Inside Dan Quinn's total transformation of the Washington Commanders
How did a laughingstock of a franchise become a contender overnight? Jayden Daniels is the catalyst, of course. But the head coach was also a grand-slam hire. His unorthodox approach is paying off.
All should’ve fallen apart in late November. When these Washington Commanders crashed to reality with back-to-back-to-back defeats, players easily could’ve slid onto the injury report with phantom sprains to start plotting their Caribbean vacations.
The NFL season is the ultimate grind. Business decisions are inevitable.
Bare minimum, this is exactly when the voice of a new coach crackles into white noise. Darryl Tapp witnessed it often throughout his 165-game career with six different teams. It doesn’t matter what your boss is saying in front of a room. If true connections do not exist in a building, Tapp explains, this is precisely when a team will “splinter.” Then, he stops himself. On second thought? The team’s defensive line coach brings it all the way back to Week 1: Washington’s 37-20 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Without genuine relationships, he believes the Commanders “would’ve lost everybody” after that defeat.
“Because as a new staff, guys are slow to trust,” Tapp says. “Think about it. If you’re a player, you have a small window to play this game. And you want people in charge to be truthful, honest, and know what they’re talking about. Bigger than that, you want to know that they care about you. So if you’re a guy that has no interest in me as a person or you just treat me as a number instead of a person — when adversity happens? — then I now become an independent contractor. I’m going to make sure I’m providing for my family.”
Nobody flinched after that third consecutive loss in November. The Commanders enter the postseason as arguably the hottest team in the NFC.
They’ll face those Buccaneers on Sunday night in the wild card round.
Washington believes it can win — now — and it’s downright berserk to associate such real optimism with the football team in D.C. The entire 21st century, the Redskins/WFT/Commanders have been a running gag that exists purely for the amusement of the 31 other franchises. Dan Snyder, its fan-boy owner, constantly discovered new ways to soil an organization rich in pride, tradition, trophies. He’s gone, so the good times are rolling. This is no one-hit wonder. Washington has a chance to join the NFC’s elites, and stay there.
The primary source of hope is obvious: Jayden Daniels. The No. 2 overall pick out of LSU is the rare breed of athlete who demands the ball in the clutch.
Of course, we’ve all seen dysfunctional organizations sabotage talented rookie quarterbacks. The Cleveland Browns drafted Baker Mayfield No. 1 overall, and dumped him for a quarterback accused of sexual assault. It only cost them a trio of first-round picks and $230 million guaranteed. (Nobody’s thrown more touchdowns in the NFL the last two years than Mayfield.) The New York Jets drafted Sam Darnold No. 3, and miscast the bungling Adam Gase as a quarterback whisperer capable of unlocking greatness. (Darnold turned Minnesota into a contender and may now earn a contract worth north of $50 million per year.)
Drafting one player alone is never enough.
Teams must hit the bull’s eye on their head coach hire.
Left at the altar by Ben Johnson, the Commanders pivoted to Dan Quinn, to a coach who had already spent 5 ½ years as the head man in Atlanta. Finally, good fortune was on Washington’s side. Back when we were reporting on a Brian Robinson Jr. feature, the team’s running backs coach could not stop praising his boss. It was unprompted. It was beyond traditional flattery. Anthony Lynn, who has played or coached for a third of the NFL, called Quinn “one of the best culture-builders” he’s ever seen. This, he swore was different. He said Quinn put the players in charge… in a unique way. He noted that this culture change required extra work from the assistant coaches… hesitant to share that secret sauce.
Then, the Commanders went 12-5. An eight-win jump from 2023. Only the Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs won this many games in Washington.
When that adversity struck, communication between coaches and players did not short-circuit. Rifts did not divide the locker room. That’s because Quinn effectively created an entirely new world for these Commanders. How exactly? What was that first domino Lynn’s referring to? Go Long talked to more coaches on staff to piece together the league’s greatest turnaround in 2024.
You’ve got to go back — wayyy back — before the Hail Marys, before the overtime wins, before the Commanders even selected Daniels on draft night.
Quinn’s first order of business was something these coaches had never heard before.
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Start with the man who’s got the best perspective. If anyone can speak to the total transformation of this franchise, it’s Tapp. It’s the kid who grew up a diehard Redskin fan in Chesapeake, Va., three hours away, and then spent one of his NFL seasons with the franchise in 2013. He knows how much the team means to the people. He saw firsthand what life was like under the previous owner.
