Jayden Daniels has had arguably the best season for a rookie quarterback in NFL history, and Howie Long clearly does not think anything that the Washington Commanders star has accomplished is a fluke.
Long had some extremely high praise for Daniels during the FOX pregame show before the NFC Championship game between the Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The Hall of Fame defensive end said he believes there are only five teams in the NFL that would prefer to have their current quarterback over Daniels.
“Is he the best quarterback to ever play as a rookie? I think he’s in that conversation,” Long said. “I think there are five teams, if people around the league are being honest, that would not trade their quarterback right now for Jayden Daniels — Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati and the Chargers. And if they win today, I think that list goes down to four.”
Long said five teams but only mentioned four — the Buffalo Bills, Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Chargers. It is probably safe to assume the fifth team is the Kansas City Chiefs.
The quarterbacks of the aforementioned teams — Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Patrick Mahomes — are all studs who are younger than 30. There are still plenty of good quarterbacks around the league outside of that group, but Long believes 26 of them are less valuable than Daniels.
Some of the other established or promising quarterbacks around the league include Jalen Hurts, Jordan Love, Drake Maye, Kyler Murray, Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott and Trevor Lawrence. Long believes Daniels has already shown enough that the former LSU star should be viewed as having a better future in the NFL than all of those QBs.
Daniels went 22/31 for 299 yards, 2 touchdowns and no interceptions in a 45-31 upset win over the Detroit Lions in the Divisional Round. He also rushed for 51 yards. If he can duplicate that production against the Eagles, the Commanders will have a great shot of continuing their Cinderella season in the Super Bowl.
