Jayden Daniels

Two seasons, two different players — the rookie year was historic, the sophomore year was a stall.

In 2024 Daniels was +0.103 EPA per dropback with a +3.55 CPOE — the 5th-best rookie passing season since 2010 by EPA. In 2025 those numbers flipped to -0.029 EPA / -2.73 CPOE across just 7 games before the year ended early. The rookie line was top-quartile-starter quality. The sophomore line is below replacement.

Why it matters. A two-season collapse this sharp for a No. 2 overall pick raises urgent questions about whether the 2024 performance was system-driven or truly repeatable.

His 891 rushing yards as a rookie is the most by any QB's debut season in the database.

The list of rookie QBs who cleared 800 rushing yards is two names long. Daniels passed RG3's mark in the same number of starts (15+ each), and did it on 23 more carries — a higher volume but with comparable per-carry efficiency (6.0 YPC for Daniels vs 6.7 for Griffin).

For scale: Daniels alone outrushed the entire 2024 New England Patriots rookie passing class plus most veteran QB rooms.

Why it matters. Rushing production at this volume from a rookie QB is a structural advantage — it forces defenses to account for a run threat that simply didn't exist at the position for a decade.

On scrambles he averaged 8.0 yards a pop — designed runs got him 4.1.

The split is dramatic. Daniels's designed runs — the called QB-power, read-option keepers, sneaks, and kneels — produced a respectable +0.085 EPA. His scrambles — plays that broke down and turned into open-field improvisation — produced +0.722 EPA per play, one of the highest scramble rates in the league that season.

The touchdown split is the inverse: 5 of his 6 rushing TDs were on designed plays near the goal line. The big scramble plays moved the chains; the play-call ran it in.

Why it matters. The EPA gap between scrambles (+0.722) and designed runs (+0.085) reveals that Daniels's most dangerous rushing moments are unscripted — his value as a runner is amplified every time a play breaks down.

Rookie EPA: top-5 since 2010, in company you'd expect.

Daniels slots in 5th by EPA per dropback among the rookie class of the past 15 years — ahead of Stroud's celebrated 2023 and Burrow's 2020. The four names ahead of him are all veteran starters or established Pro Bowlers now.

His +3.55 CPOE is the third-best on this list, meaning he was completing passes 3.55 percentage points above what the situation predicted. That's a touch-and-accuracy signal, not a system-aided one.

Why it matters. Every QB above Daniels on this list went on to become a long-term franchise starter — the company he's in on this metric defines the upper ceiling of the position.

In the red zone he was a TD-machine — 25 passing TDs on 100 attempts.

Red zone passing TD rate: 25.0%. One in every four red-zone dropbacks ended with him throwing a touchdown — elite efficiency for any QB, let alone one in his first 24 starts.

The EPA gap runs the opposite direction from most QBs: Daniels's red-zone EPA (+0.21) actually beats his rest-of-field EPA (+0.04). That's mostly a sophomore-year effect dragging the open-field number down, but it points to where his offense lives — short field, designed shots, lots of motion to wide-open receivers.

Why it matters. A 25% red-zone TD rate is a finishing skill, not just volume — it converts field position into points at an elite clip that directly wins games.

He was the league's best 4Q passer as a rookie — +0.36 EPA in 144 dropbacks.

In the 4th-quarter one-score subset (margin within 8 points) of his rookie season, Daniels posted +0.298 EPA per dropback on 80 plays — more than quadrupling his non-clutch efficiency in those situations (+0.069).

The Hail-Mary win over Chicago in Week 8 isn't a fluke artifact in the data — it's the headline event of a sustained pattern. His 2025 sample is small but the rate has held: +0.513 EPA in 40 4Q dropbacks, zero interceptions. Whatever's gone wrong this year, it isn't his ability to operate when the game is on the line.

Why it matters. Sustaining elite efficiency specifically when games are closest is the hardest skill to teach at QB — Daniels has shown it across two seasons despite the overall 2025 regression.

Took Washington from 4 wins to the NFC Championship in one season — then the team collapsed without him.

Washington went 12–5 in the regular season and won two playoff games before losing in the NFC Championship in his rookie year — the franchise's best season since the early 1990s.

In 2025 he started only 7 games before the season ended, and the team finished 5–12. The replacement-QB cliff was steep: Washington's record without Daniels in 2025 was 0–7 in the 7 games he missed before his last start, then 1–3 after. The franchise's fortunes and his availability are now nearly indistinguishable.

Why it matters. A 12-win regular season and two playoff wins in year one is a franchise-altering result — the 2025 collapse to 5-12 with him unavailable makes the causal link between Daniels and Washington's competitiveness nearly impossible to dispute.