The second game of Jayden Daniels' NFL career delivered his first victory as quarterback of the Washington Commanders. It also came with six trips to the red zone, zero touchdowns and an important lesson. "We've got to finish in the red zone; that's the main thing we can take away from that," Daniels said.
"Extremely frustrating. We moved the ball efficiently down the field and, not to say anything, but to go out there and leave points on the field, man, we work so hard to get down there — we want touchdowns." Instead, they got flags.
Five falsestart penalties stalled out drives and provided a reminder that this transformed offense with Daniels, a revamped line and new coordinator Kliff Kingsbury still has work to do to get on the same page. "Luckily, those are things that we can control, so we can get that corrected," said running back Austin Ekeler, one of more than 30 new players on Washington's 53-man roster. "We will definitely be emphasizing that going forward.
It's the details of going through practice and saying: 'Hey, we've been through this. We can't be doing this to ourselves, especially in the red zone." The Commanders, who are 1-1 going into a matchup at 0-2 Cincinnati next Monday night, reached the 20-yard line seven times Sunday against the New York Giants and could not crack the end zone.
Rookie tight end Ben Sinnott false-started on fourth-and-1 on their opening possession; right guard Sam Cosmi moved early twice and left guard Nick Allegretti and left tack.