The Commanders had one of their most disappointing performances of the season against the Vikings, allowing J.J. McCarthy, who entered the game with the lowest QBR in the league, to throw three touchdowns with zero interceptions and the Vikings’ offense — one of the worst units at converting third downs — to rack up 26 first downs last Sunday. It was a regression for a unit that had shown improvement in the previous games against the Denver Broncos and Miami Dolphins, partially prompting Quinn to say after the game that the team took “three steps back.”
Quinn believes it is imperative for the defense, as well as the entire team, to recapture the progress it made earlier in the season.
“Finding that edge, finding that spark, finding what needs to get done so we never find our way into this space again. Watching January and February football sucks; we’re the ones that did that. And we’ve got to make sure that we do everything in our power individually to make sure that these four weeks matter and it’s important and we got to go find those edges.”
It is unknown at this point how the Commanders intend to fix their problems with four division games left on the schedule. The injuries on defense have limited the plays that Quinn can call, and the lack of personnel in the pass rush has given opposing quarterbacks plenty of time to pick apart the secondary’s zone coverage.
Quinn is up for the challenge, though, no matter what that will require from him and his players.
“But it starts, honestly, this week in terms of the players, our execution of that. Usually, as a coach, you have an idea, ‘Okay, that practice week didn’t go well,’ when there’s a bad performance that follows that. By having good practices preceding a terrible loss, I was not ready for us to have that type of performance. I really wasn’t. But we’ll continue to look to dig, like you said, game plan, any of the practice routines, that’s our charge, man. These four weeks, whatever we gotta do to get that part exactly like we want, that’s really important.”