The Washington Commanders… A team in transition!

[kbso83432]

How do you see the coaching Carousel working out? Guys like Harbaugh, Tomlin, and McDermott, can bring stability and wins to a team, but can't seem to win a SB with a top-of-the line QB. Will they be in high demand, or stop gaps until a team hiring them get the QB, or will ownership pass on them because they couldn't get the job done WITH the QB in place? Is this a warning to GMs that rosters matter? Is this delusional thinking that you fire the coach because there are better ones out there?

Harbaugh got the Giants job. He's got that ring with Flacco. Everything I've heard with Tomlin is he's taking the year off. He'll be able to pick his spot in 27. McDermott will definitely get a job next cycle, if not this one.

Rosters do matter. The Bengals can't protect Burrow. Allen has no one to throw to. Jayden has the worst defense in the league. Lamar gets a lot of crap but Andrews makes a catch and their kicker makes that kick, his legacy could be different.

You almost have to build a superteam to win with an average QB now. Getting the elite QB should make everything easier, just depends on the GM.

I'm sure Dan wishes he had fired Gruden and kept McVay. Might still have a football team had he done so.

 

[skinsdad62]

Quin has been to a superbowl , Tomlinson and harbuagh have won once

 

[Stymietee]

Quin has been to a superbowl , Tomlinson and harbuagh have won once

Fun fact: In the SB era, the overwhelming number of HC/QB tandem have won a SB within the first five years of being together.

Historical trends suggests that most successful HC/QB duos win their first Super Bowl within five seasons, making it a strong indicator of potential success. However, exceptions do exist: Duos like Tom Landry and Roger Staubach (Cowboys) took 11 years, and Bill Cowher and Neil O'Donnell (Steelers) took 9 years for their first win, proving the rule isn't absolute. Recent successful pairings Reid/Mahomes and McVay/Stafford have also won within their first few years together, reinforcing the trend.
Now, if Quinn somehow wins a chip within the next 3 years, serious questions will be asked, by me, if no one else,about firing him almost immediately afterwards.

 

[Gosknz]

Quin has been to a superbowl , Tomlinson and harbuagh have won once

If Shanahan runs the damn ball and kicks a field goal, Quinn has one too.

 

[cfjaekd7g]

The 2024 season and 2025 Commanders' season lie in stark contrast to one another, but what we are really seeing in the opposing seasons is not, as some speculate, a bad team or, as others opine, more of the same that marked the Snyder era. Instead, I’ll argue that what we’re seeing are growing pains and a transition from an NFL afterthought to league prominence. The 2024 QB draft class is having an impact on the league not seen since the 1983 NFL Draft class, which produced John Elway, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason (1 SB app), Ken O’Brien (2x Pro Bowl), and Todd Blackledge. As I write this, four QBs from the 2024 class will, or have, played in a playoff game. They are Daniels, Williams, Maye, and Nix. So, what do we make of this?

Well, for the Commanders…

There are three foundational legs to building a perennial contender in the NFL. The first one is decent ownership, where great ownership is a bonus; you absolutely cannot have terrible Snyderism, meaning steady, non-interfering ownership will suffice for this purpose. Second, a coach that knows what he’s doing, and of course, a quarterback. Now, it’s important to note that you don’t always need all three to contend. We’ve seen teams reach the playoffs with at least one of those elements missing, but the kind of transitional changes that give you long-term franchise stability require all three to be in place. While I am not yet convinced that Josh Harris is a great owner, it can reasonably be suggested that he is at least a decent one, thus far in his first few years as the team owner. Aside from injury concerns, does anyone doubt that Washington has its long-term QB in place? So, in terms of long-term stability, the Commanders already have two of these key players in place, which means the focus now has to be on their current head coach, Dan Quinn, and whether he has the chops to guide this franchise back to steady, years-long prominence.

So what does prominence mean?...

