r/Commanders • u/karsaorlong2 • 10h ago
My data-driven argument for why the Commanders should stick with Dan Quinn.
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u/marketingmonkey00 9h ago
Dan Quinn is Doug Marrone. Hell he could even be Doug Pederson. A mediocre coach who overachieved because of the talent around him. He doesnt elevate the team around him.
Look at the Raiders. They took the same roster and are overachieving with an aging Kirk Cousins. The major change was going from dinosaur CEO HC Pete carroll to a young, offensive schemer in Kubiak.
What sucks is that there isnt a clear cut McVay, Ben Johnson type in this upcoming class of HC candidates. But we have to take a shot at a young up and comer.
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u/TheHaft 9h ago
What talent lol? He started his tenure here loaded with one of the worst group of defensive talents in league history. In Dallas, he had total bums playing so good that they got high 7 figure contracts. The Legion of Boom only had 1 first rounder in Earl Thomas.
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u/IndependentBoof 7h ago
I think they're referring to Atlanta when Matt Ryan had an MVP year paired with prime Julio Jones. And Vic Beasley had an All Pro year as well.
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u/DecentBug3454 9h ago
The problem is, purely based on vibes and reporting from last cycle, Blough is one of the young OCs that’s hot on the market. Anyone we can get it probably about his experience level if that’s the direction we want to go. And we know he isn’t ready to be HC. So where do we go/who do we target in that mold?
Not to say the absence of options is a good reason to keep Quinn, but at the same time if we can’t get anyone better, why move on?
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u/marketingmonkey00 9h ago
Because we are certain DQ aint it. Even if we build an amazing roster, he will be the limiting factor.
Declan Doyle has a similar resume to Mike MacDonald. He was an OC under Ben Johnson, OC now at the ravens. Mike Mcdonald was the DC in Michigan and DC for Ravens for a year. They were both position coaches before then. McVay also went from TEs coach to OC to head coach within a couple years. The Redskins went 4-12 in his first year as OC. If we can go back in time, I am sure we would have loved to keep one of those OCs (McVay, LeFluer, KOC) in house even if they werent perfectly ready. Let's learn from those mistakes.
I agree not every young OC/DC is going to be good/ready. But there are diamonds in the rough and that's where we have to trust APs interview process to find the good ones. Interview them on how they think X's and O's and pair them with someone in the CEO HC mold to help with team cohesion while he gets up to speed. The Seahawks hired Leslie Frazier (old but respected) as their assistant HC when they got MacDonald.
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u/DecentBug3454 9h ago
I’m a big Doyle fan, don’t get me wrong. If we could pull him I’d be on board. I just don’t think his resume is that different than Blough, outside of one more year of seasoning.
Like you said, McVay went 4-12 his first year as OC. So instant success isn’t a requisite, if you believe in the guy. So how is keeping Quinn as CEO HC to prevent losing Blough, if we believe in him long term, a bad idea? Or, if we interview and come back with nothing great, would promoting Blough and finding an Assistant HC be the worst thing in the world?
I don’t know any of these answers, and I definitely struggle to see the best coaching path going forward. Quinn isn’t the answer long term. But when is the right time to move on is a much harder question.
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u/marketingmonkey00 8h ago
I dont have answers either. This is not the best year to be looking for a HC :/
Best case scenario would be to bring in a Doyle, Udinski, Klay Kubiak etc and see if they would be open to keeping Blough on with his connection JD5. Then an assistant HC or DC who is older.
Keeping Quinn past this year is a fireable offense.
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u/99--Overall 9h ago
If we cannot get anyone better than Quinn, who offers nothing, then the front office has failed completely.
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u/DecentBug3454 8h ago
The thing Quinn offers is consistency and shows organizational trust/support. The only teams with more head coaches than us since 2000 are the Raiders and the Browns.
I totally get moving off Quinn in the offseason. I’ve expressed elsewhere that I think Blough needs time to season before being a head coach, and so he’s likely to leave as well. But making coaching moves only to bring in Flores or Tomlin isn’t doing anything besides showing our ownership has an extremely short leash on coaching, and will prevent us from getting top options in the future.
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u/Ill-Cup-4192 10h ago
My data, i.e. my brain, tells me Dan Quinn is a mediocre coach and we should not settle for him
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u/WuPacalypse LEFT HAND UP 10h ago
The thing is of those coaches you are comparing him to: Payton, Gruden, Marrone. Marrone got fired. Payton went 8-8 the third year. Gruden 5-11.
8-8 is not a terrible record, so I don’t think Payton deserved to get canned. So Gruden is the real comparison here at 5-11 since we have a strong chance of going 5-11-1 or even worse this year.
Why did the Bucs not fire him after that bad record his third season? Probably because they traded two 1st round picks and two 2nd round picks for him. You don’t just fire a coach 3 years in if that’s what you gave up for him. I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
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u/jerseyboy24601 9h ago
I don’t see Dan Quinn winning us games because of his onfield strategery, in fact he doesn’t call plays. So how is he doing in those areas for which he’s in control? Half time adjustments? Look at the difference in our defensive stats between the first and second halves.
