With David Blough and Daronte Jones leading a revamped staff, Dan Quinn explains why Washington had to leave its 2025 struggles in the past.
ASHBURN, Va. — The new league year begins for the NFL on March 11, but the Washington Commanders have already closed the book on 2025, according to head coach Dan Quinn.
While we knew a bit of a regression was certainly possible after a 12-5 debut season for Quinn and his Commanders, nobody saw what happened this past year coming, at least not to the extent that it came.
Because of this, Washington now enters its 2026 campaign with a reshaped coaching staff that is not only determined to get it right but also has the mandate from the top to leave 2025 in the past, where it belongs.
“Full stop 25, alright,” Quinn said. “I had to do that first. Enough beating myself up, [and] others in that way. And so, the energy, the swagger that we create, the standards that we want…For me, it always starts first with practice and the speed, the effort, the execution of that.”
It starts with Quinn, but I’ve come to learn it also takes the players executing properly and continuing to prop each other up when times get tough, because no team succeeds without driving through adversity. It takes more than just supporting each other, however, and the Commanders captured an attitude and style of play in 2024 that they were missing in 2025.
“The locker room is a strong one, guys supporting one another. We spoke on that so much in a tough year. But I think I want to recapture that energy of that swagger of how we want to play, the style, the attitude of it. And I’m certain we can do that. You’ve heard me also say building a championship program this season, I’m taking the lessons, I’m moving them forward, but it’s also staying there. I’m not carrying over the things that sucked and weren’t part of how we want to do business.”
Quinn said carrying the energy and lessons forward with the coaches, new and returning, is the first step. Once the players arrive in April for the team’s offseason program, they’ll become the next big part of that equation. “I’m ready for that process to be fully underway,” Quinn added.
Severing ties to recapture Washington’s lost swagger
Growth isn’t always comfortable. In fact, it rarely is. For Washington to grow beyond the mistakes of the past, it had to move on. And that meant severing ties that had been built during a run to the NFC Championship Game, and in years past as well.
Decisions that were easy to see coming were not made the same way.
“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? What’s the best thing for them? And so, if I put it into those spaces, what do we need to do moving forward? What things need to change, and how would we go about that? Then you look at it from that lens, and that’s certainly what I had to do because it’s a difficult part of it. You build bonds with coaches and with players, and so when you move on from them, it’s challenging.”
That’s the burden of the job. When it goes right, you get to be the one wearing the Gatorade bath. When it goes wrong, you have to make the right decisions. Personal feelings aside.
Quinn said that he has an immense amount of respect for dismissed coordinators Kliff Kingsbury and Joe Whitt Jr., but that can’t get in the way of doing what he feels is right for the team as a whole. “I thought it was time for change, a new vision of how we’d want to go about it, and so that’s what we did.”
New coordinators headline massive staff changes
David Blough takes over as the team’s offensive coordinator in just his third year of coaching. Daronte Jones, with nearly 30 years of coaching experience between college and NFL programs, takes over the defense.
But those aren’t the only changes.
Offensive line coach Bobby Johnson has been replaced by Darnell Stapleton. D.J. Williams is the new quarterbacks coach. And Wes Welker will have an official role on the offensive coaching staff this season after helping out with the defensive and special teams staffs last year.
Eric Henderson is the new defensive line coach, and Darryl Tapp is staying on board as the assistant defensive line coach. The team also promoted William Gay to the cornerbacks coach position.
And those are just some of the changes. For familial reasons, Williams caught a lot of people’s attention when he was hired. As the son of franchise legend Doug Williams, it was understandable.
“I’ve known D.J. for a while, dating back to times in Atlanta,” Quinn said of his new quarterbacks coach. “He was in New Orleans, so I had a chance to initially get to know him then. And he’s always been somebody that I’ve kept my eye on about what he’s doing and where he is. And so had a chance to also visit with [Former Atlanta Falcons Head Coach] Raheem [Morris] about where he was and his growth there. And it just came across so strongly to everybody that I spoke with about him about what he’s doing and where he is headed and the influence that he has.”
Quinn kept Doug Williams out of son’s interview
Doug Williams, the Commanders’ senior advisor to the general manager, wasn’t involved in the process that brought his son to the organization, Quinn shared.
Quinn said he didn’t even want to bring up the fact that he was interviewing D.J. because if he didn’t get the job, he didn’t want to have to break that news to Doug.
“I remember getting off the Zoom the first time, I said, ‘Holy (expletive) man, he was excellent.’ And so, we interviewed some more people, and I went down to Doug’s office, ‘Hey man, we hired a quarterback coach, and I think you’d know him.’ And so, it was a very cool moment about that.”
And now, Williams will get to be part of building the team’s future, like his father helped cement the team’s legendary past.
When Quinn arrived in Washington, he vowed that he wouldn’t do things the same way he had done them before during his first opportunity to be an NFL head coach. He said he learned the value of understanding that what was successful once won’t necessarily be successful again. In Atlanta, that lesson was learned over a few years. Here, it took just one.
Things are going to be different for the Commanders this season, one way or another. Because if one major decision has already been made this offseason, it’s that things aren’t going down the way they did before.