Why Commanders believe Jayden Daniels is the QB the team has been waiting for

They've been looking for a new quarterback in Washington for most of the past 40 years, but Adam Peters didn't start searching until January. It was only after he was hired as the new Commanders general manager that he first dug in to the available quarterbacks.

And when he got his first look at tape of LSU QB Jayden Daniels, it was love at first sight.

"I didn't really watch a lot of the quarterbacks hard during the season," Peters said. "And then I turned on Jayden for the first time here, and I couldn't believe it. I honestly couldn't believe how good he was. I saw him on TV, saw him on highlights and everything, but when you really study him as a quarterback — just as a quarterback — he's really, really good."

That first impression turned out to be an understatement in Peters' mind. Soon it became a no-brainer, and no surprise, that he would make Daniels the second overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and the first pick for the new Commanders regime. Just as importantly, even though he'd never say it like this, Peters' actions would anoint Daniels as the face and the promised savior of one of the NFL's most downtrodden franchises.

It takes a special talent and a special person to thrive under that kind of pressure, to be asked to exceed what might already be unreasonable expectations. It's why Peters spent months diving deep into the pool of available quarterbacks to confirm what he was pretty sure he knew all along.

"We did a lot of work on Jayden," he said. "In terms of every single person we spoke to, it was just exemplary as a person, personal character, football character, his work ethic, his football intelligence, how much he cared, his leadership, how he is as a teammate. They were all exemplary. Every single