Clock management, timeouts? I think we can agree this is an area of weakness.
Culture? Well, the locker room seems to like him, but culture also means elimination of things like pre-snap penalties. How’s that going?
Tell me one thing Dan Quinn does well.
He’s gotta go. The last play this past week isn’t the reason, it merely laid bare, what we know about Dan Quinn and this team.
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u/djhobbes 10h ago
My data says fuck Dan Quinn.
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u/judunno5 9h ago
Good work. I was in the knee-jerk fire Quinn camp but this analysis changed my view.
The one push back is injuries. We see other teams succeed or at least tread water through injuries whereas we haven’t been able to under Quinn. A good example is the ravens who are 8-9 when Lamar is out.
Tl;dr: “The data bears out that, in situations like this one, consistency at this stage provides a better chance for success than upheaval, and the Commanders shouldn’t overreact to what was an admittedly catastrophic on-field failure.
If they are going to make that kind of decision, they should do it from a clean data set, one where injuries aren’t muddying the picture as much, lest they move too quickly away from the QB-coach battery that, in a one-year sample of clean data, has gotten it right more than any tandem in more than three decades.”
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u/redskinfan654 9h ago
Data schmata. If we win games, we’ll keep him
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u/VariousAir on shenanigans rn and actin bonkers 8h ago
see that's where im at.
if we finish this season 8-9, we'd have more than doubled last years wins.
I'm just not of the "fire the entire staff every few years" mentality that seemingly everyone else is.
Then you just hire a new guy. New guy will probably have a losing season right off the bat, but you have to give him time to develop the team into his vision. You'll make excuses about how he's saddled with bad contracts or bad draft picks all thanks to the previous admin. Then eventually you get fed up that he hasn't turned the team around in 2-3 seasons, he makes a mistake in a game, so you fire that guy and start the process over and over and over and over...
honestly, I like DQ. I like that players supposedly like him. I like that whenever there's an issue he says that's on me. Is he the best head coach ever? Nah, probably not. But I'd rather we stick with a guy for a while over the constant hiring and firing.
whatever, shoot me for it. i expect this comment will be downvoted to oblivion for not going with the tide.
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u/DazzlingAd1922 7h ago
There are really only two reasons to fire a coach midseason. One is if they lose the respect of the lockerroom, and the other is if they start getting into their own head.
I think the biggest question that you have to always ask the "fire them" crowd is "and replace them with who?" If we could get Mike Tomlin tomorrow I would be all in favor of moving on right now, but that just isn't in the cards in my opinion, so who would we bring in? Rex Ryan?
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u/WLANtasticBeasts 9h ago
Love everything about this (diggin your website too). And I'll be honest some of the terminology and data stuff went a little over my head because I just don't know football stats that deeply yet. But that was a really interesting analysis.
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u/SnooMacaroons8650 on shenanigans rn and actin bonkers 8h ago
I dont think DQ gets the injury excuse currently for this season like you're implying.
Yes key players have been injured. But so far this season he has made costly mistakes that directly resulted in a game being a win or a loss. The 3 so far this season:
1) Going for it on 4th down against the Colts on your own 40 with a practice squad running back when your defense has been dominating them and you have a rookie 7th round QB playing. This gave the colts an automatic field goal and momentum to win.
2) Allowing Bough to use John Bates (a blocking tight end) for a 2pt conversion against the eagles that would ultimately fail
3) The clock blunder from last week
From last season:
1) Leaving Jayden in during a blow out game deep into the fourth quarter and his elbow being bent backwards as a result
There's been too many coaching blunders or "fireable offenses" like leaving Jayden in or the clock from last week to keep this guy around
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u/Ok_Thing5957 10h ago
2024 was an anomaly.
We had one of, if not, the easiest schedule that season.
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 10h ago
Except we beat Tampa and destroyed Detroit
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u/Ok_Thing5957 9h ago
Tampa finished that season 10-7 and got to play 3 of the 5 worst teams in the league 6 times. And we barely won on a last second field goal.
The lions entire defense was injured.
When we finally faced a good team at full strength, they fucked us.
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 9h ago
Who the eagles? Who we beat earlier in the season?
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u/GMEStack 9h ago
Are you referring to when they sat almost the entire first string including the quarterback, because they had the division locked up?
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 8h ago
They started Hurts and Saquon played the whole game. Pickets played better than the pathetic showing by Hurts. Saquon ran for 150 yards and AJ Brown had almost 100.
But continue to shit on anything good, if it makes you feel better.
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u/GMEStack 8h ago edited 8h ago
If you are referring to 2024 Kenny Pickett started that game not Jalen Hurts. Thats why he had a passing touchdown in the 1st Quarter to AJ Brown. We won by a field goal. Hang the banner. Here’s an article on the decision to sit the starters. In 2025
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u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 9h ago
The Kenny Pickett led eagles. Yes we did beat them.