Once his 12-year playing career wrapped up, Tapp got into coaching and eventually landed with the San Francisco 49ers. That’s when he linked up with Adam Peters. Even though they seemed to exist in two very different departments — Tapp as the assistant D-Line coach, Peters the assistant GM — they actually collaborated a ton. It was Tapp’s job to coach up the players drafted in Round 3 and lower. So the two started evaluating players together and speaking the same language. Before they knew it, the two were talking football over games of cornhole. Peters was named the Commanders GM in January ‘24.
Tapp had a relationship with Quinn, too. In 2009, Quinn was his D-Line coach and he loved the coach’s penchant for tailoring gameplans to everyone’s individual gifts. Nothing was cookie cutter. He didn’t ask Patrick Kerney, Lawrence Jackson and Tapp to rush the same exact way. Jim Mora was fired, Pete Carroll was hired, Quinn survived. And even after Tapp was traded to Philadelphia, Quinn made a point to reach out every two weeks. From the other side of the country, 3,000 miles away, Quinn felt the need to help a player who was struggling with the transition.
Over the next decade, their bond grew. Peters hired Quinn, and Quinn added Tapp to his staff.
A staff — much like the Detroit Lions — that’s teeming with former players.
Everything we see on Sundays is rooted in the spring, in the first two weeks coaches were around players for Phase 1 of the offseason conditioning program.
Usually, that’s when head coaches are dying to surgically implant X’s and O’s and coaching philosophies into the brains of players. Fancy slogans are painted on walls. T-shirts are printed. This is their chance to put into action everything they’ve learned from endless mentors and self-help books. Here? Quinn’s mandate to his entire staff of 20+ assistants was simple: Do not talk football. He told the position coaches to learn as much as they could about their players’ upbringing, interests, families, how they’re wired.
The Commanders would be built on a foundation of genuine relationships. Not a dictatorship.
Playbooks could collect dust. Quinn informed his staff that football would take care of itself because they’re all athletic, all smart, all gifted. Players needed to know coaches cared about them — first.
“We got to understand the man,” Tapp says. “I want to know where he’s from. I want to know about his significant others. If he has kids. I want to know stuff about this guy that you can’t Google. That’s not on my Wiki page. Because that’s when that true relationship, that connection, happened. So when you go through those tough times, guys got even closer together. Nobody was throwing anybody under the bus. Nobody was questioning players or coaches. Coaches weren’t questioning. We were all together because we understand what we’ve built so far and where we were going. So it was never a sense of panic. It was always a sense of urgency.
“We didn’t start out on fire. We had rough times. The team and the personnel people and the cafeteria staff and the janitors and the field crew and everybody stayed together in the boat. You build a structure to withstand those times because they’re going to come. You don’t know when they’re going to come but they’re going to come and you’ve got to make sure you’re battle-tested when they do.”
Quinn’s mission was immediate and explicit, adds quarterbacks coach Tavita Pritchard: “Make this the best environment to work in, in all of pro sports.”
To accomplish this, Quinn knew his coaches needed to understand the people in their room.
“Because everything we can and will do,” Pritchard says, “will hinge on how connected we are in ways beyond football.”
One day, Tapp took all 18 guys inside his defensive line room go-karting. They picked teams through a random draft, wore the team colors (white, gold, burgundy) and raced. Tapp, Daron Payne and Benning Potoa’e took the crown with the fastest cumulative time. (“To see a bunch of grown 250-pound to 310-pound men acting like kids,” Tapp says, “is pretty comical.”)
Another day, they all went skeet shooting.
Another day, Andre Jones Jr. — an avid fisherman — took teammates to a local lake.
Other position groups went bowling. Or out for dinners. Naturally, everyone became more of a family. This period set the tone for relationship-building all season long. Inside the D-Line room, Tapp figured out which type of music each of his players enjoyed so he could blare certain artists as they walked into his meeting room. Efe Obada, a Nigerian native profiled here, loves a genre called “Afrobeats.” A few others like the rapper Future. Others are into gospel. Each day, Tapp switches it up.
Quinn’s edict initially took veteran coaches by surprise. It was strange to not jump right into Install No. 1. Lynn remembers telling himself, I hope this pays off. (“It is paying off,” he later said. “We measure everything.”)
The defensive coordinator around here, Joe Whitt Jr, calls Quinn the single-most caring person he knows. If the coach asks “How’s your day going?” he sincerely means it. Back on his Falcons staff in 2020, Whitt couldn’t believe what he was seeing day-to-day up close. Whitt also pans a magnifying glass over Phase 1 as the defining moment for these Commanders. The defensive backs congregated for sessions pass-game coordinator Jason Simmons called “My Story.” Everyone sent in pictures of themselves and then — one by one, in front of the room — each player shared their life story.
