OPINION:
Washington Commanders coach Dan Quinn on Nov. 2 after a 38-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks: “What I can say is I can speak for every coach and player and just an unacceptable performance by us tonight.”
Quinn, after his team’s 31-0 loss Sunday to the Minnesota Vikings — a team that lost 26-0 to the Seahawks the week before:
“Oftentimes you stand here after a loss and you try to find something good that you want to point to,” Quinn said. “But tonight, honestly, I (can’t)….Tonight, to me, none of it was acceptable.”
Sensing a pattern here?
What is the meaning of unacceptable? According to dictionary.com, unacceptable is “too bad to be accepted, approved of, or allowed to continue.”
I’m not sure something can be continuously unacceptable. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of the word, doesn’t it? If something was unacceptable a month ago, and it is unacceptable now, shouldn’t somebody do something about it? Or just accept the unacceptable for the rest of the season?
If I were Quinn, I’d expand my vocabulary. According to thesaurus.com, distasteful, objectionable, offensive and repugnant are all acceptable synonyms for future reference — and there is no reason to believe there won’t be future references.
The 2025 season came to an end in Minneapolis Sunday with the first shutout a Washington offense has turned in since Oct. 20, 2019, when they lost 9-0 to the San Francisco 49ers. That seems like another life. Bill Callahan was the head coach after Jay Gruden was fired after a 0-5 start. Bruce Allen was team president. Skipper Dan the Sailing Man was the owner.
No one had heard of COVID before.
The franchise name was Redskins.
Those days, nothing seemed unacceptable.
Commanders fans thought they left the unacceptable days behind when Skipper Dan sold the team to Josh Harris and his band of saviors in 2023.
Adam Peters was named general manager in 2024, followed by Quinn being hired as head coach and Jayden Daniels drafted as their quarterback of the future.
A 12-4 season, a trip to the NFC title game, and a fan base that had become accustomed to unacceptable believed there was a new normal in Washington.
A 3-10 record this season, though, is too familiar for a damaged fan base to accept, and now they are consumed with anger, awakened from their slumber last year, only to care again — at least the fans that hadn’t abandoned the team.
They want to know who to blame and perhaps are even angrier that the answer is complicated by a long list of injuries that certainly contributed to a lost season.
Is it Peters, who may have banked on an old roster of spare parts to deliver a second season?
Is it Quinn, who has had to replace his handpicked defensive coordinator and whose squads have looked unprepared at times — like Sunday — to play an NFL preseason game, let alone one that counts?
Or is it Harris, who hired both of them?
There is no shortage of questions surrounding the struggling team. Will an owner who had to amass a group of 20 investors to buy the franchise for $6 billion and is facing a $2.7 billion price tag for a new stadium spend on free agency or keep shopping at the thrift shop?
Will offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury leave for another job, and if so, is that bad news or good news?
At the top of the list of play-calling priorities going into the Vikings game should have been to protect Daniels, who was taking the field after missing three games coming back from his third injury this year.
Facing a blitz-happy Minnesota defense, the Commanders failed to rely on a running game that could have taken the pressure off their quarterback.
Chris Rodriguez averaged more than five yards a carry yet only got the ball 10 times — even when the game was still within reach for Washington.
Daniels struggled under constant pressure and had a pass halfway through the third quarter intercepted by Minnesota Vikings linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel. Daniels was knocked to the ground by cornerback Isaiah Rodgers and landed on the dislocated elbow he suffered in the Seattle game last month.
After a trip to the medical blue tent, Daniels was held out as a precaution, Quinn said.
There was much debate over whether Daniels should have been playing at all, given a season left with little to accomplish.
But with five games left before the Minnesota game, holding out Daniels if he was cleared to play seemed unacceptable.
Then again, a coaching staff that can’t protect their most important asset also seems unacceptable.
“I thought we took a step forward last week,” Quinn said, referring to Washington’s 27-26 loss to the favored Denver Broncos. “Tonight, I think we took three steps back.”
I would say that’s unsatisfactory.
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