HIM?! THAT’S THE GUY?!

LSU players are in disbelief. This cannot be Jayden Daniels.

The Arizona State transfer has just walked into the indoor practice facility for the first time on a March afternoon in 2022. Chatter had spread that the coaches thought Daniels, a fourth-year junior, could be special. But when he shows up, several LSU players and staff members give each other side-eyes.

“No swag whatsoever,” receiver Malik Nabers says now. “He looked like a kid on his first day of high school.”

At the time, Daniels’ official bio lists him at 6-foot-4, 200 pounds, but he is probably an inch shorter and 25 pounds less than that. He has a backpack that hangs lower than cool kids would ever wear it. His hair is a mess. He’s wearing glasses as he cross-references his printed class schedule against his phone’s calendar. He doesn’t say much. He looks so out of place that one of the LSU assistant coaches sneaks a picture when Daniels isn’t paying attention.

Nabers goes so far as to call Daniels a “weird nerd” to his face, after knowing him for all of two minutes. Some teammates pile on, too, laughing and ribbing Daniels. Assistant coach Sherman Wilson, the guy who takes the picture, tells Daniels he looks like a “bum.”

Most of the banter is good-natured ribbing of the rookie. But some of it is a test. LSU has a culture that has long encouraged players put newcomers through the wringer before an SEC season begins, so they know what level of toughness is needed to succeed. His new teammates keep telling Daniels that life and football are different in the SEC, that his California cool better be ready to grind. He is third on the LSU depth chart, and they let him know he’s entering into the QB battle of his life.

Daniels handles the digs well on the surface, but underneath, he’s hurting. Daniels has always had a warm, calm exterior, and he’s a better listener than any star quarterback needs to be. But he’s at a wobbly point in his life, both as a football player and as a person. His mechanics are a mess — LSU coaches think his feet and his eyes are doing two different things on most plays, leading him to run when he should throw and throw when he should run.

His mindset isn’t much better following an ugly public end to his Arizona State career. When he entered the transfer portal in February 2022, a viral video surfaced of his ex-teammates clearing out his locker and dumping on him. Daniels took the high road and responded to the video with kind words of appreciation. But deep down, he lands in Baton Rouge with a wounded soul and time running out on his college career.

In his early days at LSU, he makes the conscious decision to kill his new teammates with kindness, absorbing the barbs with a big smile on his face. From the outside, he looks as if he has the perfect amount of thick skin and humility to battle for the starting job. On the inside, he admits later, he feels the sting of being the new kid getting picked on.

Players leave the facility that day liking Jayden Daniels, the person. But Nabers and other players wonder, how will this nerd hold up under pressure?

LSU BEATS OUT Missouri for Daniels’ services. Daniels likes what new coach Brian Kelly and his staff are selling, which is that Baton Rouge is the best place for him to reboot his career. It helps that Joe Burrow, an Ohio State castaway, had just played in the Super Bowl after LSU resuscitated his career two years earlier.

LSU coaches are up-front with Daniels; he’ll have to win the job in an extremely competitive quarterback room. The team already has Garrett Nussmeier, who showed incredible upside as a freshman but only had four games of mop-up duty under his belt. Senior Myles Brennan has experience, but injury and production problems make him a high-basement, low-ceiling option. A good, healthy QB competition would be a positive thing, coaches think.

Daniels says he likes that he’ll have to win his spot. But the pressure on a transfer with an expiring play clock on his career can be daunting, something that Burrow says he felt a few years earlier when he was considering his move to LSU. Second chances are everywhere in college football these days. But if Daniels flamed out in Baton Rouge, he might not have found a good third chance elsewhere.

LSU is desperate, too. Kelly uses the word “infusion” to describe what he thinks the locker room needs. And normally measured offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock has a final videoconference call with Daniels when he’s in the portal, where he catches himself blurting out, “If you come to LSU, we can win the Heisman together.”

