Jay Gruden wasn’t quite sure which Cincinnati landmarks to recommend to Grant & Danny as they prepare for two shows in Cincy around next Monday’s Commanders-Bengals game – he doesn’t even remember Fiona the Hippo! – but he DID have a synopsis of Jayden Daniels’ first career win.
“Solid. Second game and he did not turn the ball over, which is critical. You have to win these close games when your defense is playing pretty good and the other team’s been struggling, and that’s what happened, and turnovers will kill you,” Gruden said. “As long as he's protecting the ball, I know everybody wants to see touchdowns in the red zone, they'll come, but just make sure we at least get points to keep the game close and try to win at the end like they did.”
Gruden was especially impressed with the Commanders opening up more in the second half, especially the 34-yard completion to Noah Brown where the offense worked in sync, and just shows what Daniels can do in the pocket when it’s clean.
“Ekeler made a great block and he just set his feet and let it rip, and that's something that you'll see more and more of the more he can see some things and feel like there's no pass rush around him,” Gruden said. “He needs to have some clean pockets, and had a little bit more in the second half, so it gave him some time.”
That said, while Danny will take 400 yards of offense and scores on every drive, the fact is they had six trips into the red zone and came away with all field goals, which is not ideal.
“A couple of penalties, a couple of sacks, and he missed a throw over the top of the defense on one of them and threw it out of the back of the end zone. They ran a couple RPOs that didn’t work at all, and tried to run the ball on third and short one time, didn't get it…just a lot of things,” Gruden said. “But, the good thing is they ate up a ton of clock. The first drive was 10 minutes, and the best thing for a struggling defense like Washington has is have 10-minute drives all the time. Unfortunately, they didn't convert, but there’s a lot of reasons. They’ll get better with time.”
One thing that is working, though, even if you think someone is doing it too much? The running game had a DAY against the Giants, which was a big part of eating up clock.
“You could see one of the times it was a true handoff and Jayden just took two steps after he handed off, and there's two guys trying to make sure he didn't have the ball – and then there goes the inside zone popping out of there,” Gruden said. “That is a hell of a weapon to have. Jayden Daniels and the threat of his zone read or carrying the ball getting outside the numbers is scary on defenses, and you have to have people account for him, and that’ll open up things for Ekeler and Robinson like it did. But it’s all gonna depend on whether or not Washington manufactures some big plays in the passing game and forces teams into two high safeties, because they're gonna see a lot of single high safety the more teams prepare for them, and they're going to force them to try to throw the ball. So Terry’s got to make some big plays, or somebody else in the passing game, to scare defenses where they have to keep a safety over the top. The more they play, the more they're gonna see loaded boxes, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult. But that threat of Jayden running is still gonna open up some holes for B-Rob and Ekeler.”
Take a listen to Gruden’s entire weekly visit above!
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