The Washington Commanders experienced a resurgence last season, led in large part by a superstar performance from rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. The offense checked in seventh in the NFL in yards and fifth in points, while Daniels himself won Offensive Rookie of the Year and eventually led the team to an NFC title game appearance.
But the Commanders didn’t just rest on their laurels and assume improvement heading into Daniels’ second NFL season. They went out and made some aggressive moves to improve the offense. Most notable among those were trading for tackle Laremy Tunsil and wide receiver Deebo Samuel. And Daniels is very excited about the latter move — and particularly about what Samuel can bring to the table in one specific area of the offense.
“Offseason was good, but now you just see what he’s proven year in and year out,” Daniels said during an panel interview at Fanatics Fest. “I’m excited to throw him a screen and hopefully on the stat sheet it says a touchdown for 80 yards and I didn’t have to do any of the work. I’m excited, he’s a great person. Great fit in the locker room right away. Hopefully we’re gonna see a lot of touchdowns.”
Daniels bringing up the screen game is quite fitting, given both Samuel’s skill set and Washington’s own struggles in that area last season. As we wrote when examining the places where Daniels might be able to improve in Year 2 (emphasis ours):
The Commanders’ screen game wasn’t very effective in 2024. Daniels checked in 29th in EPA per dropback and 26th in yards per pass, and he threw two interceptable passes on screens, according to TruMedia. This is an area where the acquisition of Deebo Samuel should hopefully help quite a bit. Samuel has been one of the league’s most effective wideouts on screens thanks to his nearly unmatched ability to create yards after the catch. An improved offensive line should also be able to make a difference here.
As we noted, Samuel’s proficiency in this area should be of at least some help. According to TruMedia, no receiver in the NFL has gained more yards on screens than Samuel (1,049) since he entered the league in 2019. And it’s not particularly close. The gap between Samuel and the next-closest receiver (Chris Godwin) is over 250 yards. And his yards-after-catch-per-reception average (13.0) is first among all receivers during that time as well.
Accordingly, Samuel has also lapped the field in creating big gains out of screen-pass opportunities. He’s gained more than 15 yards yards on a screen 21 times during that span — by far the most in the NFL. Incredible, he’s done it more than twice as many times as the next-closest player, D.J. Moore, who has just nine explosive gains on screen passes.
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Brad Crawford
And it’s not just volume. On a per-target basis, Samuel turned screens into explosives 17.4% of the time, which ranks 12th among the 873 receivers who have played since 2019. But among the 11 players ahead of him, only three (Brian Thomas Jr., Jakeem Grant and Lil’Jordan Humphrey) have been targeted with at least 10 screen passes.
Last year, though, things changed quite a bit on the screen front. Samuel came into the season with an illness and struggled with his health all year, and he was not quite as effective on those screens. He was still targeted with 21 screen passes, via TruMedia, but those passes gained just 146 yards. Only two of them turned into explosives and only six gained first downs, while his yards-after-catch-per-reception average dropped to only 9.4, which ranked behind 14 other receivers targeted with 10-plus screens.
Samuel will be 29 years old this season and has played a physically exacting style during his seven years in the NFL. In the three years since his breakout 2021 season during which he was named a first-team All-Pro, he hasn’t reached 900 yards receiving or 250 yards rushing, and he’s seemingly heading into the decline phase of his career.
But the Commanders are betting that he can be more effective in a defined role than the more expansive one that the 49ers needed him to play over the last few years, working in screens and short-area passes to create yards after the catch. That was part of the attack that wasn’t really available to Washington last year, and if Samuel can recapture some of what he had prior to 2024, it will help Daniels and Kliff Kingsbury expand the menu of the passing game and avoid some of the Year 2 drop-off that quarterbacks sometimes experience.
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