The coaching staff knows that there is a version of Daniels that can be a superstar, and LSU could use all the help it can get. Kelly and his staff are facing a flood of transfers and decommitments, and all the normal roster turnover after a coaching change. By the time spring practice began, Kelly says the program was down to 39 scholarship players in a sport where the top programs have 85 scholarship guys.

By then, Daniels’ highlight tape was perplexing. As a freshman at ASU in 2019, Daniels had 17 touchdowns and two interceptions, with flashes of the running ability that eventually made him one of the great breakout rookies in NFL history. However, 2020 was a lost year due to the COVID pandemic, with Arizona State playing only four games in a static 2-2 season. In 2021, Daniels was choppy during a turbulent 8-5 junior season, and all eight wins were vacated because of NCAA violations by coach Herm Edwards and his staff.

There were stretches where Daniels tried to do everything for a bad ASU offense, and there were other times when he seemed as if he was suffering from paralysis-by-analysis on dropbacks. He ended the year with 10 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. On many plays, the top half of his body would be doing one thing and the bottom half would be doing another, leading to airmailed passes and panicked QB scrambles when receivers were running wide open. Daniels entered the portal as a half-scratched lottery ticket running low on belief in himself.

At LSU, Daniels fits right in. But his new teammates goof on Daniels with great delight all spring. He tells his closest confidante on the coaching staff, Wilson, the truth, which is that he’s gritting his teeth some days to avoid being antagonistic as he catches strays. But his teammates don’t see any of that. Then and now, Daniels projects an approachability and curiosity that sometimes appears as if nothing bothers him. In this case, the California cool is helping.

But his competitive side comes roaring out sometimes. One day that spring, a bunch of offensive players went to Top Golf. Daniels mentions that he’s never been a golfer, and his first swing confirms it. Everybody laughs in disbelief when he unveils a clunky mess of a windup.

“You see him play football, and he is so athletic and fast, and his arm is so crazy, then you see him swing a golf club and go, ‘Man, what’s going on?'” says Josh Williams, the former LSU running back. “You don’t expect a golf swing like that.”

Daniels is irritated when the other players goof on him, and he vows to work his butt off to improve at golf. Teammates say he made solid progress over the next two years — “He got better, but only a little better,” Williams says. To this day, his first golf swing ranks as an all-time oof moment that players pick on Daniels about.

The guys all love seeing that side of him. Before spring ball is even over, Daniels has established himself as a friend, good teammate and strong contender for the QB job. Nobody outworks him — some players still remember getting to the facility expecting to be the first guy there, only to find Daniels already lifting or in the film room. Other guys recall going home for the day, realizing they forgot something and going back to an almost empty building… and there sat Daniels, still working.

But Daniels isn’t even close to the clear starter as spring ball winds down. And as well as he feels as if he fits in, he’s still not sure if he has friends or frenemies because of the way his teammates pick at him. He mostly bites his tongue at first. But he admits to Wilson that his thick skin act is just that, an act — he feels every barb as if it’s a paper cut.

At this point, Daniels is candid about his mindset and how much he needs this new dynamic to work. His once-promising college football career is on the ropes, and he needs to enter the QB competition with the right balance of confidence and humility to get back on track. He still routinely comes across the video of his old ASU teammates flaming him, and now his new teammates are giving him a hard time, too? Daniels feels some panic underneath the calm he shows on the outside.

Wilson is the right man at the right time. He’s only 33 then, with the official title of director of player retention, which means he does some recruiting, some brand management and some coaching. That often makes him the first one in the door with players, and he often becomes a steadying presence as they try to find their footing at LSU. Players reverently call him Sherm, not Coach Wilson or even Sherman. He has an incredible résumé for such a young guy — he has worked in the scouting department for the Los Angeles Rams for several years and on the coaching staffs at both Louisiana Tech and Memphis before coming to Baton Rouge.

