The Washington Commanders will finish their season with no more than five wins and another high-end first-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
A year after winning 12 games and qualifying for the NFC Championship, it's not what anybody envisioned. Everyone has taken heat for the disappointment, but especially head coach Dan Quinn.
Despite the noise, all indications are that Quinn will return in 2026. It's unequivocally the correct decision, and one national analyst with former ties to Washington's franchise just explained exactly why without even trying.
Louis Riddick drops the ultimate truth bomb on Dan Quinn, other oft-criticized coaches
We live in a world of instant gratification. When it comes to sports, this has generated increasingly toxic discourse anytime a team goes through its lumps, especially when it comes to coaches. Somebody needed to stand up to the peanut gallery, and Louis Riddick of ESPN finally did.
It isn’t always Super Bowl or…you suck and should fire your coach and the window is closed and you should trade your QB and gain a bunch of picks and reset the salary cap and blah blah blah.
— Louis Riddick (@LRiddickESPN) December 26, 2025
Sh!t happens. Teams have bad years. Players get hurt. Assistant coaching changes…
Given the timing of the post and the media cycle following the Christmas Day games, this was likely about Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions. It rings true there, too. Their offensive line and defensive backfield have been decimated by injuries. They lost both coordinators from last year. Despite all of that, their supposedly "it was all Ben Johnson" offense is still top five in scoring. He's a good coach.
It's the same deal in Washington.
Quinn is 11 months removed from coaching in an NFC Championship game. We're not going to pretend he deserves no credit for that. He made mistakes this season, but so did a lot of other people. Far too many things went wrong for the Commanders to blame it all on one guy, let alone to render him incapable of redemption.
Everybody wanted to fire Nick Sirianni after the 2023 season. His team won the Super Bowl the following year. Andy Reid was once considered a perpetual choker who would never win the big one. Bill Belichick was once canned by the Cleveland Browns.
Coaches, just like players, are human. They can grow within their craft. They can learn from their mistakes. They can have flaws, and still be good enough to live with. But in today's all-or-nothing, knee-jerk culture, they have been stripped of that grace.
There are two types of coaches in sports today: those whose fans want fired, and those whose fans will one day want them fired. No matter what they do, they can't ever win; they can only "not lose." And at some point, everybody is going to endure hard times. It's inevitable.
There's a reason no reputable analyst is pushing to fire Quinn. There's plenty of room to criticize his performance this season, but it's still far too soon for his job to be on the line.
As it stands, Quinn has led one great season in Washington and one very bad one. There's as much reason to believe 2024 is closer to the standard under him than 2025 is.
No organization in its right mind would deprive him of the opportunity to prove it.