Commanders’ Jayden Daniels takes charge; Jets’ Braelon Allen youngest to score TD

National Football League

Published Sep. 25, 2024 7:10 a.m. ET

The buzz surrounding Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels seems to grow each week, and Monday night’s performance in a thrilling 38-33 win over the Bengals was one of the best ever by a rookie.

Daniels went 21-for-23 for 254 yards and two touchdowns, also leading Washington with 39 rushing yards and another score. How rare is a passing game that accurate? The 91.3% completion rate is the eighth-best for any game ever with 20-plus passes, and it’s both an NFL rookie record and a Washington team record.

Usually such high-completion games feature dump-offs and screens, but Daniels did so in a game in which he averaged 11.0 yards per attempt. In NFL history, there have been 20 games with at least 20 passes and a 90% completion rate or better, and that’s the third-highest yards per attempt within those 20 games.

The dual-threat nature of Daniels’ game means he’s also leading all NFL rookies in rushing yards with 171, and he’s one rushing touchdown behind the overall NFL lead there. He’s on pace to throw for 3,762 yards, rush for 969 and account for 28 touchdowns rushing and passing. He also ranks fourth among all NFL quarterbacks in passer rating.

The excitement around Daniels will make Washington a more coveted TV commodity. As it stands, the Commanders have only one more prime-time game scheduled this season, on a Thursday in Week 11 at Philadelphia. If Daniels keeps up anything close to the level of play he’s shown through three games, Washington will find itself flexed into bigger TV windows.

He’ll go head-to-head with Chicago’s Caleb Williams in Week 9, and while Denver’s Bo Nix took a big step forward in the Broncos‘ win over the Bucs on Sunday, Daniels looks to be the early leader in this rookie quarterback class.

Steelers‘ Zach Frazier leading rookie OL class

The 2024 NFL Draft had offensive line as a position of strength and depth, and that has played out in the first three weeks of the season. Nine rookies have established themselves as multi-game starters: four tackles in the Chargers‘ Joe Alt, the Titans‘ JC Latham, the Saints‘ Taliese Fuaga and the Cowboys‘ Tyler Guyton; two guards in the Patriots‘ Layden Robinson and the 49ers‘ Dominick Puni; and three centers in the Steelers’ Zach Frazier, Bucs‘ Graham Barton and the Cowboys’ Cooper Beebe.

Of those nine, the highest graded by Pro Football Focus is easily Frazier, the No. 6 center on the site. He’s shown both football smarts and a physicality to be able to line up against bigger nose tackles, drawing praise from longtime Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey on Ben Roethlisberger’s podcast.

“I think he has all the ability — the physical ability, the mental ability — to be a great football player for the Steelers,” Pouncey said. “I’m on board with him 100 percent.”

At tackle, Alt is PFF’s highest-graded at No. 15, though he’s now sidelined with a sprained MCL. Latham (20th) and Fuaga (23rd) aren’t far behind.

Frazier is making this impact as a second-round pick, and other mid-rounders are stepping up on the interior line. The Patriots’ Robinson is a fourth-round pick, and Beebe and Puni are both third-round picks. Rams guard Beaux Limmer, a sixth-round pick and one of 18 rookies on the Rams’ 53-man roster, stepped in and played every snap in their win over the 49ers.

NFL’s No. 1 target: Giants rookie Malik Nabers

Giants receiver Malik Nabers had two touchdown catches in Sunday’s win over the Browns, and what’s most remarkable in his impressive start is the sheer volume of passes being thrown his way.

If you’re going to invest a high first-round pick on a receiver, you want to maximize that investment, and the Giants are at record levels. In three games, Nabers already has 37 targets — the only other NFL player with more than 29 is the Lions‘ Amon-Ra St. Brown, with 32.

Pro-rate that over a full season, and Nabers is on course for 210 targets, which would be a record since the stat started being kept in 1992. Kudos to anyone who can name the current record holder. (It’s former Jets receiver Rob Moore, who had 208 targets in 1997.) There have only been five 200-target seasons in NFL history, none since Julio Jones in 2015. For perspective, the Cowboys’ CeeDee Lamb led the NFL with 181 targets in 2023.

Precocious start for Braelon Allen

Jets running back Braelon Allen had 11 carries for 55 yards Sunday, a yard more than Breece Hall for the team lead, and the fourth-round pick from Wisconsin continues to turn heads as he takes on a larger role. His two Week 2 touchdowns were notable because he’s only 20 years old and won’t turn 21 until Jan. 20 — as such, he’s the youngest player to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl era.

That’s a full two months younger than JuJu Smith-Schuster was when he scored his first touchdown in 2017, and that’s who Allen is chasing for most touchdowns before a 21st birthday. Smith-Schuster had five, Chicago’s Rashaad Salaam had two in 1995, Tampa Bay’s Reidel Anthony had two in 1997 and New Orleans’ Brandin Cooks had one in 2014. That’s the entire Super Bowl era list.

Introducing …

The NFL distinguishes between rookies and first-year players — a rookie was in college last year, whereas a first-year player might have been on a practice squad or in another league. Despite that distinction, we’ll still give a shoutout to Broncos edge rusher Dondrea Tillman, who had two sacks in his NFL debut Sunday in Denver’s surprising rout of the Bucs. Tillman is 26, played at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania and won three championships with the Birmingham Stallions the past three summers in the USFL and UFL. He was cut by the Broncos after preseason but came back on the practice squad and made the most of his first NFL snaps Sunday.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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