The thing that makes Wilson such a secret weapon at LSU is his ability to challenge players in the most aggressive way that can still be considered friendly. With Daniels, he manages to be both the biggest irritant in his life and also his most trusted adviser. Wilson realizes right away that Daniels responds well to his mild ribbing if he thinks the ribbing is coming from a place of love and support. That’s a Wilson specialty — when he drives LSU players, they often feel as if they want to show him up, rather than rough him up. His tone is that of a caring agitator, such as before the Heisman season in 2023, when Wilson relentlessly began texting Daniels a preseason ranking that had him behind Duke’s Riley Leonard.

“No way he’s better than me,” Daniels would say, and that would be the propane in his tank for the day. Eighteen months later, Daniels won the Heisman and should have thanked Riley Leonard. But instead, he shouts out Wilson at the very end of his speech, after his mom and dad, for the way that Wilson pushed him at LSU. “You might be annoying,” Daniels says. “But I love you, dog.”

Wilson annoys Daniels — with love — from day one at LSU in 2022, when he snapped that photo of Daniels when he wasn’t looking. Wilson sees Daniels’ scars from the way his Arizona State days ended and can tell that the transfer is putting up a facade to cover that up. His self-confidence passes the smell test with most people who interact with him. But Wilson sees through it. He thinks Daniels is covering up some deep insecurities, that he is focused too much on outside stuff and not focusing enough on the very straightforward idea of just getting better every minute of every day.

They find important common ground in an unexpected source: Kobe Bryant. Mamba Mentality had always been Daniels’ adopted philosophy, which is essential in understanding why he so fiercely defends Kobe’s honor. That first spring at LSU, in 2022, somebody made the mistake of saying that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. Then and now, this turns out to be a cheat code to instantly get under Daniels’ skin.

Daniels is a Southern California kid, through and through, and he will not allow any disparaging of his hero, Bryant. Even now, his old friends love winding him up about Kobe. “I tell him all the time that Jordan was better,” says Rachaad White, his former Arizona State teammate. “Tell him that I said that. Tell him that Rachaad is telling people Kobe wasn’t close to MJ.”

So, Wilson homes in on the nuances of how Bryant explained Mamba Mentality, which often is watered down to being very competitive. There’s more to it than that. Notably, Bryant talked often about the relentless process of greatness, of working extremely hard, often alone, at ridiculous hours. Wilson makes a connection for Daniels that will change his life.

“See, Kobe wanted to be the best to ever play basketball,” Wilson says. “But he knew to get there, he had to be the best Kobe Bryant above all else. He raised his level, which made everybody around him try to rise up, too.” It was a lightbulb moment for Daniels. Now, Wilson’s Dr. Phil mumbo jumbo makes more sense to him.

On the field, Daniels has the best skill set of the LSU quarterbacks — everything the world saw in last season’s NFL playoff run is on full display that spring. He makes an instant connection with Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr., with stretches of practice where those three look like the most dangerous passing group in college football. On plays when the pocket breaks down and he has to run, Daniels busts loose, and the LSU defense can’t tackle him.

Denbrock has moments when he thinks, “I might have been right — Jayden can win the Heisman.”

But there are also way too many times when the coaching staff groans at Daniels’ inconsistency. Right after an incredible practice scramble for 40 yards, he’ll get trapped in the pocket and sacked three times in a row. He especially struggles with his feet getting synced up with his head and arm — Kelly and Denbrock keep stressing to him that a good throw begins with his feet and to let his lower body guide the way a play unfolds. But he’s not getting it, causing immense frustration for the coaches and also for Daniels. Too often, he’s dancing around in the pocket, head rotating from side to side, not secure enough with himself to make a unified decision and go with it. “Your eyes need to follow your feet, not the other way around,” they pound into his head.

The three quarterbacks battle through March and April, and when the spring game ends on April 22, Kelly sounds more unsure than ever who his best quarterback will be. He even throws in touted QB recruit Walker Howard in the mix with the others. “I don’t know if we cleared up anything,” Kelly says.

