In early March, the Washington Commanders took the center stage for all of the NFL world’s attention when they sent a fifth-round pick to the San Francisco 49ers and took on Deebo Samuel’s full $17.55M 2025 salary to finalize the trade. NFL analyst Isaiah Stanback (via SI) hyped the move, emphasizing the Commanders’ star QB Jayden Daniels’ accuracy and Samuel’s YAC prowess, “Deebo Samuel and Jayden Daniels … I cannot wait to see this… You have one of the most accurate quarterbacks … and one of the best YAC receivers in Deebo Samuel working underneath … That is going to be a problem.”

And the optimism around the Samuel and Daniels combo is rather justified, as the dual-threat quarterback’s 2024 season stats reinforce that confidence. Last year for the Commanders, Daniels recorded 3,568 passing yards, 25 TDs, 891 rushing yards, and 6 rushing TDs. The QB led ALL rookie signal-callers in postseason passing yards and tied for the most playoff passing TDs. With a screen/pass ratio of 26% of attempts, Daniels was ranked 6th in the NFL with 52 screen passes last year. This sets the stage for targeted plays where Samuel excels: short passes with big-yards-after-catch potential.

And while talking about the arrival of Deebo Samuel at the NYC Fanatics Fest 2025, Jayden Daniels, with a tone of humor, showed his excitement and a hint of relief as the QB will possibly be relieved of his role of rushing into the defenses and stick to being an exceptional thrower for the newly signed receiver. The video of Daniels was shared by ‘Sleeper Commanders’ on X via an NFL reporter, Arye Pulli.

In the video, Daniels quietly issued a challenge for Samuel, saying, “Training Camp, obviously, all season was good. Now I’m just 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. But I’m just excited, he’s a great person. Great, fitting in the locker room. We’re vibing with him, so you’re gonna see a hella lot of touchdowns.”

The fans are hyped and overly excited to see Samuel’s skills put to work for the Commanders and show the world that their pick is more action and less words. In actuality, Samuel’s offseason performance has led many of the Washington staff to believe that this notion is quite rapidly being turned to fruition. If you ask the Commanders’ head coach, Dan Quinn, they didn’t just land Deebo Samuel; they’ve unleashed a weapon.

Deebo Samuel turns heads with his offseason performance for the Washington Commanders

As the head coach of the Commanders, Dan Quinn, will now plan his attacks and rushes around the wide receiver. Shutting down the criticism around some viral clips on social media, Quinn emphasized that Samuel is one of the fastest players on his team, and he saw it himself in the off-season training camps.

Quinn said, “Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten until [he was] out here how fast he is. I can remember one time he just ran by somebody down the field on a deep ball, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I forgot about that. So, it didn’t surprise me, but it was maybe [that] I missed talking about it to that space because I was easily reminded, he’s one of the fastest players on the team.”

Furthermore, Quinn also emphasized how Samuel was a difficult target to defend against during his days as a Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator, “He was such a difficult person to tackle that you spent so much time, ‘How are you going to tackle this person?’ And so, sometimes when you’re playing against the receiver, you say, ‘Man, you better either get him at the line or you better be on top of him.’ With him, so many times there were so many runs after catch plays that we had a tackling plan, and how would you go about it?”

However, Samuel had a slump in the 2024 season. The wide receiver recorded 51 receptions for 670 yards, plus 136 rushing yards. But under the guidance of the Commanders‘ offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, who led the Washington battalion to the 3rd rank in WR screens in 2024, the arrival of Samuel here sets up an ideal stage for his amazing comeback. And as Dan Quinn reminded everyone just days ago: “he’s one of the fastest players on the team,” we can only wait to see the amazing duo of Jayden Daniels and Deebo Samuel unfold on the pitch.