The Draw Play

As I stated in the Chaos report yesterday, this is one of the most brutal losses the season has offered. Not only did the Commies get obliterated in primetime in front of a national audience, their star QB sensation from a year ago, the savior of the franchise, suffered what is probably a season-ending injury to his arm. An unfortunate landing on a routine tackle sent his elbow into the negative zone, and his ligaments were never to be seen again. He suffered a dislocated elbow. He could theoretically play again this season but he probably shouldn’t. The Commanders were already struggling and are only a single win above New York for last place in the division. Punt the season, play the young bloods, plan for next year.

When the injury happened it was hard to ignore parallels to a certain other former savior. RG3 suffered a career-altering injury on the FedEx home turf against the Seahawks. RG3 is similar to Daniels in skillset and body type, and to some degree, recklessness while running. While I get the obvious connections, I don’t think the cases are very similar and are mostly people reacting to bad vibes after a terrible event. RG3’s injury was to his knee. RG3 was a far dumber QB, he could barely get past his first read and he scrambled recklessly in more designed runs. Part of his injury was the coaching staff forcing Griffin out there when he was clearly injured, and when the fateful knee injury happened, he was already hobbled and broken. The shitty field caused the problem, the coaching staff caused the problem, his health not being 100% before the snap caused the problem.

Daniels was much more of a freak accident. Daniels had been nursing a hamstring issue this year but that’s not what snapped. He just braced himself with his left arm as he went down and physics did the rest. I’m not even sure the terrible field had that much to do with it. I think it was just…bad luck. He’s taken harder hits and stronger tackles just fine. His arm was not previously a point of concern. Shit just happened. Also, as I said in the Chaos report, this injury probably does not hamper Daniels career much outside this season. It’s his off-arm. That’s the limb he needs the least to be an effective QB. His throwing arm and two legs are more important. He’ll be okay as long as he isn’t an idiot with his rehab.

The biggest point of discussion I’ve seen regarding the injury was Dan Quinn’s decision to keep him in the game, pointlessly risking his QB in a match long out of hand. I’ve seen people calling for him to get fired. I’ve seen it compared to the Wentz Vikings drama from last week. I don’t agree with these takes. I think people need to calm down.

First off, the Wentz comparison is bad because Daniels wasn’t nursing an elbow injury prior to the event. Wentz tore his left shoulder prior to the Chargers game and the Vikings started him anyway, and kept him in the game for even longer than Daniels was as Wentz took hit after hit after hit in a game that was just as out of hand. That was malpractice. Daniels was functionally healthy and not getting destroyed until the tackle itself.

As for the issue of taking Daniels out? I think people are just emotional that the worst case scenario occurred. Starters, especially healthy ones, are rarely taken out of the game before 5 minutes to go, even in massive blowouts. It doesn’t happen nearly as much as people are insinuating it does in an effort to shame Quinn. Tua didn’t come out of the game against the Ravens despite Baltimore being up 28-6 to start the 4th. It’s very easy to look at a blowout result and go “the starters should have been taken out for the 4th” but this is just isn’t how football normally goes. People “predicted” the injury to Daniels before it happened but that’s just confirmation bias. Fans “predict” things happening all the time, and we are wrong all the time, but we like to chirp about the ones we get right in retrospect while shuffling all the wrong predictions under the rug. Hell, I could show you right now. Before the 2024 draft, I predicted the QB prospects based on literally nothing but vibes. For Daniels, I wrote “incredible start ruined by horrible injury”. Am I a genius because I took an educated guess on typical career trajectory options and might have nailed his? No. Look what I predicted for Drake Maye and how that’s going. But that’s what a few people are doing to Dan Quinn. They saw a scenario that could happen, that had a somewhat reasonable chance of occurring, and pretended it was obvious after it actually happened.

If Quinn had taken Daniels out of the game before that point, I would have understood. The Seahawks were very far ahead. But this is football. When you pull the starters, that’s the white flag. That sends the signal to every single person watching, including your own team, that you are throwing in the towel. As long as there is a chance, you try to demonstrate fight. Denver could have taken Bo Nix out of the game against the Giants a couple weeks ago for the exact same reasons, but look what happened. Now the Broncos and Bo get to celebrate being part of one of the most memorable games of the year. The drive where Daniels was hurt started with 12:30 left to go on the game clock. Even with the score being 38-7, when is the last time you saw a starting QB get taken out of a game for safety with over 12 minutes to go? That doesn’t happen. Basically ever. These guys like Wentz and Daniels WANT to be out there. People are just upset that the worst scenario came to pass. I get that. It sucks. I’m sorry, Commies fans, it sucks ass. I don’t think Dan Quinn is some football criminal for this. I think he acted the way every coach does.

What happened to Daniels was just…it was bad luck. The sport is filled with bad luck. It ruins so much, every year. No matter how teams prepare and try to combat the variables, chaos will always strike. It’s always been the most unfortunate part of the experience.