Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn addressed the media the day after the team's 27-27 tie with the New York Giants. Here are some of his final thoughts before the team moves on to the San Francisco 49ers.
-- Most of Quinn's press conference pertained to the final sequence of overtime, but he opened things up by taking responsibility for the errors. He said he was "furious" with how the team executed in that moment, from the players to the coaches. They took too long to run another play after Rachaad White ran for a two-yard gain. "It was a breakdown that can't happen," Quinn told the players and coaches, and they're going to work to ensure that it never happens again.
"Yesterday's ending was the biggest example, but we've got a lot of s--- to clean up on from yesterday's game," Quinn said. "And trust me, everyone in this building starting with me feels that urgency. So, let's open it up with questions."
-- Here's what Quinn said when asked what role he had on the headset and if having a first-time play caller in Offensive Coordinator David Blough factored into the miscommunication:
"It starts with me first off. No doubt about it. And so, in that scenario where you're calling at the start of a drive, in any two-minute drive, you talk about timeouts, you talk about field position, kick lines, distances that you need to get to. And so, it needs to be communicated then from me to David, who has last words with [QB] Jayden [Daniels] on each down, not just, you know, a start of a drive. And so, when there's that time, you wanna get to where the next one, we're able to clock and kick. And so, those are the ones in subbing and too slow with that. That's like – our execution was just off and that's more frustrating, honestly, when you put a lot of time into that moment and then not to have that come through, we're pissed."
-- Quinn had more to say about the urgency in the final minute:
"The urgency to get in has to be way faster, you know, if we're going to sub. And what I said earlier was, this is one we don't need to sub and take the time to go back and forth with that. So, to get another yard or two, that's fine, we can go and clock it, but just the execution of this long in, this long out, onto the line, not nearly good enough, man."
-- Although the tie was not ideal, there are still 12 games on the Commanders' schedule for them to get things back on track. Quinn wants to make sure the tie is not a defining moment of the year.
"It's a good question. I don't catastrophize things, but I do wanna make sure that I don't minimize things either. And there are plenty of things for us to improve upon in this game and not just the last play. And so, I wanna make sure I'm always emphasizing that to the team about what we're capable of, what we need to work on. But by no small margin, it was the execution, man. And that's what I want us as players and coaches to absolutely drill down, nail it, because when you have this, it gives a bad taste in your mouth. And you wanna, like in our team meeting today, we laid out the plan of how to go play our best at San Francisco. I do wanna make sure I'm expressing what we're teaching, but at the same time, also point to what we need to get done."












