LOVERRO: Believe it, anything is possible

OPINION:

“Anything seems possible now? Why not?” That’s a line from a column I wrote in September.

The Washington Commanders had given fans plenty of early-season reasons to be optimistic, but this?

This? Did this seem possible?

A 12-win regular season and road playoff wins over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the No. 1 team in the NFC, the Detroit Lions?

I’m not sure that I believed this season would lead to the NFC championship game for the first time since 1991.

Given truth serum, I doubt that most of you believed it either.

But in that Commanders locker room? Anything did seem possible, even an impressive 45-31 upset win over the favored Lions.

They had trust in Jayden Daniels early this season. The rookie quarterback had won over his teammates long before they took the field Saturday night. 

“The only word I can really say is hope,” tackle Sam Cosmi said after their Monday night 38-33 victory over the favored Cincinnati Bengals. “I believe. We believe.”

Less than a week later, after Washington’s 42-14 win over the Cardinals in Arizona, running back Jeremy McNichols – a seven-year veteran – anointed Daniels. “He leads us on and off the field,” said McNichols, who scored a key touchdown in Saturday night’s win over Detroit. “So we are going to rally behind him.”

Mind you, we were still in the month of September here. Baseball playoffs had not begun. The presidential election was six weeks away.

It’s a new year now, and whether you use the word hope or trust, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone devoted to the Washington Commanders who doesn’t have either now in the young quarterback.

Heck, why be bound by the DMV? It would be hard to find anyone in the NFL right now who doesn’t believe in the greatness of Daniels, who has put the power and glory back into the job of being this franchise’s quarterback – a job that was once considered second in stature only to the president in this town. By the way, inauguration? What inauguration?

Daniels was the most important player on the field Saturday night and made everyone else around him important – like Terry McLaurin, who took a screen pass from Daniels in the second quarter and ran 58 yards for a score, and Dyami Brown, who caught a beautiful 38-yard bomb from Daniels.

He didn’t have to do it alone, like he had to do for much of the final stretch run of the season. The defense came up big with five turnovers, one of which was returned for a touchdown by Quan Martin. 

The presence of a healthy Austin Ekeler, who ran for 47 yards on six carries and caught four passes for 41 yards, was a key weapon that kept the battered Lions defense off balance.

But they are planets that revolve around the sun that is Daniels, who completed 22 of 31 passes for 299 yards, two touchdowns, a 122.9 quarterback rating and 51 yards rushing with zero sacks and zero interceptions in the biggest game of his career. He is wearing out thesaurus’ in the media trying to come up with new ways every week to describe something nobody has ever seen before from a rookie quarterback.

“I always believed that we could achieve more than people give us credit for,” Daniels told reporters after the game.

So did the rest of the team – certainly coach Dan Quinn, whose commitment to going for it on fourth down is based as much as his trust in his quarterback as it is in any analytics formula, believed more was possible because of Daniels.“He makes great decisions with the football, and that takes real mindfulness,” Quinn told reporters.

Quinn, his staff and general manager Adam Peters have had a real mindfulness about what notes to hit for his team’s preparation before every game. They hit a high note last week when the entire team paid tribute to Washington Super Bowl-winning quarterback Doug Williams, with all of them wearing Williams’ No. 17 jersey and giving him a standing ovation in the team auditorium. 

Williams is a senior advisor on the staff, a mentor to Daniels and the honorary captain through the playoffs. It was a great way to connect this team with the glory of the past, unlike the regular trotting out of the Super Bowl trophies that former owner and lonely yacht captain Dan Snyder would often do to cover up the lack of trust and hope in his teams.

They may have been wearing No. 17, but the No. 5 jersey that Daniels wears is seared into this team’s soul.

• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.