How did Commanders’ Jayden Daniels pass Tom Brady’s record after four NFL games?
While it’s still early days, the Commanders’ rookie continues to turn heads and that’s included breaking a record set by Tom Brady. Just how good is this guy?
Following on from a historic performance in Week 3, the Commanders’ signal-caller is clearly intent on showing football fans that he’s the real deal. At this point, it’s not so much about doubting his ability as it is wondering whether or not he can be stopped.
Jayden Daniels is clearly one to watch
It was just a week ago that we dug into a historic performance by Washington Commanders rookie quarterback Jaylen Daniels. If you caught the piece, Daniels managed to make NFL history by maintaining the highest pass completion percentage of any rookie in history across the first three games in the league. The result was a 38-33 win against the Cincinnati Bengals which was in no small part down to the efforts of Daniels who completed 21-of-23 passes, enough to place him in the NFL history books with a 91.3% completion rate, the most by a rookie quarterback in league history.
With that, we return to his Week 4 performance in which Daniels performed just as he did the week before: Sensationally. In a game against the Arizona Cardinals that the Commanders won 42-14, Daniels was instrumental. Indeed, the young signal-caller completed 26-of-30 passes for 233 yards, one touchdown, and one interception, while adding 47 rushing yards and a touchdown on eight carries. It doesn’t get much better.
To that end, Daniels actually set two records according to reports. Firstly, he became the first quarterback in NFL history to have two consecutive games with 85% of his passes or higher completed with a minimum of 15 attempts in each game. Then, there was the icing on the cake which is to say through his first four games, Daniels surpassed a record set by the great Tom Brady himself. More specifically, the 23-year-old notched the highest completion percentage through the first four games of a season in NFL history, with a minimum of 75 attempts.
To bring this all together, Daniels has a completion rate of 82.1%. If you didn’t know, the previous record was set by Brady who stood at 79.2% in 2007. Geno Smith’s mark of 77.3% in 2022 and Kyler Murray’s number of 76.1% in 2021 came close but as they say, there was no cigar, which makes the rookie’s effort all the more impressive.