Daily Slop – 6 July 25

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

Commanders links

Articles

CBS Sports

Projecting 2024 rookie QB class in 2025: Can Caleb Williams bounce back, Jayden Daniels continue his rise?

Jayden Daniels: Minor tweaks after outstanding debut

Daniels produced one of the best rookie seasons ever — if not the best rookie season ever — by a quarterback. He was preternaturally calm. He processed defenses like a 10-year veteran. His physical gifts were as advertised, and perhaps even better.

The following notes, hence, are not really criticisms, but simply nits to pick — maybe the difference between a star, which he already is, and a superstar, a surefire MVP candidate.

First, we’d like to see Daniels improve his accuracy from inside the pocket. Though accurate in general and incredibly accurate outside the pocket, Daniels had an 11.2% off-target rate on throws in the pocket, 25th out of 36 qualifying quarterbacks. While the misses weren’t way off, Daniels did leave some open throws on the field when his mobility wasn’t a factor.

This generally occurred over two settings: when the defense did a good job keeping him hemmed in or for a small stretch after Daniels’ rib injury. In the four-week stretch after Daniels’ injury against the Panthers, he scrambled on just 9.5% of his dropbacks, down from his 12.5% rate for the season as a whole. He didn’t have a single scramble against the Steelers. And in those games, he had lots of misses from the pocket. Daniels’ worst game from the pocket was his single half against the Cowboys in Week 18, when he knew he was only going to play one half and was purposely mostly confined to the pocket for safety purposes. (The Commanders had already clinched a playoff berth.)

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Commanders.com

2025 opponent breakdown | Los Angeles Chargers

• What’s the running back rotation going to look like? The Chargers will have a much different backfield than they did in 2024, when Dobbins led a rushing attack that had nine different players with a rushing attempt (10 if you count punter JK Scott). Now, Hampton’s quickness and Harris’ physicality will rule the Chargers’ ground game. The two should complement each other well, as Hampton was one of the most explosive weapons in college football last season while Harris has powered forward for four straight 1,000-yard campaigns. It will be interesting to see how that workload gets split up. Harris is a known commodity and was signed for nearly $10 million, according to reports, and has a good shot to provide the franchise with its first 1,000-yard rusher since Melvin Gordon. Hampton, on the other hand, is a first-round pick and proven himself as a more dynamic weapon as a runner and pass-catcher. The Chargers will likely implement a committee approach, but if it works out, they could have a formidable running back room for the foreseeable future.
• How does the interior offensive line work out? Becton seems to be the only clear answer on the inside of the Chargers’ offensive line. He revived his career with the switch to guard and ended up playing well for the Eagles during their Super Bowl run. The other two spots are bigger question marks with few obvious answers. Bradley Bozeman and Zion Johnson seem to be in line to compete for both spots, but the coaching staff isn’t publicly favoring any player at the moment. Regardless of who plays, the Chargers will need to improve up front if they hope to have the run-first offense they designed in the offseason. They were 13th last season in run-block win-rate last season, which isn’t bad, but given Greg Roman’s history of run-first systems, it could be better.
• Who’s No. 2? McConkey is the Chargers’ clear No. 1 option in the passing game. Aside from him, there are players with promising traits who have yet to show consistent results. Perhaps it’s Mike Williams, who the Chargers brought back from the Steelers. He had his best performances with the Chargers, but there are few guarantees in his production at 30 years old. Johnston led the team in receiving touchdowns and had 711 yards, but there was a sizable gap in results between him and McConkey, who had 1,149 yards on 82 grabs. Considering how often the Chargers ran the ball last season — they were tied for 11th with 463 attempts — and how that won’t change in 2025, it might not matter if there is a clear No. 2 option. Still, Herbert, despite his talent, only has two playoff appearances (both losses). If the Chargers want to maximize his skill set, it would behoove them to at least have some answers outside of McConkey.

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CBS Sports

Top 2025 NFL players by jersey number: a 0-99 ranking of the best

5 – Jayden Daniels

There are more established candidates here — Garrett Wilson, Tee Higgins, Drake London and Jalen Ramsey among them. But let’s be honest: No. 5 belongs to Daniels as long as he’s even half as magical as he was during his unflappably dynamic debut. He’s already the face of the Commanders.

