The Washington Commanders are days away from their first playoff appearance since 2020, as well as their first postseason road trip since the 2007 season. For those wondering, quarterback Jayden Daniels, 24, would have just celebrated his seventh birthday when Washington traveled to Seattle to play the Seahawks.

So, is Daniels feeling any extra pressure this week as the Commanders get ready to take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Nah.

"It's just going through my routine that I'll usually go through," Daniels said Wednesday "I know it's cliche, but it's literally just another game."

Fans who have spent decades rooting for the team probably feel differently, but that's the attitude Daniels is carrying into the biggest game of his professional career so far. He's been able to keep a cool head all season, regardless of whether he's leading the Commanders to a 40-point blowout or scoring a game-winning touchdown at the end of regulation. That isn't going to change against the Buccaneers -- the team that handed him his first loss in the NFL.

"The focus level might be a little bit more, but you got to stay who you are throughout the week, who you've been for these 17-18 weeks and go out there and just play ball," Daniels said.

Daniels has proven since the 37-20 loss that he can remain calm under pressure, and the final stretch of the regular season added more evidence to that. When the Commanders were down 21-7 to the Philadelphia Eagles, Daniels threw four touchdown passes. Including one to Jamison Crowder in the final 10 seconds, to earn the win; against the Falcons, he led the offense on a 12-play, game-winning drive in overtime; and that doesn't mention the plays he had against the New York Giants, Cincinnati Bengals and Chicago Bears to earn wins for his team.

The ability to compartmentalize, Daniels said, is a mixture of having to learn the skill set and simply being part of his identity.

"You got to learn to not let bad plays stack on top of the bad plays," Daniels said. "If you have a bad play, you move on to the next play. And you can't really focus on anything that's in the past, you got to worry about the present, be where your feet are."

Daniels seems genuinely unfazed when games are on the line. He's thrown five touchdown passes in the final 30 seconds of regulation or overtime -- more than any quarterback in any season since the 1970 merger. He's thrown 12 touchdowns passes in the fourth quarter or overtime -- the most by a rookie in NFL history.

But staying cool under pressure helps Daniels in more situations than the fourth quarter. He didn't let his first-career interception against the Cardinals derail what turned out to be a 42-14 victory, nor did he seem bothered when the Commanders committed five turnovers in the rematch with the Eagles.

Daniels makes sure to learn from his mistakes, but he doesn't dwell on them.

"If I miss a throw on third down, you can't go back and relive that throw, you got to move on," Daniels said. "So, it's not really just the late game situations. I mean, I guess that's where it shows up, but it's really throughout the whole game how I treat life."

And that helps his coaches, too.

"I think that's probably one of his strongest traits," Kingsbury said. "He can process it really quickly and be on to the next play. He's not leery of himself. He wants to be perfect. He wants to play great. He wants to win every rep, but once the play's over, he's on to the next one really quickly, and that's not easy to do as a young player or an established player, even in this league."

This week, Daniels will need to compartmentalize how he and the offense performed in the last matchup with the Buccaneers. Daniels' first pass of his career went backwards and was ruled a fumble that set up a second-and-25. Daniels' rookie season has gone much better since then, as he broke the Commanders' rookie passing record and is a strong for the Offensive Rookie of the Year, if not the outright leader for the award.

"It's crazy just to see the growth over not even a year," Daniels said. "And you just learn something different each and every game. It was just something new, you just get more comfortable. But if I got that first pass back, I would for sure."

Head coach Dan Quinn knew that Daniels was good at moving on to the next play just by watching film from LSU, but it wasn't until after he was drafted that he learned why that was one of Daniels' best traits. He has a high level of discipline developed by sticking to his daily routine and building strong practice habits to make sure he's as prepared as possible.

"That's nice and the information is important, but it's also one thing to see it for yourself," Quinn said. "Because the film evaluation, that was a fairly easy part of it. It's all the other things that go into the position that make him unique."

Like the rest of the team, Daniels knows how important it would be to the fans for the Commanders to win a playoff game. "The fan base deserves to be able to cheer for the team in the playoffs," he said. "And we appreciate the support through it all."

But Daniels isn't trying to make the Wild Card game any bigger than it needs to be. For him, it's just another week.

"That's not something that's in our focus. Like I said, we'll let everybody outside the building determine that and how excited and happy they are. But we got to do whatever we can to go win a football game."