But behind closed doors, the entire program thinks Daniels is capable of big things heading into summer 2022. He hasn’t yet put it all together for an extended period of time, but his vibe has begun attracting the true believers among his teammates and coaches. Wilson, for one, thinks he will continue to separate himself and eventually win the job. Teammates gravitate toward him, one Kobe argument at a time, and when he starts late-night throwing sessions with his receivers, attendance is strong.

By then, he and Nabers are very close. They text each other constantly, and then each of them starts a group chat with another player, and then another player. Nabers considers himself a troll, and he spots a fellow troll in Daniels. As he has gotten more comfortable inside the LSU locker room, Daniels has begun to joke back with his teammates in a way that they respect.

Daniels is especially adept at working over his receivers. When Daniels first started throwing workouts with his receivers, he had sporadic participation. But Daniels figures out that he can play guys off each other. Nabers laughs a little, thinking back to how many times he would get home from a full day of classes and workouts, then take a shower and put his feet up. Then his phone would buzz as late as 9 or 10 p.m., with Daniels saying he is going to the indoor facility for throwing work. “Just got out of the shower,” Nabers would text back.

Daniels: “Get another shower later.”
Nabers: “Nah, maybe tomorrow.”
Daniels: “OK, I guess I’ll just throw with…” and then he would toss out the name of another receiver.
Nabers: “Be there in 10 minutes.”

By the time summer practice kicks off, Daniels has friends all over the locker room. Now, he just has to go win the job as the calendar turns to August.

The one thing Daniels isn’t ready for? The weather.

DANIELS HAD BEEN in Baton Rouge for a few months when he decided to swallow his pride and ask the most pressing question on his mind: What kind of hellish inferno had he transferred into?

He had grown up in Southern California, where summer temperatures could get into the high 90s, but the strong Santa Ana winds kept the air dry and manageable. The average rainfall in the summer is just .1 inches per month. When he went off to ASU, he found Tempe to be 10 degrees hotter but just as dry.

So, he is absolutely unprepared for a Louisiana summer that feels something like a hot tub inside a sauna, with frequent outbursts from the heavens that can seem like the end times. One day in July 2022, he asks Wilson, “Does it always sound like this?”

“What?” Wilson asks.

Daniels points toward the sky. “The thunder,” he says.

Wilson starts laughing. He gets it. In Louisiana, storms thunder differently. That July, Baton Rouge had a thunderstorm that dropped 2.34 inches of rain in one day, and another that dropped 3.36 inches in the area. All told, on the 62 days of that July and August, there are 48 days with at least one thunderstorm. In just two months, Daniels basically goes through more bad summer weather than the first 21 years of his life combined. In Wilson’s office, Daniels has the look of a kid who’s thinking about crawling under the covers with his favorite Build-A-Bear.

Wilson assures Daniels that the Baton Rouge skies are usually more bark than bite and that there is nothing particularly worrisome about the clouds on this day. In this moment, he feels an incredible bond with the young man growing up in front of him.

The weather is unbearable in August as summer practice begins. Even Louisiana-born LSU players shake their heads, thinking back to what was a sizzling month of practice, especially for a newbie such as Daniels. “That camp was one of the hottest summers I have ever been a part of, and Jayden was definitely feeling it,” says Thomas, Jr., who grew up 20 minutes outside of Baton Rouge. “He just kept saying, ‘This is too hot. What is this?’ But he eventually adjusted.”

The summer competition kicks off in early August, with most observers considering it a dead heat between Brennan, Daniels and Nussmeier. But then Brennan, the veteran of the group, announces his retirement on Aug. 15. He’s 23, entering his sixth year, with significant injuries to his body, and decides to hang up his helmet. Suddenly, it’s down to Nussmeier and Daniels.

The coaching staff never tips its hand publicly that month, leading into the Sept. 4 opener against Florida State. Coaches think that Daniels is clearly further along as a quarterback prospect, but they still don’t love how often he can go cold for long periods of time. He sometimes has two or three straight practices looking timid and sloppy with his footwork, to the point where momentum swings back toward Nussmeier.

