Rich Reacts to Jayden Daniels’ Freak Elbow Injury on Its Impact on the Commanders’ Season

"You're Dan Quinn. You're staring into the abyss."

That is how Rich opened his breakdown of the Washington Commanders' nightmare in Dallas, and it only got darker from there. Washington is 0-2, and as Rich put it, "not just 0 and 2, but the worst type of 0 and 2. You're 0 and 2 in division."

The cruel part is how good Jayden Daniels looked before it happened. At the end of the loss to Philadelphia and through the first half in Dallas, Rich said, Daniels "flat out looks like the Jayden Daniels of his unicorn rookie season." The offense was humming. He was "as elusive as ever and smart about it."

Then came the decision. Two seconds left in the half, Washington getting the ball after halftime, and Quinn chose not to kick the field goal. Instead, he put his quarterback under center for one shot at tying the game, with Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb looking "all giddy" on the other side.

Rich was clear that his critique is "a total 2020 hindsight second guess." He walked through the math Quinn would have weighed. Take the points and it's 17-13, with the ball coming back to start the second half and a chance to take the lead. Go for it, and the worst case is no points and a pep talk in the locker room about being aggressive.

What nobody could have scripted was the actual downside. One of Washington's own linemen stepped on Daniels' foot. Falling, Daniels braced himself with the same left arm he dislocated last year, and it twisted "in such an ugly way that Tom Brady would curse on Fox." If Quinn had known that was on the table, Rich said, "he clearly would take the points."

So now Quinn is left with two ways to process it. "You stare at the ceiling and go, 'What the hell just happened? I should have taken the points,'" Rich said. Or you tell yourself, "I've been in football forever and this is the way it goes."

The Brady moment became its own conversation. Rich called it "a very human moment" and wanted to know why there was no delay button. He asked Mike whether he had missed it on the fader, and got a technical explanation about the center channel in 5.1 audio. "I don't care about centers or 5.1," Rich replied. Around the desk, the consensus was that everyone watching said the same thing Brady did. At first, some on the desk thought it was a knee or leg injury. "Tom being real right there, man," one member of the desk said. "Like all of us."

After the game, Quinn gave what he knew. "With Jayden, he injured his left elbow. It was a dislocation. X-rays showed no fracture," Quinn said. Daniels traveled home with the team, with more imaging to come. "Man, are we bummed for him. I thought he was like really playing his ass off. And we will rally so hard around Marcus until Jayden's back."

"He went Vermeil there," Rich said of the promise. And for what it's worth, Marcus Mariota looked good in relief. He found Diggs in the end zone, and Diggs finished with two touchdowns, none of which drew a celebration flag this time around.

That is what makes the timing so painful for Washington. Rich noted that for an offense that supposedly could not block anybody, the Commanders had started to look more like the team from two years ago than last year's version. Now they look like last year again, because Daniels has a dislocated elbow, the same injury that kept him out for a month last year.

"Let's hope it's the same thing there, I guess," Rich said. "Because otherwise it was beginning to click a little bit here."