A recent ESPN “First Take” segment featuring Stephen A. Smith, Tedy Bruschi, and Shannon Sharpe focused on Washington Commanders QB Jayden Daniels’s early performance in his first four NFL games.
Smith wasn’t shy about praising Daniels over the other NFC East quarterbacks.
“I am rolling with Jayden Daniels. First of all, I’m not rolling with a guy like Dak Prescott, who’s had eight years to win a Super Bowl and can’t even win more than two playoff games in eight years. As far as I’m concerned, he has shown me what he is. He’s elite in the regular season but far from it in the postseason.”
“This brother (Daniels) brings me hope. Let’s understand something, 82.1 % completion percentage. Over their three-game winning streak, this man has scored on 22 of 24 of their drives over the last three games. Ten touchdowns, ten field goals, excluding kneel downs.”
Smith then referred to Dan Quinn saying he blew a 25-point lead in the Super bowl, but that he also got his team to the Super Bowl and concluded “he kinda knows what he is doing.”
Smith admitted then he had been down on Kliff Kingsbury, not thinking he had deserved a shot at an NFL head coaching job. He then said Kingsbury did not deserve to by pass a lot of other NFL coordinators to get that head coaching job with the Cardinals.
“But we all knows as a coordinator, he can call up some plays. We all know as coordinator he’s cultivated relationships with quarterbacks…and that’s going a long way. Now he is doing it with Jayden Daniels, because Daniels has raved about the level of communication they have with one another.”
Smith then recalled how much talk pre-draft was the number of hits Daniels took at LSU and how would he survive in the NFL “That’s not what he is doing. He is being smart, he’s running with the football, making plays with his legs. He’s certainly making plays with his arm.”
“We are looking at Washington being formidable, they could potentially win this division…The way this kid is playing, and the pieces he has around him, I like what I see.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Smith did his version of the NFL power rankings, and the Commanders were ranked No. 5.
.@stephenasmith's top five NFL teams for the week đź‘€ pic.twitter.com/p1mZef5bAt
— First Take (@FirstTake) October 1, 2024
Here is a video of the entire segment.