Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels Photo: Getty
Super Bowl LIX
Kick-off: 12:30pm, Monday 10 February
Caesars Superdome, New Orleans
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Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels is one of the biggest rising athletes in America right now. He's one win away from being the first ever rookie quarterback to make it all the way to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, coming up in February.
The sixth-seeded Commanders provided the biggest playoff upset in years, when they beat the top seed Detroit Lions 45-31 last weekend. Daniels notched up 299 yards passing yards and two touchdowns, securing the Commanders a trip to Philadelphia to take on Eagles on Monday in the NFC conference championship, with the winner securing their spot in the Super Bowl.
But there's something else that's a little bit different about the 24-year-old from California. Daniels gets out of bed at 6am every morning to go to training, but it's not on a real football field. He likes to prepare for games also using Virtual Reality (VR).
Jayden Daniels, centre, looks for a pass during the playoff between the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders. Photo: Steven King/Icon Sportswire
The quarterback uses a German virtual reality simulator developed by Cognilize that loads him into specific tailor-made game situations, known as 'immersive decision-making training' by the company.
"It's like real life. They load in the stadium that you're playing in. I'll get in there and they'll probably give me seven seconds to know the play," he said on the All Facts No Brakes podcast.
It doesn't just stop there. The speed of the VR simulation is set at the highest possible setting as Daniels trains at 1.75x speed, giving him the ability to "read defences 80 percent faster". When he's in an actual real life game he stated on his X social media, it makes the real game seem a lot slower giving him a unique competitive advantage.
"It moves faster within the VR than actual human beings. Once you get out there, everything slows down. I know this is coming. I've seen this before, (and) it moved more than 20 times faster in VR." Daniels told The Athletic.
Jayden Daniels throws a pass. Photo: Steven King/Icon Sportswire
This isn't the first time Daniels has tasted major success. After a breakout season for LSU in 2023, when he scored 50 touchdowns and amassing nearly 5000 total yards, he became a household name in the US when he took home the Heisman Trophy as the best player in college football.
During Daniels' famous 2023 Heisman winning season, he sustained a concussion after receiving a solid hit by Alabama's Dallas Turner.
Everyone had written Daniels off for the big game LSU against the Florida Gators the next weekend, after he hadn't trained on the real football field all week due to concussion protocols.
But Daniels kept his mental fitness up throughout the week using VR and what came next shocked everyone. He took the field and set an SEC conference record with a whopping 606 total yards, becoming the first player in FBS history to have 350 yards passing and 200 yards rushing in a single game. He followed it up the next week with a SEC record-tying eight touchdowns in a single game against Georgia State.
A quarterback's main aim in a game of American football (unless running the ball themselves) is to get through the play by either passing to a receiver or handing off while remaining untouched. It's something that's relatively simple to simulate in a VR setting.
It's also well documented that it doesn't come cheap. With the NFL being the financial juggernaut it is, it's not surprising to anyone that it can afford such technology. But what other sports and occupations use similar approaches to virtual training?
During the first Covid-19 lockdown, when the sporting world ground to a halt, New Zealand driver Scott McLaughlin impressed when he translated his skills from (at the time) V8 Supercars into the VR iRacing league.
He famously placed in second during an IndyCar iRacing Challenge. Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, the reigning Indianapolis 500 champion at the time, was the only driver to beat McLaughlin, with NASCAR and all time racing legend Dale Earnhardt Jnr finishing just behind him in third.
"I managed to pass Junior with a few laps to go… I never thought I'd say that but that's very cool and it was a lot of fun racing him." McLaughlin said at the time.
What other sports will see the use of VR? The Warriors have said that they don't know of its use in the NRL yet, however the application of it could very much draw on the experience that Daniels had.
It's not hard to think that it's just a matter of time before we see sports VR in some form in this part of the world.
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