{"id":442479,"date":"2025-10-13T07:13:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T07:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/442479\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T07:13:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T07:13:23","slug":"commanders-jayden-daniels-wont-relive-the-hail-mary-that-beat-bears-a-year-ago-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/442479\/","title":{"rendered":"Commanders’ Jayden Daniels won’t relive the Hail Mary that beat Bears a year ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASHBURN, Va. \u2013 Jayden Daniels sees no point in reliving the \u201cHail Maryland,\u201d as some Commanders fans called it, owing to the game’s location, or the \u201cFail Mary,\u201d as some Bears fans called it, owing to their defense’s flub \u2014 the 52-yard, last-play TD pass he threw<\/a> to Noah Brown a year ago that lifted Washington past Chicago.<\/p>\n

So what if the rematch, also in Landover, Maryland<\/a>, is headed to national television on Monday night? And who cares if that particular bit of magic was part of a series of late heroics by Daniels<\/a> en route to claiming AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and leading Washington to the NFC title game?<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, that Hail Mary isn\u2019t going to help us win a game on Monday,” Daniels responded when asked why he didn’t want to examine the past. “So what\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hard to argue with that.<\/p>\n

The guy who was all alone when he grabbed the ball in the end zone, Brown, wasn’t interested in chatting, either: Through a Commanders team spokesman, he declined a reporter\u2019s request to discuss the play. He has been dealing with groin and knee injuries and will miss his fourth consecutive game Monday.<\/p>\n

Washington coach Dan Quinn said during the week he had no plans to dissect that moment with his players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s last year\u2019s story. It was awesome \u2014 we loved it \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t apply to this week\u2019s game at all, unless we get into that exact scenario and that exact situation. So then we can talk about it,\u201d said Quinn, whose team can pull even with the Philadelphia Eagles atop the NFC East by beating Chicago. “But until then, we’ve got a lot of stuff to get better at and work on to get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did acknowledge it \u201cwas one of the most fun chapters of last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Commanders enter Monday with a 3-2 record<\/a> after alternating wins and losses all season, including a 27-10 victory at the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 5. Daniels was returning after sitting out two games \u2014 the first he’s missed in the NFL \u2014 with an injured left knee, and he looked just fine.<\/p>\n

The Bears are 2-2 in their first season under Ben Johnson<\/a> and come in after their bye week, which followed a two-game winning streak. Because he wasn’t with Chicago in 2024, Johnson had a built-in excuse to avoid the topic and used it, saying: “We\u2019re a new team and we\u2019re just focused on winning this game this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

That disastrous conclusion on Oct. 27, 2024, was the start of Chicago’s 10-game losing streak and the beginning of the end of Matt Eberflus’ tenure as coach. <\/p>\n

A refresher: Chicago led 15-12 after a TD run with 25 seconds remaining. That was down to 19 seconds after the ensuing kickoff return put Washington at its own 24-yard line with zero timeouts left. Completions by Daniels, playing with a rib injury, to Zach Ertz and Terry McLaurin moved the ball to Washington’s 48 with just two seconds to go. <\/p>\n

Time for one last play<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The QB scrambled around for about 12 seconds, eventually heaving the ball from his 35.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve coached that up the same way every time. … It\u2019s important that everybody\u2019s on the same page there,\u201d Eberflus, now the defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, said this week.<\/p>\n

One glaring issue for the Bears: Instead of paying attention at the start of the play, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson<\/a> had turned his back to the line of scrimmage and was taunting fans<\/a> when the ball was snapped. <\/p>\n

By the time he got involved, at the front of the end zone, he got a hand on the football, only for it to end up in the arms of the player<\/a> he was supposed to be covering: Brown.<\/p>\n

Stevenson said he \u201cgot a couple side-eyes\u201d from teammates over that gaffe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was harsh. It hurt my feelings. That\u2019s the best way I can explain it \u2014 it just hurt my feelings, being a football player and having one of those mistakes that\u2019s going to linger around,\u201d Stevenson said this week. \u201cEven when my son grows up, I\u2019ve got to explain that to him. It definitely hurt.\u201d <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP Sports Writers Schuyler Dixon in Dallas and Andrew Seligman in Chicago contributed to this report. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NFL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nfl<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ASHBURN, Va. \u2013 Jayden Daniels sees no point in reliving the \u201cHail Maryland,\u201d as some Commanders fans called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,1035,692,391,2493,7291,7,734,9113,6,1478,9,7186,1471,7025],"class_list":{"0":"post-442479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-ben-johnson","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bears","12":"tag-chicagobears","13":"tag-dan-quinn","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-jayden-daniels","16":"tag-matt-eberflus","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-noah-brown","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-terry-mclaurin","21":"tag-tyrique-stevenson","22":"tag-zach-ertz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115365622965556111","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}