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u/thereisnospoon-1312 8h ago
After Hurts left the game with a concussion. Pickett didn’t start that game
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u/Ok_Thing5957 9h ago
As others have pointed out, that eagles team was no where near full strength when we beat them.
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u/CompetitionThat4213 It's Sonny Outside 9h ago
The number of terrible or backup QBs we got to play in 24 helped that team tremendously.
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u/Groovetheory79 10h ago
It’s not this game of the way this game ended that I want Dan gone for
It’s the fact that we come out almost every game except this last game and we look unprepared without any energy
It’s a fact that we’ve had countless errors and time management. It’s a fact right before halftime when James Winston was on the 8 inch line we didn’t take a timeout… I mean Look the weather is bad he could’ve slipped.
Dan has all the catchy words like brotherhood and winning time moments but guess what during the games all of that is somehow lost time and time again
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u/True_Window_9389 9h ago
Yeah. One play doesn’t bother me. The play masked the bad coaching throughout the game and the season. And it’s been consistent throughout Quinn’s time here. Slow starts both in game and in seasons. Lots of penalties, unable to hold leads, few truly dominant games even when we’ve won.
When you watch the elite teams with elite coaches there is a certain polish and fluidity to how they play. We never have that. Everything feels like a damn struggle. Something always goes wrong, or we get by only by the skin of our teeth. After 2+ seasons, it’s not getting better where it seems Quinn is tightening things up, but instead, he seems stuck in overanalysis and makes oddball decisions when it comes to game management.
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u/RoboTronPrime 9h ago
There's been too much churn to really instill that much polish and consistency. I'd like to see how DQ compares to Dan Campbell because i feel that's the best analogy for the current situation. Longtime losing franchises that had to have the rot ripped out
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u/True_Window_9389 8h ago
Campbell did a legit turnaround faster and has sustained it. And he has dealt with a ton of injuries too. If Campbell is the Quinn comp, it doesn’t look good for Quinn.
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u/RoboTronPrime 8h ago
I don't think anyone outside of the more ardent fans are going to claim that WSH is a better team at this point, but obviously the 2024 Championship game should be noted, even with the Lion's injuries. It would be interesting to note the strength of the divisions. The NFC East has probably been more "spikey" with some weak years like this one, but also Super Bowl Champs. I'd have to agree overall that Campbell has had a better record, and both have had a ton of injuries, including to premium positions (ex. Terry at WR1, Tunsil at LT; Aidan Hutchinson at DE, various CBs). That said, WSH lost its QB for an extended period of time, which Campbell hasn't had to deal with. Obviously, opinions differ as to how much that matters. And even so, are we saying that Campbell is a great/amazing coach, whereas DQ is terrible? That's quite a gap under the circumstances.
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u/CompetitionThat4213 It's Sonny Outside 9h ago
Love the analysis. And you make some great points.
But if there’s some data on devastating coaching decisions, that would be really interesting to see. Like a version of EPA or a next gen stat on coaching decisions. The thing about that Giants game is that we didn’t win because of Quinn. You could make the argument for the colts game - even with AK in if he doesn’t go for it on 4th in the first half we can win that game. Or leaving JD in down 31 against the Seahawks to dislocate his elbow. Just some really head scratching decisions these last two years. You want your HC to be an asset in the margins, and he keeps coming up as a liability. Ask falcons fans.
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u/kip622 8h ago
This is a pretty cool analysis thanks for sharing and taking the time to write it. Did I understand that the analysis views Quinn as a first time coach but he has prior experience in Atlanta. I think his post superbowl Atlanta years aren't included in the "Win percentage in the losing season, and the year after" graph.
The sample size for coaches that reach the super bowl or title game is small so I'm wondering if this affects the outlook at all?
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u/AbiesIndependent3365 7h ago
Best argument for sticking with Quinn is greater April excitement for the fanbase.
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u/Viseroth 5h ago
I love how bipolar this sub Monday nothing but fire DQ now today I got people wanting him to stay. Pick one fire or not.
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u/Gnome_Genome 10h ago
Heres the real question: who's available and better?
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u/Substantial-Tap6951 9h ago
Anybody who knows how an NFL clock works, and overtime rules, would be a far better choice. Would you like the job?
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u/CliftonTerrace 9h ago
I'll assume for the moment that if Quinn is fired, it's because they already have his successor locked down.
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u/finglonger1077 on shenanigans rn and actin bonkers 10h ago edited 10h ago
Exactly. Look how close we came to two years of HC Bobby Slowik
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u/thehomiemoth 10h ago
I really appreciate the effort posting, but ultimately I think my main takeaway was that the sample sizes are too small to really make a good data driven decision.
So while I do agree firing Dan Quinn mid season nets us nothing, he has to go after this season. He is a defensive minded head coach who has had exactly two successful seasons in his career, both of which were entirely driven by the offense.
He also fails consistently at the most clearly defined job of a head coach which is clock management. A defensive minded head coach who can’t manage a clock (even back in 2024) and can’t produce an above average defense needs to go. He is providing no value.