Something needs to change for the Washington Commanders, and head coach Dan Quinn is making the first move: he announced on Monday that he is taking over as the team’s defensive coordinator for Joe Whitt Jr. in addition to his head coaching duties, per the Athletic.
Quinn has extensive experience working as a defensive coach: he was the defensive line coach at William & Mary beginning in 1994, and got his first defensive coordinator job at Hofstra in 2000, before the 49ers brought him to the NFL to be their defensive quality control coach. Quinn has been in the NFL since, besides a brief return to college to serve as coordinator for Florida, and was the Cowboys defensive coordinator from 2021 through 2023 before the Commanders hired him for his second head coaching job in the NFL.
The Commanders are in the midst of a historically significant stretch of failure, a five-game losing streak that has seen them lose by at least 21 points, longest such skid within a single season by any NFL team since the 2002 Cardinals. No club has dropped five in a row by 21 or more — the record — since the 1965 Steelers.
Linebacker Von Miller refused, not surprisingly, to publicly point a finger at Quinn and his staff to explain what has gone wrong for the Washington Commanders during this failure of a season.
“What’s going on is definitely not on the coaches. They have us super prepared,” Miller said. “We’re physically prepared, mentally prepared, emotionally prepared. DQ does a great job of keeping the morale going and holding on to the standard that we set. I’m not sure where the disconnect is.”
No one, including Quinn, seemed prepared to explain what they think the biggest problems — and possible solutions, other than this coaching change — are for the Commanders after their latest embarrassing performance, a 44-22 home loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday. That dropped Washington’s record to 3-7 entering next weekend’s game in Spain against the Miami Dolphins and extended the Commanders’ losing streak to five games.
“I don’t know what to say,” was how linebacker Frankie Luvu put it.
The truth is there’s plenty of blame to go around for this implosion one season after AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels led the Commanders to a 12-5 record in the regular season and their first appearance in the NFC title game in more than three decades.
It hasn’t helped that Daniels has missed four games because of injuries, including the debacle against Detroit, and will not be available to face Miami, either, as he recovers from a dislocated left elbow. Plenty of other players, including No. 1 receiver Terry McLaurin, have missed time, too.
But every NFL team has to deal with injuries. It’s rare that a defense looks as unprofessional as the unit that Quinn and coordinator Whitt Jr. are responsible for preparing and GM Adam Peters assembled.
“We got a lot of things to fix,” Quinn said Sunday night. “We all are baffled, frustrated, all of that.” Quinn will now take it upon himself to fix those things and that frustration with seven games left on the schedule.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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