There was a very different reaction from the teammates of quarterbacks Jayden Daniels and Jaxson Dart to their respective injuries in Week 2.
The X account NFL Memes showed side-by-side videos of Daniels’ injury during Sunday’s Commanders-Cowboys game and Dart’s injury during last night’s Giants-Rams game. In the video, the Commanders players continue walking off the field after Daniels falls to the ground while everyone gathers in a prayer circle around Dart.
“Jayden Daniels’ teammates after he went down with in injury vs. Jaxson Dart’s teammates after he went down,” the account wrote.
Different circumstances, different outcomes
Fans were quick to point out that the situations were very different. Daniels’ occurred as the teams were heading into the locker room and his teammates likely didn’t notice what had happened to him. By contrast, Dart’s injury occurred right in the middle of the first quarter.
And as far as the idea that the Commanders’ players didn’t care about Daniels, a video that NFL Memes did not include shows the teammates returning to the field to embrace and pray for him before he was carted off.
Fans were quick to call out NFL Memes for not acknowledging the distinction:
“It’s almost like one happened going into halftime and the other happened in the middle of a quarter. The team had to go to the locker room, and even then some still came to check on him. A better comparison would be last year when the same injury happened in the middle of a quarter and the team did kneel around him. Weird huh?” one user on X remarked.
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“Maybe because one injury was right before halftime (they came back over) & one was in the middle of the game where they stop the game for the injury…” wrote another.
“One was in the middle of the game and one was at halftime, also a lot came back after they knew the severity,” a third pointed out.
Some people did buy into the narrative though and have been mocking the Commanders and Daniels for the players seemingly not caring about their star QB getting hurt.
That’s clearly not the case, but that’s why context is important.