As the season opener approaches, LSU coaches are publicly undecided when discussing the quarterback position, waiting until the week of the opener to finally announce… nothing, really. Kelly tells the media he knows who will start on Saturday but won’t reveal whether it’s Daniels or Nussmeier.

“Here’s what I vividly remember,” Kelly says now. “Jayden had the position halfway through camp, but then he had a stretch of less-than-stellar practices while Nuss picked it up.

Both guys were good enough to be No. 1s. But Jayden finished strong with really strong practices. That settled us into thinking he’d be the starter.”

Sure enough, when LSU’s offense runs onto the field on Sept. 2, Daniels is in the middle of the huddle. But it’s the one play he isn’t under center that will change the trajectory of his life forever.

IN HIS FIRST start at his new school, Daniels and the offense sputter through the first 55 minutes against Florida State. But down 24-10, Daniels comes to life and leads two late scoring drives to pull within 24-23 with no time left on the clock. There is buzz on the sideline about possibly going for two and winning the game outright. But Daniels is cramped up on the bench, trying to get ready for overtime. With Daniels unavailable, the coaches make a quick decision to kick the extra point.

But in an unbelievable gut-punch moment, FSU blocks the kick to hang on. Daniels doesn’t even see the play — and yet he’ll also never be able to unsee it.

He tells teammates and coaches the next week that if they’re ever in that situation again, they have to go for two and win the game. Daniels is bothered after the game that LSU let a big opening win slip away. He shares that with Wilson, who isn’t hearing any of it. “We lost because you couldn’t sustain,” he says to Daniels about his cramps.

That cuts Daniels deep, but he doesn’t disagree. Wilson’s directness, along with Nabers & Co. constantly badgering him, has thickened Daniels’ skin. He needed the exposure therapy that LSU’s difficult, competitive environment provided, and Wilson notices Daniels’ growth. Rather than balling up his fists and firing back, he seems as if he has the kind of confidence to absorb criticism without it going directly to his heart. LSU is 0-1, so the results haven’t shown up in the standings yet. But somehow it feels as if Daniels 2.0 has arrived.

LSU goes 6-1 after the Florida State loss to claw back into the College Football Playoff conversation. Daniels shows off everything he could ever be, and his teammates have rallied behind him. He’s their guy, but at practice, he’s still showing signs of being an indecisive passer. Kelly and the coaching staff stay on him about making a read, setting his feet and letting the ball fly. Even two months into the season, he occasionally has an hour at practice where he looks jittery and delivers the ball late or to the wrong guy. As far as Daniels can tell, he remains a bad half away from getting benched. Daniels feels immense frustration that he somehow has command of the locker room but not the pocket.

The season feels as if it’s hanging in the balance. At 6-2, LSU can still technically win the SEC and make a CFP push. But Daniels has been so inconsistent that it’s tough to imagine him getting the Tigers’ offense on a heater down the stretch.

The bad news is that there will be no warmup period — No. 6 Alabama is coming to Baton Rouge the next weekend.

THE TIDE DEFENSE is in Daniels’ face all day, sacking him six times. But Daniels is the best player on the field, constantly flummoxing Alabama, then getting sacked, then flummoxing the defense again. LSU has a 24-21 lead late when Bama ties it, forcing overtime.

Bama, a two-touchdown favorite, gets the ball first in OT and marches right down to take a 31-24 lead. The entire roster watches as the Tigers’ defenders walk off the field looking gassed. There’s a general vibe that Alabama can do whatever it wants with the ball on offense, and that Daniels better have a bunch of touchdowns left in him. LSU hasn’t beaten Alabama in Baton Rouge since 2010, so the mood at Tiger Stadium is downright despondent.

On the first play, Daniels fakes a handoff and poof, he’s gone on a 25-yard touchdown. It’s one of those silly video game runs that only a handful of players — Michael Vick, Lamar Jackson, maybe prime Steve Young — can even think about trying. He prances into the end zone, the crowd goes wild, and the LSU sideline goes silent. Everybody thinks back to the Florida State game. Kick the extra point or go for the win?