Players were allowed to talk as long as they wanted. Several were extremely vulnerable. Several shed tears. It took a full week for all DBs to speak. Teammates forged a true brotherhood over shared trauma. The exercise was so powerful that Whitt decided right then to conduct the same “My Story” session with his entire team if he gets the opportunity to be a head coach.
All of this directly translates to the field.
When things go haywire, the coordinator never sees players from either side of the ball pointing fingers.
“Because the bond is tight. And it is real,” Whitt says. “Everybody is so loose in that building. You wouldn’t even know we had a playoff game coming up. Everybody is just relaxed because we don’t work in a tense environment. Now, we work in a highly competitive environment. It’s one of the most competitive environments that you’re going to be around. But when it comes to stressing or worrying about messing up, we don’t live that way. We can cut it loose because we know our brother has our back and that’s why they play the way that they play.”
For this to work, everyone needed to be on-board — coaches and players.
Pritchard, 37, came straight from the college ranks at Stanford and was “craving” such an environment that put people first in such a unique way. Inside his quarterbacks room, he talks often about being a Dad. He’s got four kids. He immediately got to work knowing the team’s prized possession, Daniels, on a deeper level. Quickly, the young coach realized this partnership was fate. Daniels was a lot like him. The LSU quarterback spoke passionately about his family, his teammates.
“It was very clear that people and relationships are extremely important to him,” Pritchard says. “When you’re talking about a team dynamic, the ultimate team sport, those things matter, man. Especially with a quarterback, a franchise player. To have a guy who is not just about themselves and what they’re going through, but other people and their teammates and can connect with other people — you see that immediately with Jay. You see it immediately. He cares about the relationships he has and he invests in those things. And I think that was very apparent from Day 1.
“He also loves to have fun. He loves to smile. You see it when he plays. He plays with a lot of joy and he lives with a lot of joy. That’s who he is.”
Create a world in which everyone truly knows each other and everyone’s more willing to bounce ideas off each other: good or bad.
Innovation’s nonstop. Washington inches toward solutions.
Nobody’s hesitant to go right to the boss in the goatee and backwards hat with a suggestion. All along, Pritchard says Quinn has been open to changing anything he’s done in the past. This includes everything from how the Commanders structure practice, back to how they handled their “Top 30” pre-draft visits. The Commanders famously took 20+ prospects to Topgolf, including the quarterbacks they’d be choosing from at No. 2: Daniels, Drake Maye, J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix Jr. Coaches wanted to observe potential draftees in an authentic environment.
Not a board meeting. Not something that requires hours of memorization with agents.
“He’s literally asking us feedback in real time on everything. Everything,” Pritchard says. “You’re empowering your people around you to have a say in the culture and environment you’re building, and that goes a long way.”
No wonder Daniels looks so good, so fast. This is the vision that’s completely shaped the Commanders offense. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and Pritchard didn’t jam a quarterback with roadrunner speed and a rocket-launcher arm into a traditional offense. They play to the QB’s strengths. They allow the QB to play fast. His first pro season, Daniels completed 69 percent of his passes for 3,568 yards with 25 touchdowns and nine interceptions. His 891 rushing yards broke Robert Griffin III’s NFL record for most yards on the ground as a rookie.
His cool in the clutch is what has turbocharged belief team-wide.
There’s the stunning Hail Mary finish vs. the Bears, obviously. Daniels launched the ball 65 yards in the air. Noah Brown cradled the deflection. Quinn ran onto the field to join the jubilation.
But there’s also everything that came after that three-game losing streak.
In a 20-19 win at New Orleans, Daniels rolled left, hit the brakes, dropped the ball, calmly picked it up, stepped up and rifled a 16-yard TD to Terry McLaurin. In a 36-33 thriller over Philadelphia, he gunned a game-winner to Jameson Crowder in the back of the end zone with 10 seconds left. Poise that amazed McLaurin. “I’ve never seen that from a rookie at any position, let alone quarterback,” the veteran wideout said. “He has utmost confidence in the guys around him and he has a way of making the right plays when it’s time. You can’t teach that.” Then, the Commanders punched their playoff ticket with a 30-24 win over Atlanta. Daniels was hypnotizing again. Forty-two of his 127 rushing yards came in overtime. Atlanta’s Grady Jarrett and Matthew Judon both had clear shots on one third-and-2 dash. Both whiffed.
Nobody’s bringing Quinn’s vision to life quite like the quarterback.
