Commanders are currently atop the NFC East and fans are feeling good about the team and its rookie QB Jayden Daniels

In this week's Reacts survey , we covered a lot of ground, asking readers to gaze into their crystal balls to predict how Washington's rookie QB would fare in his quest for his first professional passing touchdown as well as forecasting the winner of the ground battle between the Commanders' defense and this week's offensive opponent, the Cincinnati Bengals. We also asked the usual weekly question about confidence in the team's direction.

Jayden Daniels It's pretty amazing that the NFL's three rookie starting quarterbacks — Williams, Daniels and Nix — have thrown a combined 196 passes so far this season without a single passing TD. Per Opta Stats , this marks the most consecutive pass attempts by rookies without a TD pass to begin a season in NFL history

It's not that the rookies haven't scored at all. Jayden Daniels, for example, scored two rushing touchdowns in his first regular season game in Tampa Bay to open the 2024 regular season, and Bo Nix also ran one in for the Broncos in his inaugural regular season game. But the lack of passing scores has made headlines.

For Jayden Daniels, at least, the pattern holds for every NFL game he's played so far, including preseason. Playing in New Jersey and Miami Gardens, he led three preseason drives in two games. He scored a rushing touchdown against the Jets, but did not complete a touchdown pass to a receiver in either game.

None of this is to say that Daniels hasn't done a good job with the offense in his first two games.

Through two weeks, Jayden Daniels ranks 10th among QBs (min 20 passes) in yards per attempt at 7.7, and he is completing 75% of his passes. While his intended air yards are low (he leads the league in passes behind the line of scrimmage), the players catching his passes collectively rank 4th in the NFL in yards-after-catch-per-reception, and the Commanders are tied for 6th in receptions of 20+ yards, with 6 in two games.

Significantly, Jayden has yet to throw an interception, which sets him apart from Caleb Williams (2) and Bo Nix (4).

Among all NFL quarterbacks (min 20 passes), Jayden is 7th in Passer Rating (96), and the Commanders offense is enjoying a lot of success. Washington is 6th in the NFL with 44 first-downs, and the Commanders are one of three teams to have punted only 3 times this season (tied for #1). In fact, the Commanders have run the 9th-most offensive plays in the league so far.

Thanks in part to Jayden's scrambling, Washington has the 2nd-most rushing 1st-downs in the NFL, and that has led to sustained drives. Washington, in fact, has had 15 offensive drives and scored on 10 of them.

But to have a truly functional offense that consistently helps the team win games, the Commanders need to be able to score touchdowns when they get to the red zone, and, sooner or later, Daniels needs to start throwing passes that result in touchdowns.

In this week's survey, we asked readers how many touchdown passes the rookie would throw in his first-ever prime time appearance on Monday Night Football this week.

Check the odds at FanDuel

Only 5% of respondents expect Daniels' shutout with respect to passing TDs to continue. Confidence in Daniels seems to be high among Hogs Haven readers as 91% of those responding to this question expect the rookie to throw 1 or 2 touchdown passes this week.

Commanders run defense While Washington's offense has been pretty functional through two games, the same can't be said of the defense, which has struggled mightily at times.

Per ESPN , the Commanders have the following defensive ranks through two weeks:

Total yards - 21st (348 yards per game) Passing yards - 22nd (227.5 yards per game) Points per game - 29th (27.5 points per game) The only traditional defensive statistic that looks reasonable so far is rushing defense, where the Commanders rank in the middle of the pack - 16th at 120.5 yards per game.

Monday night's opponent, the Cincinnati Bengals, have, through two weeks, produced the 3rd-lowest rushing total of any NFL team (72 yards per game) on their way to an 0-2 record. The two opposing defenses they have faced have been the NE Patriots (11th ranked) and the KC Chiefs (29th ranked), so it's not as if they've been up against powerhouse defenses.

The Bengals' top rusher is Zack Moss, who has rushed for over 500 yards in a season only once since being drafted in the 3rd round of the 2020 draft — he ran for 793 yards at 4.3 yards per carry last season in Indianapolis. So far in '24, he has averaged 3.7 yards per carry on 21 rushes.

Moss is backed up by 2nd year player, Chase Brown, who ran for 179 yards as a rookie, and has added 42 yards on 7 carries (long of 12 yards) in the first two weeks of this season.

The team's other back, Trayveon Williams, has not touched the ball in the 2024 regular season, and just 307 rushing yards in his 5-year career.

In this week's Reacts survey, we invited respondents to take the over or under against 95 rushing yards for the Bengals offense.

