Jayden Daniels stood at the podium after Washington’s 24-22 loss and took the blame for something a 12-year veteran did on his own.
Stefon Diggs scored a fourth-quarter touchdown in his Commanders debut, went to the goalpost to celebrate, and got flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. That penalty pushed the extra point back and took away Washington’s chance to go for two and tie the game. Washington later missed a two-point try after another score, and the Commanders lost by two.
Daniels’ response: “We just got to be smarter. We’ve got to know situational football. That’s on me for not reiterating that in the huddle. There’s a time and place for everything. I’m pretty sure at that point we’d have went for two. As the leader and the captain, I put that onus on myself for not reiterating that in the huddle.”
It is a great quote. It is also wrong.
This is not a huddle problem
Daniels is describing a world where the quarterback has to remind every player, before every snap, not to draw an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. That is not football, that is babysitting.
Stefon Diggs has been in this league for twelve years. He has scored a lot of touchdowns. He knows the celebration rules as well as anyone who has ever played the position, and he knows what using the goalpost as a prop gets you. There is no version of that huddle where Daniels says “hey, remember the rule about the goalpost” and the outcome changes, because Diggs already knew the rule.
The penalty was not a misunderstanding of situational football. It was a veteran in a new uniform, in an emotional moment, doing something he knew he should not do.
Why Daniels said it anyway
Because this is exactly what you want from your franchise quarterback, and it is why the Commanders are in good shape long term regardless of how Week 1 went.
Daniels is young. Diggs has a decade on him and a long resume. The easiest thing in the world would have been to say “you have to know better there” and let the media run with it. Instead he absorbed it publicly and handled the actual conversation privately, which is where that conversation belongs.
That is leadership. It buys credibility in a locker room that no press conference full of blame-shifting ever could. Players notice when the quarterback eats a mistake that was not his.
But there is a line between accountability and inventing responsibility that does not exist, and this crossed it.
Look at how the fourth quarter unfolded. Diggs scores. The flag comes out. The two-point option disappears because of the walk-off on the extra point. Washington scores again later and fails on a two-point try that mattered far more than it should have.
Take the penalty away and Washington gets to play that endgame the way it drew it up, with the full range of options available. Instead the Commanders were playing catch-up math for the last stretch of a game they lost by two points.
Diggs finished with four catches for 55 yards. Fine debut, damaging moment.
The good news is that this is a one-time fix. Diggs will not do it again. Daniels will keep taking public responsibility for things that are not his fault, which will keep making his teammates run through walls for him.
And Washington will move on, hopefully with everyone understanding that the guy who needed the reminder was not the one who apologized for it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.