“Culture permeates everything,” Pritchard says. “We’re not going to do something because ‘Well, this is the system we run’ or ‘this is the way you have to play offense in the NFL.’ We're going to do this because we think it’s what’s best. Put Jay out there in a position to succeed and empower him to do it.”
Once everyone got to know each other on a deeper level in the offseason, Dan Quinn then made sure they all had a sense of direction. This magic carpet ride of a season is also rooted in an official team credo.
When the L’s accumulated in November, Quinn reminded players of that credo… one he did not author himself.
Quinn didn’t bestow an ideology upon all 53 of his players. He gave the pen — literally — to the players. He let the players decide what these 2024 Washington Commanders would become. Assistant coaches are hesitant to share the specifics of something so intimate to the team but it all began when Quinn welcomed in a group of former and active military members. After a series of workshops, soldiers explained how they established a code of ethics for their special forces units. (“How they were going to operate,” Pritchard adds,” how they were going to ‘get down,’ as DQ would say.”)
Next, the Commander players were asked to put their heads together and articulate a code of their own. It’s long. It’s referenced often by Quinn. He reminds the players who they said they wanted to be this season.
“How we want to finish, how we want to focus, how we want to practice, how we want to deal with adversity, how we want to connect to each other,” Pritchard says. “Without telling you exactly what those things are, those are the themes of what we’re talking about: Hey, here’s who we are. Because that’s what culture is, right? Culture is a group acceptance of ‘here’s who we are.’ And like I said, it permeates every facet of the organization every day.
“We have built something unique and special. We’re continuing to build that every day.”
Tapp remembers the military personnel teaching how to eliminate the “me” and the “I” from a team dynamic.
That creed is something they’ve been “riding by and living by” all year.
Various speakers have been addressing the team all season long.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who owns 4 percent of the Commanders, spoke to the team. He told players to enjoy “the process of winning.” Soak it in. Michael Phelps, the 23-time Olympic gold medalist, addressed everyone in Arizona ahead of a 42-14 blowout win. One of the best speakers is actually in-house. Dylan Thompson — the senior director of team support and advancement — just may be one of the most potent secret weapons in the entire NFL. Before this season, the former South Carolina quarterback was the director of team development for the Houston Texans (2021- ‘23) and a character coach for the Detroit Lions (2018- ‘20). Last August, you may recall, defensive end Will Anderson Jr. telling us he never felt so connected to somebody in the sport before. Thompson completely pulled him out of a mental rut.
Quarterback C.J. Stroud has also cited Thompson as a major factor in his breakout rookie season, calling Thompson “one of the best human beings that I’ve ever met in my life.” Stroud told KPRC 2 Houston. Now, Daniels is the quarterback and the Commanders are the team benefiting from Thompson’s wisdom.
Says Tapp: “He is unbelievable.”
To execute this total 180-degree turn, coaches know they’ve got to practice what they preach. That’s when players lose trust. It helps that so many of them played in this cutthroat NFL. Guys like Ken Norton Jr., David Blough, Larry Izzo, Bobby Engram, Shariff Floyd, William Gay, Ryan Kerrigan, Tapp.
“Good, bad, indifferent,” Tapp says. “Tell me what it is so I can get better and I can digest that. Don’t sugarcoat it. Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth. Because if you don’t tell me the truth and I find out secondhand? Now I’ve lost trust in you and it’s really hard to get those things back.”
One lie can crack that foundation. Sift through the ruins of failed regimes and you’re certain to find damning hypocrisy. The higher up the food chain the lie, the worse the destruction. As we’ve said a million times, bad owners create bad teams.
The difference between the Redskins (under Snyder) and the Commanders (under Josh Harris)? “Night and day,” Tapp assures, because everything trickles down. His bosses sincerely care about the work-life balance. Tapp feels like the Commanders value his family more than they even value himself. Wives and children are welcomed at practice, at the facility, always traveling with coaches. Whitt has lived this sentiment. Back in 2020, Quinn knew Whitt’s kids had moved constantly — Green Bay to Cleveland to, now, Atlanta. So, he handwrote all three kids letters to explain how important it was for their Dad to join him.
To this day, the Whitt kids still have those letters.
To this day, Quinn never wants his coaches missing their kids’ events — be it a ballet recital or a high school football game. In Dallas, Quinn would frequently join Whitt for his son’s Friday night games.
“He really cares, man,” Whitt says. “I never met one person that has a negative word to say about Dan Quinn. And if I met somebody that did have a negative word? I would look at them sideways. Because I know what the man really stands for.”
Back when Tapp was playing in Washington? Life was much different. Hell, the Redskins didn’t even have a cafeteria. Food was catered in.