A whopping 71% of those surveyed took the "over" despite the fact that the Bengals rushed for 70 and 74 yards in their first two games of the season.

These Washington fans are definitely unimpressed with what they've seen from the Commanders defense so far this season!

Monday Night Football Over at Cincy Jungle, readers were asked to vote on the outcome of this week's Commanders-Bengals game.

Check the odds at FanDuel

Overall, 91% of those responding to the Reacts survey on the Bengals site predicted a win for the 0-2 Bengals against the visiting 1-1 Washington team, with just 8% predicting a Commanders victory.

At Hogs Haven, we didn't ask readers for a prediction of the game outcome in this week's Reacts survey; however, we have an indirect survey of win-loss predictions in the form of the weekly Pick'em contest . It's certainly a smaller sample size, but when it comes to picking game winners, the median score in Week 1 was 11 out of 16, while in Week 2 — a week full of upsets — it was 8 out of 16. Picking against the spread, the median scores were 6/15 in Week 1 and 7/15 in Week 2.

Here are the breakdowns of this week's predictions for the Monday Night Football game from entries into the contest.

PIck'em In a straight question of picking the winner, with 50 contest entries, 74% of Hogs Haven readers predict a Cincinnati win.

Point Spread Surprisingly, with a smaller sample size of 31 entries, the breakdown is virtually identical with 74% expecting the Bengals to cover the spread against 26% who predict Cincy to fall short of the 8-point spread.

Fan confidence In our standard weekly question, we asked Hogs Haven readers whether they were confident in the direction of the team.

After falling to 74% last week from the Week 1 benchmark of 96%, confidence rebounded to 92% among Hogs Haven readers this week.

Again, confidence in the direction of the team seems to be rooted in the recent changes in ownership, GM, coaching staff and strategic direction as opposed to anticipation of great on-field success in the short term. Still, winning tends to buoy confidence while losing puts a dent in it.

The NFC East

The confidence expressed by voters in the Hogs Haven survey contrasts pretty sharply with the confidence levels of the other NFC East fan bases, each of whom saw their teams falter in Week 2.

That Philadelphia fan base is something, man — from 92% to 13% in a single week due to a 1-point loss to the Falcons on Monday Night Football. That's the lowest confidence level of any fan base in this week's survey. They're really ratcheting up the pressure on head coach Nick Sirianni.

Dallas fans are just a point higher in confidence, but then, they've spent the offseason trying to reconcile Jerry Jones' "all in" declaration with his relative inaction in free agency, not to mention getting blown out of their own stadium in 44-19 loss to the Saints in a game where the 'Boys were heavily favored. Jerry Jones is safe, of course, but this could be a championship-or-bust season for head coach Mike McCarthy.

If there's a surprise here, it would seem to be that 29% of Giants fans still believe in the team's direction after months of watching their front office getting stripped bare on the offseason version of Hard Knocks, and then going 0-2 to open the season. With GM Joe Shoen and head coach Brian Daboll both in the third year of the latest rebuild effort, expectations should be rising among the Giants faithful. If the team can't turn things around soon, it could get ugly there.

It's not just in fan confidence that the Commanders sit atop the NFC East. With three teams having identical 1-1 overall records, Washington is in first place in the division by virtue of being the only team in the NFCE with a division win.

The Commanders can insure that they stay there for at least a week with a victory over the Bengals on Monday Night Football since none of our NFC East rivals play one another this week.

Heck, even a loss may not dislodge Washington from the top spot as all the teams in the division face tough Week 3 matchups:

The Giants are 6.5-point road underdogs to the 1-1 Browns Philadelphia is a 3-point road underdog to the 2-0 Saints The visiting 0-2 Ravens are favored by 1 point over the Cowboys We will know the outcome of all these games by Sunday afternoon, setting up an exciting Monday Night Football game for Washington fans.

Of course, Washington is the biggest underdog in the division this week as the Commanders travel to 0-2 Cincinnati as 7.5-point underdogs for the final game of Week 3.

For Adam Peters and Dan Quinn, the 2024 season is really about setting a foundation for the future, and few observers have high expectations for the burgundy & gold in 2024. However, an upset road victory against the currently-winless Bengals — a team led by Joe Burrow that spent the offseason with dreams of playing in the AFC Championship game this postseason — could dramatically change the perception of the Commanders season. This could be particularly true if the Buccaneers — who beat Washington to open the season — can beat the Broncos in Tampa Bay to reach 3-0, possibly changing the perception of Washington's Week 1 road loss.

The Commanders-Bengals game is the later of two Monday Night Football games this week, and kicks off at 8:15 p.m. EDT.