Culture
Jayden Daniels’ growth with VR simulation has Commanders embracing mind games
ASHBURN, Va. — Kliff Kingsbury embraces the virtual reality simulation Jayden Daniels credits with advancing his quarterback skills, even if the technology initially sent him in the wrong direction.
“The first time I put it on, I backed into the wall,” said Kingsbury, the Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator and former Texas Tech quarterback. “It felt like the (pass) rush was coming.”
The former Arizona Cardinals head coach spent his one-year absence from the pro ranks determined to seek new approaches should he return. Playing in Mike Leach’s “air raid” system with the Red Raiders from 2000 to 2002 meant Kingsbury quarterbacked one of football’s recent offensive evolutions.
He isn’t about to stunt the latest.
“I’m all in on it,” Kingsbury said of the VR platform. “I mean, it’s an unbelievable technology.”
Six weeks into his rookie season, Daniels is the talk of the league and part of nascent MVP conversations. The Commanders, led by a highly efficient offense tied for second at 29.7 points per game, sport a buzzy 4-2 record entering Sunday’s home game against the Carolina Panthers.
Perhaps the only thing quicker than Daniels’ accelerated growth is the speed at which he sets the VR simulation. That would be the highest possible setting.
“It moves faster within the VR than actual human beings,” Daniels said before Washington opened the 2024 season. “Once you get out there, everything slows down. I know this is coming. I’ve seen this before, (and) it moved more than 20 times faster in VR.”
Jayden Daniels works with virtual reality every morning like a “flight simulator for QBs”@tracywolfson has more 🎤 pic.twitter.com/LmScO2SBt4
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) October 13, 2024
The simulation from the German company Cognilize arrived on the LSU campus ahead of Daniels’ final season. The dual-threat quarterback became an immediate disciple of the immersive technology initially designed for top-shelf soccer players to get extra reps beyond practice without additional wear and tear. Fast forward, the quarterback with mid- to late-round draft projections entering 2023 became a star.
Daniels dazzled with 50 touchdowns — 40 passing, 10 rushing — 3,812 passing yards and 4,946 total yards from scrimmage with just four interceptions en route to winning the Heisman Trophy. He had not passed for 3,000 yards or more than 17 touchdowns in any of his previous four seasons at LSU or Arizona State.
When LSU’s staffers lowered the VR’s pace to game speed, “It felt like slow motion,” Daniels said.
That hasn’t changed, as shown by his pinpoint accuracy — Daniels’ 75.3 completion percentage leads the NFL — and Matrix-like movements around defenders. He ranks fourth among quarterbacks in total yards (1,726) and has accounted for 10 touchdowns, six through the air.
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Regardless of results, not every coach grows with his or her sport or accepts new and different approaches. Some, stuck in their ways, are willing to rise and fall with their methods. The Commanders staff under coach Dan Quinn keeps an open mind about innovations, how they can apply to multiple positions and whatever is coming around the bend.
“It’s one of the fun parts of coaching,” Quinn said. “Nothing really stays the same, and there’s things that evolve and move forward.”
Washington targeted Daniels early in the pre-draft cycle, meaning Kingsbury had time to start formulating a plan for the Commanders’ next quarterback hope. Early meetings after the draft, where Washington made Daniels the No. 2 pick, led the coordinator to make the VR simulation a “huge component” of his weekly process.
“It’s a unique technology, and it’s definitely for the quarterbacks,” Kingsbury said. “I think it is more effective than them just watching the film. They’re going through their reads, they’re going through their progressions, they’re seeing it.”
Daniels is also simultaneously hearing Kingsbury. The coordinator tweaked his daily schedule to spend 45 to 60 minutes narrating the weekly plays into a recorder. Kingsbury’s voice is the soundtrack for those VR sessions.
“(Pilots) don’t go get trained in real planes. They do their flight simulators. … (Jayden) has that thing on all the time. He can see our reads and routes and hears my voice in it. It’s as real as you can (get to) getting game reps, and your mind doesn’t know the difference,” Kingsbury said. “Your mind thinks you’re doing it.”
Soon after the draft, the organization purchased the VR simulation for its quarterbacks. Marcus Mariota, the Commanders’ backup and a former NFL starter, finds the modern application “amazing” in helping quarterbacks develop comfort within an offense and recognize patterns.
“I believe defenses are patterns,” Mariota said. “Recognizing them quickly is important, and (the VR) seems to help Jayden with that.”
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Confidence throwing into coverage and “having a feel for space” is part of Daniels’ college-to-NFL adjustment and another way the simulation aids improvement.
“You got to throw some guys open,” Daniels said. “There’s (defenders) that have played in this league a long time that are very savvy and know what’s coming, all the patterning and stuff like that. You got to make some tight-window throws. So that’s what you got to do in this league.”
The experience isn’t only about after the snap. Simulations allow the quarterback to move in the pocket and use the entire field. Details of road stadiums, including the location of play clocks, enable the user to experience the whole scene before stepping inside.
Less sophisticated versions of the VR product existed in the past. Mariota received a sneak peek at a simulator run by Stanford years ago. The 2014 Heisman winner recalled the process using clips from game tape that couldn’t come close to replicating gamelike situations.
Nine-year veteran Jeff Driskel “played around” with VR tech as a rookie. As a “visual learner,” Washington’s emergency third-string quarterback recognizes the massive improvements from then to now. It’s personalized each game “based on what we think they’ll do on defense and what we’ll do on offense.”
Quinn, 54, leans into the teaching aspect of his job and assembled his staff accordingly. Seeing this advancement of technology lights up the “lifelong learner.” Now backup quarterbacks such as rookie Sam Hartman, who rarely gets significant practice time within the team’s offense, have a tool to help them learn.
“Reps are always few and far between for everybody, especially at the level and pace we’re going,” Hartman said. “The goal for quarterbacks is getting reps and seeing every play a million times. (VR) really helps.”
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Hartman, a member of Washington’s practice squad, has played video games wearing the Oculus headset but gets motion sickness with all the actual movement. The football simulation does not require running around.
“If I had Jayden’s speed, I’d run around a little more,” cracked Hartman, an undrafted free agent out of Notre Dame.
Mariota and Driskel said there is no telling how much assistance Daniels receives from the simulation or how he would execute under center without VR. They know that more reps lead to honing instincts. When instincts take over in real games, success often follows.
Daniels suffered a concussion in practice last year the week before LSU faced SEC-rival Florida. The injury kept him from the physical but not the mental parts of practice. He then delivered the signature performance of his college career with 372 passing yards, 234 rushing and five combined touchdowns in the 52-35 victory.
“That’s where the VR helped a lot,” Daniels said.
For now, only Washington’s quarterbacks have access to the groundbreaking technology. When simulations are available for others to trick their minds, the Commanders coaches won’t be afraid to embrace whatever scenarios come their way. The one with Daniels has created quite a nice reality.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Patrick Smith, Michael Reaves, Michael Zagaris / Getty Images)
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
Cold weather can serve as a plot point or emphasize the mood of a scene, and this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the locations of recent novels that work winter conditions right into the story. Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, the questions offer an additional hint about the setting. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
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