Kelly is leaning toward kicking the extra point. About half of the coaches agree with him. Half don’t. Pretty much every player is yelling to go for it. Thomas Jr., for one, makes the case to kick the extra point.

When Daniels gets to the sideline, Kelly can see his quarterback’s opinion in his eyes. For two months since the Florida State game, Daniels has been telling anybody who will listen that he’ll never lose another game like that again.

“We’re going to go for two and win the game,” Daniels says to Kelly.

“OK, we’ll win it then,” Kelly says, and he puts two fingers in the air.

Players go wild on the sideline, and LSU rushes their offense in with a read-option play where Daniels has to decide whether to hand to Josh Williams or keep it. As they set up, Alabama panics and realizes the defense has 12 men on the field. The Tide call a timeout, and LSU has more time to reconsider the decision. For about 10 seconds, Kelly has second thoughts.

“Are we really going to do this?” he asks his staff.

The answer is yes — they call a rollout where Daniels sprints to the right with Nabers and tight end Mason Taylor as his options. On the sideline, Thomas gets down on one knee and grits his teeth. “At that point, I did think we were going to get it,” he says.

At the snap, Daniels rolls right but immediately sees that the Bama defense is pinching up toward him, so he zips a throw toward the front corner of the end zone. Taylor catches it and crashes to the ground, and before he even climbs to his feet, fans pour down on the field. Thomas jumps to his feet and starts running out to Daniels but can’t get to him through the sea of Tigers students, many of whom were kindergartners the last time LSU beat Bama at home. If Daniels had retired from football on the spot, he would be one of those Tigers legends who will forever drink for free in Baton Rouge.

“There were plays he made that day that I don’t think anybody else who plays football, college or NFL, could have made,” says Denbrock, his offensive coordinator. “I realized that day that he was ready for more.”

This is the moment when the Hollywood version of the Jayden Daniels movie will cut from that day, Nov. 5, 2022, to a montage of him winning the Heisman a year later, then being the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft, then his NFL heroics with Washington in 2024.

That montage would skip right past what actually happened next, which is something that his teammates and coaches still just refer to, in sad voices, as “The Arkansas Game.”

THE BAMA WIN is a version of Daniels that is the best Jayden Daniels. Exactly seven days later, “The Arkansas Game” is the opposite.

All of LSU’s 2022 hopes had returned, with the Tigers soaring to No. 7 in the CFP rankings heading into their Nov. 12 game. They’re facing a 5-4 Arkansas team that had just been manhandled the previous week by Liberty.

To this day, his coaches are baffled by what they saw. Daniels is the spring version of himself, not the guy who just dominated Alabama. He struggles early and lets it snowball. He is hesitant and jittery, finishing with 85 yards passing, 19 yards rushing, a fumble, an interception and seven sacks on 66 snaps. LSU escapes 13-10, but Daniels is back to the drawing board.

“The talent was obviously there,” Kelly says. “But Jayden still wasn’t able to do it over and over again on a consistent basis. The Arkansas game showed that.”

It’s an ugly enough performance that chatter immediately picks up around the program that maybe Nussmeier ought to get a chance, that perhaps Daniels isn’t the guy after all. Teammates don’t really buy it. Daniels doesn’t, either. Hell, even Nussmeier knows that Daniels is the man. Kelly describes a scene on Monday morning that he’s never had before or since: a call that both quarterbacks were waiting to see him.

Nussmeier and Daniels are there to ask his advice on how to answer questions about the quarterback job. They both say their goal is to present a unified front, that the job is Daniels’ and they would like guidance on the best way to present that publicly. Kelly sits back in his office chair, a little surprised and a lot impressed. The whole conversation is a testament to both players.

