Dan Quinn, Daronte Jones and David Blough held court in Ashburn on Tuesday (Ben Standig)
ASHBURN, Va. — If you were waiting for Dan Quinn to offer direct answers about swapping offensive coordinators, you will be disappointed.
In this instance, the rationale isn’t hard to decipher.
Quinn met with local members on Tuesday afternoon for the first time since moving on from Kliff Kingsbury and replacing the former Arizona Cardinals head coach with assistant QB coach David Blough. The 30-year-old former quarterback with two years of coaching experience is now the primary voice tasked with guiding quarterback Jayden Daniels.
“I thought it was time for change, a new vision of how we’d want to go about it,” Quinn said, “and so that’s what we did.”
Blough and Daronte Jones, Washington’s new defensive coordinator, also held individual press conferences. There is little in common with the journeys these men took to reach this point beyond a brief overlap with the Vikings in 2022. The one common element is the main talking point about Quinn’s choices: both will enter 2026 as first-time coordinators.
“I know we may talk of two first-time coordinators,” Quinn acknowledged, “but I also recognize that everybody needs their first stop. I really feel like we’re going to set them up to succeed in every way.”
For that to happen, Washington must nail its offseason transactions. All three levels of the defense require significant help, starting with the pass rush. Both sides of the ball need speed. Wide receiver, tight end, and cornerback are among the other areas of need. Free agency and the annual draft remain a few weeks away.
Learning more about the new coordinators tasked with turning the various pieces into a lean, mean, fighting machine is this moment’s agenda. Gathering details about how Quinn reached his conclusions is part of the assessment.
“Yeah, changes are hard. As you go through, you build strong relationships with people and players,” Quinn said. “And so, when there’s time for change, those are difficult conversations, discussions, but at the end, you just keep going back, what’s the best thing for the team moving forward?”
Now, a recurring theme in my assessment here is that all the positive talk doesn’t mean Quinn crushed these hires. He surely felt positive about Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. in 2024. Things change. Quinn didn’t putz around hoping for better days ahead. He took action with these and other staff roles.
Here are some highlights from the press conferences, along with thoughts on what the men at the mic had to say.
The Playbook:
Blough is putting Daniels under center
“strong convictions, lightly held”
Daronte’s defense
System loading
Name checked
Staff changes
What I’m hearing
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Before Washington’s regular-season finale, Last Man Standig laid out reasons why Kingsbury could be ousted. Primarily, the Commanders’ use of shotgun and no-huddle during Kingsbury’s two seasons far exceeded that of any other team.
So, it wasn’t surprising to hear Quinn and Blough talk about the offense seeking explosive plays from a more traditional setup.
“It’ll look different in some ways,” Quinn said. “But this is going to be an aggressive, balanced attack, but that will probably have more under center than we have in the past. That’s also for run action and play passes to generate explosive plays. We’re going to try to feature every part of Jayden in a way that makes him unique and special. But also, the run action, the runs, and the play-action game that go with it are all things that generate explosive plays.”
Kliff Kingsbury’s offense once felt untouchable. Now, it’s under review
Blough’s career journey included stints with a variety of offensive schemes: Ben Johnson’s label-less approach that deftly marries the run and pass; Kevin O’Connell’s West Coast attack in Minnesota; and Kingsbury’s modernized version of the Air Raid offense he ran as both a player and a coach at Texas Tech.
Quinn didn’t change coordinators to keep the same system. Blough sounded like a coach ready to express himself through his play-calling and scheme.
“[Under center] opens up some different schemes in the run game, some things that I believe in,” Blough said. “It opens up different play actions and keepers and getting [Daniels] on the perimeter in different ways. I think there’s a level of communication that happens under center. I think there are different ways to go about things, and it’s something that I’m convinced about. With his skill set, his fundamentals, and the things we absolutely loved about him when he first got here still ring true.”
Blough cited the teams making deep playoff runs as evangelicals with going under center. “That was a foundation of what they did. I think that is something that we would like to implement with him and get him in that position,” Blough said.
If nothing else, Blough spoke as a coach with a vision rather than someone trying to mimic a mentor or a hyped approach. For someone in a leader-of-men role, that’s a good place to be.
Fans and some football thinkers vibed with Kingsbury’s confidence in his system. Yet his adherence to his rules of the road sometimes veered toward stubbornness. That’s not something Quinn said; it’s a logical assumption given the change in coordinators.
The topic of adaptability was part of Blough’s media session.
“I had a wise coach share, ‘It’s about strong convictions, lightly held.’ And so I think there’s an adaptability that will be fluid and we’re gonna do what our guys do best,” Blough said. “There will be staples of what our identity will look like, but there’s gonna be some things that are easy for us and hard for defenses. We’re gonna make the same things look different and different things look the same and teach in a creative way. And there’s things that I think will be really evident when they come to life on the field.”
