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)
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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