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Williams, Daniels shine in NFL preseason debuts

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2 years ago

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Williams, Daniels shine in NFL preseason debuts

By Jenna West, Kevin Fishbain and Ben Standig

Saturday’s preseason action gave NFL fans their first glimpse of quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, the Nos. 1 and 2 picks of this year’s draft, and the rookies delivered.

The Buffalo Bills hosted the Chicago Bears, who played Williams for the entire first quarter. He delivered a throw late in the quarter that made everyone’s eyes go wide when Williams rolled to his right and, on the run, threw a 26-yard pass to Cole Kmet. It might’ve been slightly behind Kmet, but the arm strength to make that throw while moving to his right is rare.

Both of Williams’ drives ended in field goals, giving the Bears an early lead against the Bills, who started Josh Allen.

Williams finished with 4 of 7 with 95 throwing yards, while he added one carry for 13 rushing yards. Backup Tyson Bagent took over in the second quarter.

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In New York, Daniels and the Washington Commanders took on the Jets. The anticipation for Daniels’ debut, even in the preseason, became must-see TV from the moment Washington drafted the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. His dual-threat capabilities shined on the opening possession.

Daniels, a passer who runs, uncorked a perfect 42-yard strike down the right side to wide receiver Dyami Brown on third-and-six to New York’s 24-yard line. Facing third-and-three from the Jets’ three-yard line after a pair of first downs, Daniels faked a handoff on the zone read and bounced outside for an easy touchdown run to the right corner of the end zone.

That was all the coaching staff needed to see, especially with a shorthanded offensive line; Washington’s top three tackles were ruled out. Daniels finished 2-of-3 for 45 yards with the three-yard scamper on the 11-play, 70-yard opening drive. Marcus Mariota took over on the next possession and Daniels’ day was over.

How did Williams look?

It looked similar to his training camp struggles when Williams dropped back for his first NFL pass. The pocket eventually collapsed, he was forced to scramble, Darnell Wright was flagged for holding and Williams eventually threw it away as he got to the sideline. But he kept his eyes downfield the entire time, and two plays later, he calmly went through his reads before hitting DJ Moore for a first down on third-and-12.

On the next play, Williams didn’t panic against the rush and got the ball to D’Andre Swift on a screen pass. It might’ve been a no-look pass, too. Swift took it 42 yards.
The following drive went 74 yards on 12 plays and featured two more Williams completions and a 13-yard scramble on third down — when Williams used his slip n’ slide skills to slide in the open field. — Kevin Fishbain, Bears staff writer

What ignited his throw to Kmet?

An illegal contact on third down when Williams tried to find wide receiver Rome Odunze ignited that drive. I noticed Williams was pretty adamant a flag be thrown, and he was fired up about the new set of downs. Then he got to work. Kmet and Moore dropped would-be completions, and when Williams’ heave to Odunze on third down in the back of the end zone was too high, you could tell Williams saw an opening and wanted it.

The offense didn’t have any pre-snap penalties, which was a priority for head coach Matt Eberflus. While Williams would’ve liked to have found the end zone, he did plenty to show the potential of what’s to come. — Fishbain

How is Daniels settling in with Washington?

Passing highlights or low moments typically define the perception of a quarterback, especially for a rookie arriving on the scene. Yet the other aspects of the job that require smarts and maturity stood out to coach Dan Quinn in training camp.

The pass to Brown was a strong example. Speaking on the local television broadcast in the first half, running back Austin Ekeler said Daniels checked out of a screen pass to target the receiver running long.

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“I had high expectations for (Daniels) coming in,” Quinn said earlier in the week, “but I would say he’s definitely surpassed even my expectations of the readiness, the command. I knew he was going to be cool, knowing the system. He’s just got that way about him.”

The Jets sat 28 players for Saturday’s preseason opener while the Commanders sat 11, including tight end Zach Ertz. That’s important context, especially since Washington’s offense generated minimal yards in Thursday’s rain-soaked joint practice against New York’s first-string defense. However, Daniels displayed poise and steady decision-making. He continued to protect the ball, a habit that’s been constant all training camp.

“It feels like the game is starting to slow down for (Daniels) even more,” McLaurin continued. “Coming in, he had a great feel (for) his ball placement and his anticipation. I think that’s what really sets him apart.

As offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury installed more of the system, Daniels began showing off his arm talent with pinpoint throws down the field. The completion to Brown was quite the example.

Teammates have praised Daniels’ work ethic — the 23-year-old is among the first to the team facility before practices — and locker room camaraderie. The rookie arrived for Saturday’s game in a Doug Williams jersey. Williams won the 1987 Super Bowl with Washington and currently works as a senior advisor to the team. — Ben Standig, Commanders senior writer

Will Daniels get the starting gig?

Quinn has yet to name the starter for Washington’s Week 1 matchup at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There is no drama here. Daniels will get the gig. He’s earned the opportunity. That’s different from saying he will light up the league from the jump. He’ll need help, and the offensive line questions remain. After one preseason drive, so do the sky-high expectations. — Standig

Required reading

(Photo: Mark Konezny / USA Today)

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Culture

Can You Match the Places These Authors Lived With Settings in Their Books?

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1 day ago

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May 26, 2026

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Can You Match the Places These Authors Lived With Settings in Their Books?

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. 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 works if you’d like to do further reading.

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Book Review: ‘America, U.S.A.,’ by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

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2 days ago

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May 25, 2026

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Book Review: ‘America, U.S.A.,’ by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.

In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.

If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”

Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”

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It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.

Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.

The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”

By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.

A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”

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Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.

Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.

AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31

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Culture

Summer’s Best Beach Reads

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3 days ago

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May 24, 2026

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Summer’s Best Beach Reads

Moore is a dependable ingredient in any summer reading soufflé. Her airy novels accomplish what they came to do: entertain and transport, without the pyrotechnics of, say, books that eschew quotation marks. In “Down With the Shipmans,” three sisters, laden with baggage, converge on their late mother’s beach cottage, only to learn that their father and his much younger wife are planning to sell the place.

The stakes are high, the drama is juicy and the views are sublime. Moore even provides two beach dogs — Leo (an unruly pit bull mix) and Cinnamon (“golden retriever, red bandanna, long pink tongue”) — to keep things lively. (Comes out June 2)

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