86 – Zach Ertz

Fellow tight end Dalton Kincaid seemed like a real candidate to steal this one by catching passes from Josh Allen, but Ertz has actually been steadier, even going on 35. He’s up over 1,100 career receptions.

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Sports Illustrated

Commanders absent from early NFL Top 100 reveal, but not for long

No Washington Commanders players appeared in the NFL Top 100’s first wave

Looking at this list, we can firmly project that receiver Terry McLaurin (No. 97 last year) and quarterback Jayden Daniels will make their eventual appearances in the Top 100.

The third Washington player in last year’s Top 100 was linebacker Bobby Wagner (No. 59), and given his play and appearance as a 2nd Team All-Pro in 2024, we’d expect him to make another appearance in 2025.

Not a slam dunk to make the list, we believe Ertz at least has an oustide shot of appearing.

New Commanders receiver Deebo Samuel was 30th on the 2024 list, but after a down year for him and the entire San Francisco 49ers squad, it is hard to state definitively whether or not he’ll fall completely off the board in 2025.

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Riggo’s Rag

Choosing Heath Shuler quickly became a nightmare for Washington

How do you wreck a top-three draft pick and a potential franchise quarterback in five easy steps or less?

With a little bit of rephrasing, that could be the title for an autobiography of either Norv Turner or Heath Shuler, the former head coach and quarterback duo in Washington, who became a test case for how not to develop talent at football’s most important position.

Shuler and Turner always looked like a curious fit, despite the latter using Aikman as a comparison. While Aikman had been a mobile playmaker for UCLA, he wasn’t a winner in the pros until he became married to the pocket in Turner’s system.

It was a system built on precepts of the famed ‘Air Coryell’ offense, best practiced by the great Dan Fouts, the classic stand-tall-and-throw-from-the-pocket quarterback. Turner’s time coaching wide receivers and tight ends with the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s also exposed him to Jim Everett, a towering, rocket-armed thrower who found his rhythm launching passes from a secure platform.

Shuler, by contrast, looked best throwing on the run and making plays off-script. Those things didn’t fit with Turner’s nuanced and regimented play designs.

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Podcasts & videos

Get Loud Live! With Doug Williams, Mark Clouse & Shawn Springs | Get Loud | Washington Commanders

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NFC East links

Bleeding Green Nation

Eagles schedule preview: Washington Commanders

[T]he 2024 Commanders were not a great team.

Washington was 10th in DVOA and point differential. That’s good, but not great. They went 2-4 against teams with a winning record in the regular season, with the two wins being against the early season Bengals and against a mostly Kenny Pickett lead Eagles, and they won those games by a total of eight points.

Behind Terry McLaurin they were lacking in skill position talent, Jayden Daniels was 3rd on the team in yards from scrimmage, entirely as their leading rusher. The defense stunk.

Credit the front office for realizing that despite their success, the roster needs help. But will the players they got actually help? Deebo Samuel is more of a concept than a reality, averaging 12.7 yards per touch in his first three seasons and 9.7 in his last three. Laremy Tunsil should be an upgrade from Brandon Coleman, but if a team that fired its offensive coordinator and offensive line coach and is willing to trade you their left tackle, that should be a big red flag. He’s already a walking yellow flag, Tunsil was the NFL’s most penalized player in 2024, in 2023 was the 5th most but only played 14 games, prorated he would have been the 2nd most, and in 2022 was the 5th most; he has committed 27 false starts in his last 52 games. The Javon Kinlaw signing was widely panned as the worst of the offseason. Though it occured midway last season, the trade for Marshon Lattimore isn’t looking good. He missed more games than he played for the Commanders, and got bullied by AJ Brown.

Dan Quinn and his group of try hard veterans were a success last year. The franchise feels that they have changed the culture. But have they? Acquiring past their prime name players and overpaying in free agency are classic Dan Snyder era moves.

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Discussion topics

The Twitter/X timeline is packed with takes about the coming announcement on Commanders uniforms. I’ve been leaving them out of the Daily Slop, but figured I’d take my finger out of the dike for a moment today to give y’all a small taste of it.

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All aTwitter

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