Jayden

Daniels

Daniels achieved a 91.5 PFF rushing grade throughout his college career, which is the best among Power-Five quarterbacks over the last decade, joining Lamar Jackson, Anthony Richardson and Caleb Williams. He similarly has the most avoided tackles while Jackson and Hurts ranked in the top five. Not only was the quality of his running better, but he chose to scramble far more than any other quarterback has. He scrambled 258 times throughout his college career, which was also the most for a quarterback in the last decade. The next closest was 180. This could lead to more rushing attempts and big runs from Daniels than other rushing quarterbacks. Every quarterback with 100 or more rushing attempts in the last decade has averaged at least 18 fantasy points per start, a number that should easily be in reach by Daniels.

His passing shouldn’t be overlooked either, as he has the best mechanics of any passer in the class. He received a respectable 84.0 career passing grade in college. We shouldn’t expect him to be as good of a passer as Hurts is now, but ideally, he is better than Hurts as a rookie.

The Commanders added offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. Kyler Murray was a top-12 fantasy quarterback in points per game in all four seasons when Kingsbury was his head coach, including his 2019 rookie season. Kingsbury’s offense should be an asset to Daniels, or at the very least not hold him back. He is being selected as one of the worst options among fantasy starting quarterbacks, but he should be closer to the middle of the starters with the upside to finish among the top three quarterbacks.