Scouting Profile: Jayden Daniels, QB, LSU
Is the best yet to come for the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner? Or is it already behind him?
Height: 6'3.5"
Weight: 210lbs
Class: Senior
NFL Comparison: Jalen Hurts in Robert Griffin III’s body.
Jayden Daniels is the latest quarterback prospect who went from "a middle of Day 3 pick" a year ago to "a bona fide top 3 pick" one year later, thanks to a 2023 season in which he completed 72.2% of his passes, threw 40 touchdown passes (against just four interceptions), logged 1,134 yards rushing, and had another 10 touchdowns rushing. Over the past two seasons at LSU, Daniels accumulated a whopping 57 touchdown passes and only 7 interceptions. If you do the math, he took a huge leap forward between 2022 and 2023, thanks to operating the same offense for the second year in a row. It was obvious how much more comfortable and knowledge able he was in operating it.
A hugely underrated factor going in Daniels' favor is the fact that he's thrown over 1,400 attempts in college. That volume of repetitions, and associated experience matters -- a lot. A lot of the quarterback busts in recent years have thrown less than 1,000 passing attempts throughout their collegiate career (sometimes a lot less). Daniels had already surpassed a thousand attempts before even starting his dazzling final season. In fact, while they're certainly not gospel, Daniels does meet Bill Parcells "rules" for an ideal/successful quarterback prospect
Many NFL scouts and personnel executives gush over Daniels' combination of elite traits, overall throwing ability, decision-making, and ability to buy time with his legs. He has clean and sound footwork, throwing from a good stance with little wasted movement. He maintains a clean throwing base when cycling through his reads. He has a quick release, with a ball that comes out in a hurry with plenty of velocity. He has enough arm strength to drive the ball outside the numbers from the opposite hash. He has the patience to sit in the pocket and work through reads before opting to tuck the ball and run. While there did appear to be a fair share of simplistic progressions in LSU's offense, he was savvy enough to know when to hold onto the ball and make a play versus forcing the pass based on the play call. He will take the check down or safer through instead of forcing the hero ball.
Even with his arm talent, Daniels doesn't deliver throws from wild angles or platforms. He can put the ball into tight windows without having to throw every pass like a laser. He can deliver some great tight window throws in intermediate parts of the field (usually outside the hash), even while DB’s are draped on the receiver; his ball placement on over-the-shoulder throws can be outstanding. He might actually be at his best, though, when pushing the ball down the field. He throws the best catchable ball on passes of 15+ air yards when not pressured, and observers believe his deep ball accuracy might be the advanced part of his game; he can hurl it 50+ yards down the field without really winding up. When he ejects from the pocket, he can uncork the fastball and place it in extremely tight windows while on the run
As a runner, Daniels glides through the open field and can rack up 20+ yard scrambles in a hurry. If you give him a swath of open field or a clear runway to accelerate, he can pick up top speed very quickly, and he’s very hard to run with when he hits that top speed. He has some shake-and-bake to his open field running, but he’s more of a “pick up huge chunks because of his straight line speed” guy. Even in traffic, he slithers through arm tackles and diving tackle attempts.
With all of that being said: as someone whose favorite team is seemingly in pole position to select Daniels in the 2024 NFL Draft, there is one fundamental question that haunts me, and should do the same to you if you root for said team: what happens when Daniels finds himself playing in an offense with a lackluster supporting cast, and the (sufficiently glaring) flaws in his game are suddenly amplified?
Nobody in their right mind can deny the fact that so many of Daniels' explosive passing plays plays involved him simply seeing Malik Nabers or Brian Thomas Jr. in single coverage, and taking the downfield shot knowing that both of them had a strong probability of beating the cornerback to the football. It’s really hard to gauge his value in an offense when there were a comical number of big plays in which those receivers had 3 to 5 (or more) yards of separation between them and the nearest defender. He's obviously not going to have that luxury in the NFL, and nobody knows how (or if) he's going to be able to adapt to that.
Because of his comfort in knowing his top receivers would almost always make a play, Daniels has tendencies of locking on to his primary target. While he did noticeably improve in that area from 2022 to 2023, there were absolutely moments of "first read or check down" last year. He can (and will) sit in the pocket and scans through progressions, but it's not as regularly often as you'd like to see it. I also have concerns about Daniels' processing speed. He's sometimes a touch slow/late in his anticipation on shorter underneath routes; there tends to be some hitches and patting of the football before he releases. He definitely left a few plays on the field because he should’ve gotten the ball out sooner, and the hesitation gave the defensive back enough time to recover and break up the play. There were more than a few instances of defenders watching his eyes and jumping the routes, except they didn’t secure the interception. He will sometimes take a half second too long or a half step too much at the top of his drop before throwing, leading to those late passes.