Making a formation look like a run or a pass is part of the schematic job. The same goes for adjusting based on personnel, opponents, and results.
Whitt served as defensive coordinator and called plays, but the scheme was primarily from the Quinn playbook. The two worked together over multiple stops, so there were no communication issues between them. But with the harsh results, Quinn, a longtime defensive coordinator, took over play-calling duties in Week 11 and then moved on from his longtime colleague.
Considering the perceived high stakes for Quinn in season number three and Jones being a new coordinator, imagining the head coach keeping a hand on the wheel isn’t crazy. But if you want a different imagination, let the new coordinator cook.
“I wanted to be very clear with [Daronte] on that. That this would be his system,” Quinn said.
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“I think it’s hard to think for someone else,” the head coach continued. “I wanted to make sure coming here, he wouldn’t have my system learn it. I said, ‘You’re coming here to install it, man.’ And I’m going to be here to support you, give you insight when you want it. … Going through the whole process with him was exciting for me too. I like that the learning can be different and what needs to be different and what can be better. And so, those were things that fired me up. But ultimately, we’re putting in a new system, and it’s going to start with his vision, his terminology, the wording we use, and the communication we share. And that’s how it has to be.”
“You naturally want to be moldable because I’ve been around so many different schemes,” Jones said. “I think that’s an advantage of mine. There aren’t too many schemes that I have not been a part of.”
Jones’s last four seasons with the Vikings included three as the defensive passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach under Brian Flores. Similar to how Washington lapped the field in shotgun and no-huddle usage, Minnesota’s 48 percent blitz rate easily outdistanced all other defenses. That aggression is appealing, and a logical reason Quinn hired the coach from Prince George’s County.
Flores often deployed a 3-4 base alignment that could easily morph into a 4-3 look. Jones also coached in Mike Zimmer’s more traditional 4-3 defense and called his own shots as LSU’s defensive coordinator in 2021. That team used a similar nickel defense (4-2-5) to Washington.
“Everyone comes from some type of tree,” Jones said. “And so … [I’ll] be able to implement various things from each scheme that I like and I want to pull from. Whether it’s the Zimmer scheme, ‘Hey, I like this on third down, I like the mug looks there’. Or if it’s Flores and the versatility and how we can use, one person in multiple ways based off of their strengths. That’s what you want to pull from.”
Jones was asked about players he’s excited to work with. He seemed to focus on those offering versatility. Players mentioned were:
CB Mike Sainristil
S Quan Martin
LB Jordan Magee
S Will Harris
DT Javon Kinlaw
Jones: “We talk about the foundation from the ground up and trying to connect to these players and find out how they learn. And I think that’s the biggest thing going forward. To be able to utilize versatility, you got to figure out how do they learn? We all, as human beings, we learn differently, right? … It’s our responsibility to figure out if they are visual, auditory, auditory, read and write, or if it’s kinesthetic learners. And that’s our job to pull that out of them.”
Other coaching changes were announced, though Washington has not yet finalized the entire staff. Many were previously reported, but some others are interesting:
Anthony Lynn is no longer the run-game coordinator, a role he held the past two seasons. Nobody else on staff received that title. Best guess, beyond an outside hire, is that Lynn and new OL coach Darnell Stapleton will jointly handle that role.
Wes Welker joins the offensive staff in a to-be-determined capacity. The former receiver and returner standout for the Patriots and Dolphins was a personnel assistant last season.
Jesse Madden, grandson of legendary coach and announcer John Madden, is the new assistant RB coach after working as an offensive quality control coach last season.
Defensive backs coach Tommy Donatell is now the safeties coach, with William Gay handling the cornerbacks. With both listed as DB coaches, that’s some level of title demotion for Donatell.
Danny Etling, hired as the assistant QB coach, was omitted from the list below. He remains on staff.
Again, the staff isn’t set in stone, even if the assumed roles are filled. I’ve said keep an eye out for an experienced offensive coach to join Blough. Lynn and assistant head coach/passing game coordinator Brian Johnson certainly count as guides for the first-time coordinator. They also have their own duties and could have a wandering eye after being passed over for Blough. Both were interviewed by other teams this offseason.
Multi-time coordinator Darrell Bevell, most recently the Dolphins QB coach, is a natural fit since he previously worked with Quinn in Seattle and Blough in Detroit. My understanding is that Washington is interested, but the Commanders are not his main focus. Perhaps that changes now that Bevell missed out on the Jets’ coordinator job and after Mike McDaniel, the former Miami head coach, hired Adam Gase to help him direct the Chargers’ offense. Former Chargers OC Greg Roman and Cowboys TE coach Lunda Wells, who met with Washington for the OC job, are also part of this hiring cycle.
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