Jayden Daniels won Offensive Rookie of the Year for 2024, and rightly so. But even that award might not do justice to the campaign he had. It might have been the best rookie season by a QB ever. He’s one of just three quarterbacks to win multiple road playoff games in their first year, and the other two didn’t carry their teams the way he did. And he certainly had a bigger rookie season than NFL legends Joe Montana and Dan Marino.
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Back when they were drafted, in 1979 and 1983, respectively, rookie QBs often sat early in their careers. Montana started just eight games across his first two years, and Marino didn’t get his first start until Week 6 of his rookie season, at which point he took the league by storm.
Both Montana and Marino went on to have iconic careers, thanks to their football IQ and elite throwing arms. But their legs certainly didn’t play much of a role in their success.
Montana and Marino were classic, statuesque quarterbacks from a bygone era. So when they were asked to discuss Daniels during a panel alongside the young Washington Commanders QB himself, both legends had high praise for him overall. However, they also couldn’t help but hide their jealousy about his running ability.
“Very special player, and coming in and playing at the level he played this early in his career is really fun to watch. Knowing how difficult that is to get done on a week-to-week basis, and everybody’s aiming for you when you start having success,” Montana started.
“And it makes it even more difficult. And the things that he was able to do, and bring the level of the team up to almost get them to the Super Bowl that year. To me, it’s fun to watch quarterbacks like that. I just wish I could run like that, but I’m a little bit older,” he added.
Marino quickly chimed in to say that while Montana wasn’t as nimble as someone like, say, his 49ers successor Steve Young, he was far more mobile than Marino himself ever was.
“I couldn’t run at all. I had minus yards rushing in my NFL career for 17 years. No actually it wasn’t minus, but it was only 87… That’s hard to do. You have to try to do that.”
Believe it or not, Marino was exactly right. He amassed just 87 total rushing yards through 17 years with the Miami Dolphins, including nine touchdown runs. He finished with positive yards rushing in just five of those 17 years, and the 87 total yards on 310 attempts gave him a sparkling 0.3 yards per rushing attempt. Who does this guy think he is, Barry Sanders?
Montana, meanwhile, was a much more productive runner during his 15-year career in the NFL. He never finished a season with negative rushing yards like Marino. And he went for 1,676 rushing yards in total (17th among QBs when he retired in 1994), including a pretty decent record of 20 rushing TDs. His rushing zenith came in 1983, when he rumbled for 284 yards and two scores.
To put into perspective how much the game has changed since the days of Montana and Marino, here are Jayden Daniels’ rushing numbers from just one season: 891 yards and six TDs on 148 attempts.
Daniels passed Marino’s career total of 87 in his very first NFL game, when he ran for 88 rushing yards. One more year like that, and Daniels will have already passed Montana as well. That’s how much the NFL game has changed in the last four decades.