Nussmeier seems wise beyond his years for anticipating a pothole where a stray comment or two creates a quarterback controversy. And Daniels’ ability to build a strong, friendly relationship with his main competition makes Kelly feel even better about handing the keys to the program to him. Some day, the coaching staff thinks, Daniels is going to reach his final form, and Nussmeier will benefit from it as he makes a rise to stardom, too.

The rest of the season has ups and downs. But mostly ups. Daniels gets better and better every week as LSU finishes 9-4, with a berth in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.

Against Purdue, Daniels is unstoppable. He powers LSU to a 35-0 halftime lead en route to a 63-7 blowout. Daniels even catches a touchdown pass from his best friend/constant instigator, Nabers. Daniels and Nabers are pulled in the third quarter and spend the rest of the game on the sidelines, dreaming about limitless, confident futures.

“It showed he could play in the SEC and lead us to big wins,” Nabers says. “I think that was the spark for what would come the next year.”

WHEN THE 2022 SEASON ends, Daniels heads into an important offseason in which he could be one of the best emerging players in college football. But unbeknownst to most of the world, even now, Daniels is all but gone from Baton Rouge — he wants to declare for the NFL draft.

He turned 22 in December and already has his business communications degree from Arizona State. He tells the LSU coaching staff that he intends to move on, despite feedback projecting him as a fourth- or fifth-round pick. He never saw himself as a Day 3 pick, but he believes the time is now to go pro.

Wilson tells him to sit with his decision for a bit and that he will support him no matter what he chooses. But he tells Daniels that he should come back and spend another year trying to become the best version of himself. His inner circle keeps telling him to play one more year. His inner voice keeps telling him to make the jump.

The answer ultimately comes from his inner Kobe. After a few weeks, Daniels tells the LSU coaches his decision: He’s coming back to Baton Rouge because he is not yet the best version of Jayden Daniels that he can be.

The rest is history. Daniels wins the Heisman in 2023 and attends the 2024 NFL draft as a likely high draft pick. He sits in a room with his LSU coaches and his two top receivers, good friends Nabers and Thomas Jr. Those two exploded in that 2023 season, finishing as the most productive wide receiver duo in the country (157 catches for 2,746 yards and 31 touchdowns). All three get picked Thursday night in the first round, led by Daniels at No. 2 to Washington.

Nabers is thrilled for Daniels. They had gotten incredibly close and become such good friends that they can say pretty much anything to each other. Nabers is essential to the Jayden Daniels origin story, and Daniels is essential to his. “He’s got some swag now,” Nabers says. “But he got all his swag from me, from trying to be like me.”

He laughs when he recalls a frequent phone call they started having when they were at LSU together, a phone call that continues to this day. Nabers will dial up Daniels for no real reason other than to check in with his friend. The call goes something like this:

Daniels: “Hey.”
Nabers: “You suck.”
Daniels: “You suck, too.”
Nabers: “You’re weird.”
Daniels: “You’re weird, too.”

Then they hang up and go about their days. They used to have some trepidation about the idea of playing against each other, especially when the mock drafts started showing that Daniels would probably go to the Commanders and the Giants liked Nabers.

But that all instantly washes away on draft night, when Nabers is overjoyed to hear Roger Goodell say Daniels’ name as the No. 2 pick.

Daniels stands up in a crisp, gray suit, with sunglasses on indoors at night, and he hugs his parents and his agent, Ron Butler, before walking toward the stage. Thomas intercepts him first with a hug, and then Daniels walks 10 feet to where Nabers appears in front of him.

Nabers has on sunglasses, too, and he balls up his fists and puts them down at his waist. He’s literally blocking Daniels from his path to the NFL. Nabers lets out a guttural yell and embraces Daniels. They do a long, aggressive hug where the momentum of the collision has them bouncing from one leg to another and then back again. They go around in a semicircle, swaying in unison, with Nabers ending up off to the side.

Nabers spins back toward his seat and waits to be picked. Daniels breaks away toward the stage to be handed a Commanders jersey by Roger Goodell. For them, the day is a beautiful culmination of friendship, love and support through challenging each other. They’ll go back to the insults tomorrow.