ers team that eventually won Super Bowl XVI.
If Daniels makes it to the NFL title game with the Commanders, he’ll have to qualify as the most essential rookie player on a Super Bowl team.
While acknowledging that Marcus Mariota looked just fine filling in for an injured Daniels in a game against the Panthers earlier this season, it’s impossible to imagine the Commanders coming close to a postseason berth without their rookie passer. Daniels’ instant impact helps strengthen the 24-year-old’s case as a historically impressive rookie.
Nobody saw this coming, did they? While I had the Commanders as one of the teams most likely to improve this season, my prediction was that they would push toward a .500 record.
I did pick a team with a rookie quarterback to advance to the playoffs in the NFC. Unfortunately for me, that team was the Bears. Oops.
It goes beyond taking over a team that went 4-13 last season. Daniels was drafted to join a team that had been rendered irrelevant by decades of bad football. The Commanders hadn’t won a playoff game since 2005 or posted a winning record since 2015.
A once-proud fan base had been insulted, embarrassed and driven to apathy by Daniel Snyder’s reign as team owner. The new ownership group was starting over with Daniels at quarterback, Dan Quinn as coach and Adam Peters as general manager, but this was supposed to be Year 1 of a multiseason turnaround.
Outside of Terry McLaurin, the Commanders weren’t expected to have even above-average players surrounding Daniels on offense.
The moves Peters had made to solidify the team were relatively modest, adding veterans such as Tyler Biadasz and Nick Allegretti along the offensive line, Olamide Zaccheaus and Zach Ertz as pass catchers and Austin Ekeler to an already-crowded backfield.
Before the season, there was more chatter about draftees such as Luke McCaffrey and Ben Sinnott becoming part of the next great Washington offense in the years to come than there was about the stopgap veterans in the starting lineup. When Peters traded 2022 first-round pick Jahan Dotson to the Eagles just before the season, it felt like the Commanders didn’t care about having as many playmakers around Daniels as possible.
Well, it turns out that Daniels has made all of those players better. Along with a resurgent season from offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, Daniels has formed connections with multiple receivers. Zaccheaus had a pair of 85-yard games.
Ertz caught 66 passes and has been a valuable third- and fourth-down threat. Noah Brown, signed off waivers before the season to replace Dotson, ran as the No. 2 wideout before suffering a kidney injury. Dyami Brown caught 11 passes for 187 yards in Washington’s two postseason wins.
Of course, it’s not just what Daniels has done but how he has done it. He has turned the end of Commanders games into appointment television. In Week 3, he hit my pick for best pass of the season to McLaurin to seal a win over the Bengals.
His Hail Mary gave the Commanders a victory over the Bears in Week 8. He led a dramatic comeback at home against the Cowboys in Week 12 before being let down by his special teams, then pulled off another last-minute win with a late drive to beat the Eagles in Week 16.
He followed a walk-off drive in overtime to beat the Falcons in Week 17 with a four-minute drive that ate up clock and set up the Commanders for a winning field goal in the wild-card win over the Buccaneers.
Oh, and while it didn’t include a dramatic ending, Daniels just played a nearly perfect game in scoring 38 points and knocking the top-seeded Lions out of the playoffs.
Other excellent rookies have their own stories. Washington was in a similarly dreary case when Griffin showed up. Sanders singlehandedly made Lions games watchable overnight. Lott was part of a historic improvement for the 49ers on defense.
The Texans were floundering before Stroud and Will Anderson Jr. arrived last season. But I’m not sure anybody has turned around a franchise and their hopes as a rookie quite as significantly and quickly as Daniels has.
So … where does Daniels rank?
OK, I’ve looked at Daniels’ performance versus other quarterbacks, where players at other positions have earned more hardware, how his team’s success impacts his case and the unique factors that make his season even more spectacular. What does all of that mean in terms of where his rookie season sits among the best ever?
It depends. There’s still at least one more game to go for Daniels, and a dramatic victory over the Eagles in Philadelphia would only add to his résumé.
As good as Daniels has been, there’s a huge gap between a universe in which he gets blown out by the Eagles in the and one in which he outduels Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen in a classic Super Bowl LIX victory.
Let’s split the rankings into three scenarios.
If the Commanders lose in the NFC Championship Game, there will be a handful of players who have to rank ahead of Daniels by their rookie performances.
Brown, as NFL MVP, is at the top of that list. Campbell nearly joined him as league MVP, coming three votes behind Terry Bradshaw. Dickerson was a revelation at running back in an era where that was right alongside quarterback as the league’s glamour position.
Taylor was the immediate Defensive Player of the Year and changed the sport. And while Marino didn’t win a playoff game as a rookie, he was arguably the league’s best quarterback in his debut season. That’s my top tier of rookie seasons.
Are there players in the next tier ahead of him? Maybe. Allen was spectacular, but that was in a nine-game season, and I’m not sure it’s realistic to compare players in a year so badly shortened by the strike to someone who had to suit up for 17 games.
Lott was an instant superstar and his team won the Super Bowl, but his case is hurt by not winning Defensive Rookie of the Year, which is a lesson to not show up in the same year as the greatest defensive player in league history.
Kearse deserves to be in the discussion, especially because he was the lone standout on a Titans defense that didn’t have another Pro Bowler in the lineup. Moss was a phenom by the end of the first quarter of his first game and was the fantasy football WR1 in his first season. I’d put Kearse and Moss ahead of Daniels.
