Kliff Kinsgbury points out why Jayden Daniels’ 2025 season was doomed from the start, and a lot of it wasn’t even his fault
Kliff Kingsbury isn’t crtical of Jayden Daniels’ second season becuase of what he had to overcome with injuries to himself and others.
The Washington Commanders’ 2025 season has been nothing short of a disaster, and maybe the writing was on the wall from the beginning.
Nobody expected this kind of season just months after going to the NFC Championship game, but here we are. The team can just reflect on what went wrong and move forward from it. Jayden Daniels is who carried the team through the season and playoffs last season, and he was also the crutch the team leaned on too much in 2025, and it backfired.
Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury was very honest about why the season hasn’t gone as planned for Daniels, and a lot was well out of his control.
The Commanders never had consistency for Jayden Daniels
This isn’t just a random struggle that started Week 1 when the season kicked off; it was a buildup from the offseason that dragged into the regular season. Dating back to training camp, where the team ramps up practice, the offense was set to fail with a lot of players missing for the majority of it. Kingsbury defended Daniels’ play in 2025 as he was never given a chance to be consistent.
“Yeah, I would just say offensively with him, really, from the spring on through training
camp, just we were never able to get into a rhythm with everybody,” Kingsbury said. “Not enough practices strung together, enough games strung together, just practicing consistently. It just wasn’t able to happen. And so I think it’s hard to really assess what that looked like based on just, we never had consistent practice or rhythm or anything of that nature, whether he was banged up or, you know, other guys were out.”
The Commanders had too many players missing at training camp
As we all very clearly remember, Terry McLaurin held out of just about all of training camp, and that was a huge hit to the offense while he waited for a contract extension. It wasn’t just the biggest distraction of the season, but it took away Daniels’ biggest weapon to continue throwing to and developing with.
It wasn’t just McLaurin, though. Noah Brown was another starting wide receiver who missed almost all of training camp as well, with an injury, and that trend continued into the season for everybody. The offensive line also missed Sam Cosmi at training camp, and rotated many offensive linemen along the way with other small injuries. There was just no constant team for Daniels to grow with daily.
“Yeah, I mean, obviously, I’m from the quarterback perspective, offensive-minded perspective, you
know,” Kingsbury added. “As many of those on the field reps, the timing with receivers, the cadences with the o-line, the mesh points with the running backs, as much as that as you can get prior to your first game and then as much as you can get in season, I think is paramount to playing good football and good offensive football. And I thought, you know, last year we were able to stay healthy in some positions and especially at Jayden just day after day after day, working at his craft, practicing, practicing getting better, and we just weren’t able to have the consistency or the amount of practice reps that we would’ve liked.”
The injuries carried over into the regular season, including Jayden Daniels
The injuries weren’t just in training camp, though, and it only took two games for the injury bug to tear the team apart on both sides of the ball. Daniels lost starting running back, Austin Ekeler Week 2, and he was a big part of the running and passing game for him. Then, Daniels suffered his first injury of the season. Since then, Daniels has only played in two full games. He’s been injured or missed a game in nine of the 13 games of the season. You can’t get a rhythm with that kind of inconsistency in playing time.
Daniels has only played with McLaurin and Brown in 10.5 out of 52 possible quarters this season, and eight were in the first two games. People can criticize his play, which is fair, but how many quarterbacks would succeed with a rotation of injuries to key players, including his own? 2026 is a massive season for the Commanders, and it starts in the offseason with free agency and the draft to build around Daniels.
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