Today, Harris green-lights whatever Quinn needs. Typically, NFL players must outsource for the best possible acupuncture, dry needling, massages, stretching coaches. Homes are full of both children and body specialists in the evening. The Commanders have been trying to bring the best of the best right to Coach Gibbs Drive in Ashburn, Va. Further, Quinn carves out time in the team’s daily schedule for these specialists on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s not something extra that’ll force a Dad to miss family time.
“That’s not standard,” Tapp says. “You always had to find your own people everywhere you went.”
Not that anyone’s in a rush to get home. Through the W’s and the L’s, players have only grown closer. To the point where players now choose to stick around the facility when the work’s done simply because they enjoy being around each other. Whitt was the cornerbacks coach on the 2010 Green Bay Packers team that got blistering-hot late in the season and won the Super Bowl. He sees the same DNA in this group. On Tuesdays — an off day — veteran linebacker Bobby Wagner started studying film at the facility like a coach. Soon enough, all of the linebackers were joining him. Last Saturday, Whitt looked inside the defensive meeting room and… class was again in session. Wagner gathered the whole unit together. (“Didn’t tell anybody,” Whitt adds. “He called a meeting and they were in there doing it — on their own.”)
Everyone can be themselves here without the fear of getting called to the principal’s office. Tapp nails it when he says the building itself doesn’t make a team. Rather, the “people” you put in the building. After all, the Dallas Cowboys built the most pristine sports facility in the country. “The Star at Frisco” is a sprawling 91-acre, $1.5 billion brainchild of Jerry Jones, full of VIP tours to give fans what the team calls “a behind-the-scenes look at a day in the life of a Dallas Cowboy.”
Neat. Those tours also piss off players and coaches alike. They feel more like a museum exhibit, than a human being.
After buying the Commanders, Harris observed the football operation for a season and then brought in his own people to run the show. Peters assembled a healthy mix of vets and youth while maintaining financial flexibility. Quinn took it from there and Quinn tells coaches this is a “recalibration,” not a rebuild. They always expected to win in Year 1.
Only two NFC teams have failed to reach the conference championship since 1995.
One of them remains rudderless. After another failed season, a defiant Jones assured he had zero plans to relinquish his GM title. “I bought the team,” he told reporters. “The first thing to come out of my mouth… somebody asked, ‘Did you buy this for your kids?’ I said, ‘Hell no. I bought it for me.’ And I didn’t buy an investment. I bought an occupation.”
One has a vision for long-term success. It took 2 ½ decades of Snyder’s bonkers tyranny but Washington is ready to make its move.
“We’re one heartbeat, one sound, echoing the message from the top down,” Tapp says. “And that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in right now.”
Nobody should be surprised if they snap the streak this season.
If so, expect new head coaches in other cities to use the same words that launched these Commanders: Don’t talk football.
Thank you for making Go Long your home for longform in the NFL.
Q&A with Joe Whitt Jr.:
Q&A: Joe Whitt Jr. on the Power of 'DQ,' Frankie Luvu, why these Washington Commanders have 2010 Packers vibes
The Washington Commanders were an atrocity in 2023, finishing with a 4-13 record. Hope was scant. People were fired. The coaching search didn’t exactly start with a bang, either.
Brian Robinson Jr. feature:
‘I can battle anything:’ Brian Robinson Jr. nearly lost his life... then gained a superpower
ASHBURN, Va. — One bullet pierced his hip. One bullet struck his knee. Both entered and exited the body of Brian Robinson Jr.
ICYMI:
‘I bleed for that win:’ Our 1 on 1 with Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott
ORCHARD PARK, NY — All playoff pain on your mind is on his mind. Sean McDermott doesn’t hide those losses deep into his subconscious. He cannot pretend like those games never happened. Bury “13 Seconds” and the rest of those defeats or use them? Before the question is even finished, he interjects — “no way” — and pops off a leather chair to grab something at his desk on the other side of his office.
Sounds to me like this organization is treating players like the adults that they are. Allowing all stakeholders to have input into decisions that affect them is the only way to ensure they are in alignment with each other’s best interests. Call it the absence of ego…something not too common amongst many higher ups in any organization.
What’s great is that everybody has a story, and the depths of that story drives what we do, and how we do it — whether you call it your “why” or your “purpose” or whatnot. Two weeks of assembled practice with no football talk would make many coaches twitch. Especially with the talk about “everyone is soft, players don’t hit enough”. Quinn built his approach on some critical assumptions — and got this year’s roster to push forward. What a culture shift! Fingers crossed, for the sake of the franchise, that he can keep the good growing and send the bad and lumpy ones to Dallas.