I'm also concerned about how Daniels will handle pressure at the next level. Some of the pockets he enjoyed in Baton Rouge were clean enough to enjoy a 3-course picnic within, before needing to get rid of the ball. There's no way he'll be that undisturbed at the next level. And for all of his dual-threat ability, he doesn't excel in the improvisational “backyard football” throws that you see from the Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson types. He either beats you from the pocket or ejects to scramble; he’s not going to reset the pocket or scramble to put himself in position to deliver a strike down the field. He doesn’t have a natural feel for escaping the pocket or navigating a dirty pocket. The only game you saw him make a few of those sandlot plays was against a hilariously overmatched Army team. In general, he's not really a “Houdini” in the pocket, or doesn’t torment rushers like they’re (pre-training montage) Rocky Balboa trying to catch the chicken.
And you cannot talk about Daniels without mentioning some of the brutal end results of his scrambling. Being able to protect yourself as a runner is a skill and ability that Daniels definitively lacks. It's very difficult to overlook the brutality of some of the hits he took in college1.
Here he is on the receiving end of the same powerslam that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson usually delivers right before dropping The People's Elbow on opponents.
That’s not even mentioning getting picked up body slammed by the opposing safety midway through the third quarter of LSU’s early-season win against Mississippi State.
Daniels suffered his fair share of bumps and bruises (if not more) because of the punishment he endured in college; if he keeps taking hits of that nature at the NFL level, he won't last physically past his rookie contract.
The vast majority of the NFL world is admittedly far more bullish than I am on Daniels. The refrain you hear from a sizable swath of personnel executives and coaches is that Daniels might’ve had the best 2023 film of any quarterback in this Draft2.
The question that haunts me, in regards to my ranking, is: what if Daniels’ trajectory is akin to that of Joe Burrow? Remember: Burrow made a quantum leap from his junior year (after which he was seen as a mid-round pick) to his senior year, helped in large part by orchestrating arguably the most talented offensive supporting cast this century.
But here’s the difference between Daniels and Burrow; I said this about the latter back in 2020:
[Burrow] was absolutely masterful in his command of the offense all year long, and he put on absolute virtuoso performances in LSU’s two biggest games: 393 yards and 3 touchdowns (while completing 79.5% of his passes) against Alabama; and 463 yards and 5 touchdown passes in the National Championship game against Clemson... He conducts his offense like he’s running a Philharmonic Orchestra.
Simply put: Daniels operated and oversaw a well-tuned offensive machine in 2023, whereas someone like Burrow was the engine that made it run. I never finished watching an 2023 LSU game and walking away thinking Daniels was the heart and soul of that offense.
Even if Daniels were to rectify many of his areas requiring improvement as a quarterback, and even if we were to make the (MASSIVE) assumption that stays largely injury-free career in the NFL, you’re still talking about a guy who might need the right supporting cast around him to bring out his best, versus a guy who elevates everyone else around him.
In Daniels, I don’t see a guy who can put the entire offense on his back and bend the rules of the Matrix to ensure his team’s success. I don’t see him as someone who makes opponents (and opposing fans) hold their breath after every snap and hope the damage he inflicts is minimal. I don’t see him as someone whom a team can Draft and feel like they’ve added a “weapon of mass destruction” of their own at quarterback, to compete in the arms race that is the quarterback position in the NFL. I just don’t.
If all the innuendo is true about the inevitability of Jayden Daniels being drafted by the Washington Commanders with the #2 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, I hope to hell my final evaluation is wrong, and he continues to ascend rapidly from his 2023 campaign.
But I have serious reservations about the likelihood of that happening, and about whether Daniels is the appropriate selection to be made at said spot. ■
Mina Kimes said it beautifully when she described Daniels' running style as "Wile E Coyote vibes."
I find this statement to be utterly preposterous. OF COURSE Daniels had a better season in 2023 than Caleb Williams and Drake Maye; the latter two played with FAR inferior supporting casts to what surrounded Daniels. Ask yourself this question: what would Daniels’ 2023 season have looked like if he played behind USC’s non-existent offensive line or UNC’s “couldn’t catch a cold if they were soaking wet in the arctic” receiving corp?