ASHBURN, Va. — Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn has some solid experience being at the top of the coaching chain for an NFL franchise.
In fact, he’s got Super Bowl experience – and he wants to get back there with the Commanders so he can get the experience of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this time.
To do that, he knows he can’t just copy and paste what he did with the Atlanta Falcons here in Washington, no matter how close it got him to the top of the pile.
One of the biggest game day changes he’s made this time around is handing off play-calling duties to defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. And after one game of not having those responsibilities the coach says he was still as involved as ever, and loved every moment of it.
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“I had a blast,” Quinn said. “In the preseason it can get a little trickier because you’re also [thinking] who’s out, who’s in to make sure the substitutions that we had set up to go. I like being part of the decision-making process. Game management, go for, if we get fourth and one here, we’ll go. If it goes to this part of the field, we’ll punt. Most of the decisions for me were game and clock management decisions to hit on. It was good practice for me honestly, to be into that space. I hear the calls on both sides, so that part felt like it should. And I think Joe had a good rhythm of what he wanted to do. But yeah, more than anything it was just good to get back into the rhythm.”
It can be hard at times for people to make a decision that appears to sacrifice control over the fate of their organization. Clearly, however, Quinn doesn’t view it as giving up control as much as it is finding his in-action role and trusting his coordinators to function within theirs.
On Saturday, it worked well. While the outcome was a three-point loss, things couldn’t have gone much smoother for a group of coaches working live competition for the first time together.
We don’t typically grade coaching staff performances, in large part because we can’t monitor near enough of what they do on game day to do so. But when a coaching staff is in disaray, or a head coach is confused, lost in the fog of war – we see it.
And we did not see that in game one of the new Quinn-led era of NFL football. A good sign that not only is control in the right hands across the board, but that this relatively renewed idea of a head coach not having his nose buried in a play sheet might actually work.
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