Commanders fans vote 2:1 to draft Jayden Daniels over Drake Maye as support for trading down weakens

Survey results!!

What Commanders fans want to do with the #2 pick

What a difference seven weeks can make!!

You can see below the results of two survey questions asked here on Hogs Haven, nearly two months apart.

Support for picking Jayden Daniels has spiked up from 21% to 51%. The idea of Drake Maye as the team’s pick also solidified, rising from 18% to 26%, while support for trading down — the most popular option at the end of February — fell from 29% to 17%.

Of course, in this week’s question, we removed the option of just trusting Adam Peters to make the right call, but this is a sports blog, not political polling, and we’re not trying to be particularly scientific.

In effect, in the Daniels vs Maye comparison, Hogs Haven members have gone from nearly even support at the end of February to a nearly 2:1 advantage for JD, while backing off dramatically from the idea of trading down, apparently embracing the idea of using the 2nd overall pick on a quarterback. Doubt about the team’s plans to do exactly that were largely erased by Adam Peters in his pre-draft press conference this week:

“We feel great about staying at number two. I don’t see a whole lot of scenarios where we trade down, to be honest with you. Yeah, we feel great about sticking there.”

Trading back into the first round for an offensive tackle

Just three weeks ago, we asked if the team should trade up into the first round to draft an offensive tackle. In that survey, 48% said yes, while 15% said no and 37% said ‘it depends’.

At the time, the question was on the leading edge of a ton of talk about this type of trade up; in other words, right after our poll, media outlets and personalities started actively discussing the possibility as readers and listeners got ‘quarterback draft fatigue’.

Because of this uptick in talk about the trade up possibilities, I thought there might have been enough discussion of the issue that a lot of minds might’ve gotten changed in the intervening three weeks.

Unlike the poll looking at movement in attitudes about what to do with the #2 overall pick, however, there’s been very little movement in attitudes about trading back up into the first round for a tackle.

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Even with the removal of the ‘it depends’ option, faced with a binary yes/no decision, 51% of those responding this week said ‘yes’ to trading back up into the first round. This number seems surprisingly low to me, but it is very close to the result from three weeks ago, and there are two reasons I can think of why it is not higher.

First, despite my effort to suggest in the survey article that anyone who opted for a trade back from #2 overall (expecting to draft an OT with that maneuver) skip this question, it could be that a lot of people who are in favor of the trade back voted ‘no’ here because they expect to have already acquired an OT.

Secondly, fans may simply be opposed to using two draft picks (or more) to get one player.

Hogs Haven has certainly been a place where the “trade back whenever possible” philosophy has gotten lots of support over the years. When the concept of “trading back is good” becomes something of a mantra for a group of like-minded NFL fans, then the concept of suddenly reversing course to trade up — losing a ‘bite at the apple’ in the process — might seem a touch heretical. It may be that about half the readers of this site would be opposed to nearly any proposal to trade up for a player.

Whatever the reason, the fans who responded to this week’s Reacts question on trading up to take an offensive tackle in the first round were split almost evenly on the question.

It will be an interesting and exciting week

Whatever happens on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, fans have expressed a strong sentiment ever since the January hiring of Adam Peters to trust the new group of decision-makers. There seems to be a deep level of faith that Adam Peters, Lance Newmark & Co will get it right — or at least, that they have a good chance of getting it right, and fans are willing to believe in them unless/until they prove that they aren’t worthy of such trust.

In effect, the honeymoon period is in full bloom, but the pressure is on. Having nine draft picks — with 6 in the top-100 — offers an incredible opportunity to reinvigorate the roster and set the franchise up for years to come. But, of course, the flip side of opportunity is risk — and high expectations from the fan base.

Adam Peters made it clear that he understood that as he addressed the media and fans in his pre-draft press conference earlier this week:

There is a lot of pressure and it’s great responsibility and we take this very seriously. That’s why we’ve been working tirelessly on this and turning over every stone. We want to do this, obviously, for this organization, but for this region, for this fan base and for the coaching staff and the players on the field to get this right. So, it’s great responsibility. With that comes pressure, but that’s what we signed up for.

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