The Eagles should beat the Commanders. Jayden Daniels is the only reason to think they won’t.
With Daniels, Washington has a major advantage at football's most important position. He's the great equalizer in the NFC championship game.
Here are the Eagles. Their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, has an injured knee, and everyone has conveniently forgotten that he suffered a concussion just a month ago, and neither of those developments is helping him shake the impression that the Eagles could be rolling toward their third Super Bowl appearance in eight years even if he weren’t playing at all.
After all, they have the best running back in the NFL, the best offensive line in the NFL, arguably the best wide receiver tandem in the NFL, and, statistically speaking, the best defense in the NFL — a remarkable infrastructure built by the man who arguably is the best general manager in the NFL.
Here are the Washington Commanders. Sunday will mark their first appearance in the NFC championship game in 33 years. They have a new owner, a new head coach, a new offensive coordinator, a new defensive coordinator, a new way of doing things — which they needed because their old way of doing things, under their previous owner, made them the most dysfunctional franchise in a league that already has the New York Jets.
But none of those improvements, none of them, would matter if they did not have a new quarterback, Jayden Daniels, a rookie who has been better than anyone could have imagined, who has been so good that he is on track to be the best quarterback in the conference. If he isn’t already.
Discuss this matchup, and the matchups within this matchup, however you wish. Just remember that, boiled down, the teams could not be more different. One wins with its quarterback. The other wins because of its quarterback.
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There’s no getting around that reality. In this postseason, Daniels has 567 net passing yards. Hurts had 65 in the Eagles’ victory over the Rams; at that pace, it would take him nine games to equal the production that Daniels delivered in two. Listen to the pro football cognoscenti talk about Hurts and Daniels, and you can practically see people moving the goalposts on Hurts’s behalf.
Daniels? Don’t blitz him. He can beat you throwing from the pocket, throwing on the run, or running. “It takes the whole defense,” linebacker Zack Baun said, “from the back end and what we do in coverage to the guys up front in crush-rushing and containing him, not giving escape ways to get out of the pocket. That’s when he’s most dangerous.”
He’s accurate. He’s smart. He’s been unflappable from the moment he took his first snap in the league.
“He’s a young quarterback by birth certificate, not by the tape,” Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said. “You know, the guy is playing extremely well. You can tell how much they think he’s playing by the volume of their offense and the things they trust him to do. He’s come through for them in a big way, and he’s tough to handle.”
Hurts? Well, he hasn’t been turning the ball over. (Neither has Daniels, actually.) And don’t forget, he can carry the ball when he’s healthy, too. (Daniels rushed for 261 more yards and gained nearly two yards per attempt more than Hurts during the regular season.) In fairness, Hurts did make a couple of checks at the line of scrimmage against the Rams that led to a couple of big Saquon Barkley runs. (Whoa, you can reach out and touch those goalposts now.) And hey, did we mention that he hasn’t been turning the ball over?
The point here isn’t to disparage Hurts. Really, it isn’t. He’s playing through the pain and physical limitations of that knee injury, and no one, other than Hurts himself, knows how much that concussion might still be affecting him. The point is to emphasize how significant an advantage the Commanders will have Sunday at the most important position in the sport, to note how much influence the player occupying that position can have on a game’s outcome, and there’s no sense in denying that they do or rationalizing that Hurts’ wonderful performance two years ago in Super Bowl LVII is all that relevant now.
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Can the Eagles win Sunday? Of course they can. That’s not even the right question. The right question is, should they win Sunday? And yes, they should. They’re the favorites. They’ll be at home. They have the better roster — maybe the best roster in the NFL.
There are plenty of reasons to believe that, come 6:30 p.m. or so Sunday, there will be a celebration raging at Lincoln Financial Field. There’s only one reason to believe that the Commanders can stop that party from happening, but it’s a pretty powerful reason. Daniels is the great equalizer here. Be afraid, Eagles fans. Be very afraid.
The Eagles host to the Washington Commanders on Sunday in the NFC championship game. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.