In his eight year as an NFL head coach Dan Quinn, with Matt Ryan/Jayden Daniels quarterbacking his teams, Quinn has a 60-59-0 W/L record (.504) and his ventures into the playoffs has netted him a 5-3 W/L/ record (.625), So, we can reasonably expect some manner of competitive team stability as Adam Peters retools the team and takes a hard look at the man that currently lead the team, with this in mind… If you have the right coach and the right QB, there’s no four-year rebuild, barring injury; two will do, and by year three, you know for certain. At this point, let me take a moment to look at a couple of historical and current events relevant to this post.

Jon Gruden replaces Tony Dungy in Tampa Bay (2002).

Andy Reid goes from Philadelphia to Kansas City (2013)

John Harbaugh is fired in Baltimore (2026)

Mike Tomlin steps down in Pittsburgh (2026)

In each of these cases, there was a team with a championship-caliber foundation that needed fresh eyes and hands-on experience with the product to get it over the top. The lone exception, Pittsburgh, a team that lacked a QB because of playoff-level stability, was never in a position to draft one. Using that backdrop, Quinn could surprise, but considering his background and NFL experience, he becomes the biggest question mark of that three-pronged foundation. As an NFL head coach, he’s solid, not exceptional, but better than average. Is he the kind of head coach that this franchise, with a championship caliber foundation, the kind of head coach that the ownership and Commanders’ Nation will be clamoring for after stabilizing playoff contention has been established? I think not! In two previous trips to either the SB or NFCCG, his teams could not finish the job. He’s 0-2 in such games, and there’s no reason to believe that he can become the 13th Head coach who lost a Super Bowl before winning one or the 6th Head coach who lost a conference championship before winning a Super Bowl in history. These 17 coaches all experienced a major postseason failure before eventually breaking through and winning a Super Bowl, but Quinn has the distinction of falling into a much smaller group of 6 men who have lost both a Super Bowl and a Conference championship before winning a Super Bowl. I think that it matters that their names are Don Shula, Tom Landry, Bud Grant, Bill Cowher, Andy Reid, and Sean McVay because IMO he is not in the same class as any of them.

Again, Quinn could surprise, but I think that his future is predictable if Washington builds what’s perceived to be a championship-caliber roster around Jayden Daniels, but falls short, the outcome is almost always the same in the modern NFL: the organization reaches a breaking point, and the coaching staff becomes the focal point of change. In Quinn's case, after having made major coaching position changes already, there's little doubt that the breaking point could come before the end of his current multi-year contract.

It is hard to dismiss Jayden's "injury concerns." Those injuries could become chronic, and the Commanders have no depth at the quarterback position. I am surprised they didn't try out the quarterback of the DC Defenders considering how much the Commanders struggled at quarterback this year.

I agree that Quinn is a question mark. However, what he did in 2024 was nothing short of a miracle. Anyone who bet that the Commanders would make it to the NFC championship at the beginning of the season made bank. That success set the bar very high for 2025, and it was painful to see just how short they came up. It wasn't just that the Commanders lost so many games, it was also how poorly they adjusted. It often felt like the Commanders had no chance because they weren't just getting beat, they were getting dominated. And, they didn't seem to learn a whole lot from their mistakes. That definitely makes Quinn the biggest question mark.

 

[cfjaekd7g]

Harbaugh got the Giants job. He's got that ring with Flacco. Everything I've heard with Tomlin is he's taking the year off. He'll be able to pick his spot in 27. McDermott will definitely get a job next cycle, if not this one.

Rosters do matter. The Bengals can't protect Burrow. Allen has no one to throw to. Jayden has the worst defense in the league. Lamar gets a lot of crap but Andrews makes a catch and their kicker makes that kick, his legacy could be different.

You almost have to build a superteam to win with an average QB now. Getting the elite QB should make everything easier, just depends on the GM.

I'm sure Dan wishes he had fired Gruden and kept McVay. Might still have a football team had he done so.

It did not matter who was Snyder's head coach. The problem was always Dan's meddling and forming friendships with players that allowed those players to circumvent the head coach. That will undermine any head coach (no matter how talented). Dan was a cancer to the franchise.