Commanders Notebook: Brandon Coleman Dominates Lineman 1-on-1 Drills

ASHBURN, Va. — It was one of our favorite days of training camp with the Washington Commanders on Thursday.

The Commanders were in pads for the second time, and it was also time for the offensive and defensive line one-on-one drills. A drill that typically leans in favor of the defensive side, which makes it more impressive when an offensive player dominates.

And that is exactly what Washington rookie offensive tackle Brandon Coleman did in his first run with the team, and it’s how we start today’s notebook.

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The best left tackles in the NFL all have one thing in common, they don’t give up many – if any – pressures around their side of the offensive line.

If Coleman is going to become one of those someday then he’s going to need to stack good practices to get there, and he’s doing just that in training camp right now.

He’s also taking advantage of guys like Andrew Wylie and Cornelius Lucas missing time this training camp. With Wylie dealing with ‘tightness’ Coleman got his first first-team reps. Since then, he’s been getting more and more of them, and is looking pretty comfortable at that left tackle position.

That’s where he lined up Thursday along with the first-team offensive line and proceeded to go four-for-four in his matchups against Commanders pass rusher.

Beating Clelin Ferrell twice and Dante Fowler Jr. and Jamin Davis once each, Coleman looked every bit the part of a starting caliber left tackle. Don’t crown him yet, but maybe get the polish out and ready in case that time comes before we may have expected it to.

Today’s look at quarterback Jayden Daniels was a good one and included a touchdown pass to receiver Terry McLaurin and a solid scramble to evade pressure and make something out of nothing when the defense covered up all of his available targets.

On the day Daniels missed on just one pass, though it wasn’t a perfect day outside of that either.

Twice on quick throws Daniels was off target leading his receivers deeper into the backfield than desired. Each resulted in what would have been a blown-up play in real action, and shows that for all the good Daniels has shown thus far, there’s still room to grow.

When there’s one touchdown pass all day it tends to be the best one, and in this case a deep ball down the left sideline to McLaurin is the play of the day.

Daniels had McLaurin lined up accross from cornerback Emmanuel Forbes and it was almost too easy to predict that Daniels would go there with the ball.

After letting his target get a full head of steam Daniels let it rip and McLaurin brought in the beautifully placed pass just beyond the reach of Forbes who was in good position, but not as good as the pass.

Safety Quan Martin was coming over to help and in full contact would have had a chance to at least knock McLaurin out of bounds before scoring, but the explosive play was all but secured as soon as Daniels let it rip for our play of the day on Day 7 of training camp with Washington.

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