The Washington Commanders will be hoping for a bounce-back 2026 season. After a spectacular turnaround under Jayden Daniels, where they went from a four-win team to the NFC Championship Game, the 2025 season was a major regression.
At the time, it was easy to boil down a lot of their issues to their superstar quarterback getting injured. However, a veteran insider isn’t sure if the injury concerns are completely gone for Daniels as he enters his third year in the NFL.
Jayden Daniels Remains a Flight-Risk
Winning Offensive Rookie of the Year and getting a Pro Bowl nod in his first year, the expectations were sky-high heading into the 2025 season. However, the Commanders could never truly hit the ground running during the year.
Whether it was an abysmal defense, which finished as the second-worst unit on PFN’s Defense Impact Metric, or the injuries to Daniels himself, the season almost became unsalvageable.
A left knee strain in Week 2 kept him out for two weeks, before a right hamstring strain added another missed game to his tally. Unfortunately, a dislocated left elbow immediately afterward almost ended his season for good, before another hit in Week 14 put the official curtain on it.
By the end of the year, Daniels had missed 10 total games, and Washington couldn’t stay afloat without him. Ending the season with a 5-12 record, it was eerily reminiscent of Robert Griffin III’s sophomore campaign.
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Mike Florio of NBC, on that note, continues to have the same concerns about Daniels that have plagued him since his scouting for the NFL Draft. Speaking on “Pro Football Talk,” he went in-depth about the size and frame concerns he continues to have.
“It’s not necessarily a news flash to say that Jayden Daniels is very thin as quarterbacks go,” Florio said.
However, Florio believes it is even more prominent in the former second overall pick’s case when you see him on the gridiron. He added, “For some guys, you maximize your speed, the less you weigh, but for some of those field-level shots, to me, how skinny he is, is jarring in relation to the other players.”
Unfortunately, that goes against one of his fundamental principles. Florio continued, “The quarterback needs to have a natural suit of armor that protects him against the ongoing wear and tear of getting thrown around. There was a moment where Dexter Lawrence just grabs his jersey and pulls, and Jayden Daniels is flopping around like Kramer.”
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However, that moment against one of the most ferocious defensive tackles in the league wasn’t an isolated incident for Daniels. Instead, Florio also pointed to the game in which he was severely injured against the Minnesota Vikings. “When he gets blown up against the Vikings and lands on the injured elbow, it’s just a shove to the ground, but it’s basic physics.”
As a result, the veteran insider believes the best-case scenario for Daniels would be to find a middle ground.
He said, “You wonder at what point he’s going to try to find a sweet spot where he can continue to move like he does, but he’s thicker than he is.” It remains to be seen if that transformation comes during the 2026 season itself.
But Daniels’ current playstyle has already shown that it can yield tremendous results. Now it’s going to be about putting the right pieces around him to ensure his health, and the dual-threat quarterback will have to sustain his level of play over a longer period of time.
