OPINION:
Before the Washington Commanders even played their first game under Dan Quinn, people were banging on his door to be part of the coaching staff here.
“What’s really cool for you and for the fanbase, there are people that really, really want to be here,” Quinn told Team 980. “I think that should speak to where this organization is headed and what’s going to go down because people feel that energy that’s going to come on. Behind the scenes, fans would be really pumped to know people are really pushing to be a part of this. I think that’s a really good sign.”
I guess the Commanders are no longer coaching heaven.
Washington reportedly is hiring Minnesota Vikings defensive backs coordinator 47-year-old Daronte Jones, born in Capitol Heights, for their vacant defensive coordinator’s job after they interviewed multiple candidates, some of whom took jobs elsewhere.
Maybe that’s what seeing two years of general manager Adam Peters’ constructed defense will do.
January 2026 certainly wasn’t February 2024, when Quinn said candidates were lining up to coach here.
Now he has two new coordinators, neither of whom has ever worked as a coordinator.
They apparently didn’t even hang out the help wanted sign after Quinn fired offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, instead promoting the next guy in the room, quarterbacks coach and superstar-in-waiting David Blough, who must speak the same language as the most important person in the building, quarterback Jayden Daniels.
If we are to believe the reports, the Commanders didn’t seriously consider anybody else — apparently not even Quinn’s close friend and former colleague Mike McDaniel, after McDaniel, widely seen as an offensive guru, was fired as the Miami Dolphins head coach, who has since taken the same job with Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers.
Not so with the defensive coordinator’s job. I’m surprised they didn’t get the band back together — the celebrated search committee. They interviewed nine candidates, both with experience in this particular job and those who have never done it before.
Brian Flores, another former Dolphins coach who just happens to be suing the league for discriminatory hiring practices in a case that is now before the Supreme Court, was one of those candidates interviewed. He coached the league’s third-ranked defense in Minnesota last season, one that shut out Washington 31-0 this season.
Flores passed on coaching heaven to stay with the Vikings, so Washington opted for his understudy — Jones, Minnesota’s defensive backs coordinator, who, according to various reports, was impressive in the interview.
“He impressed during his meeting with the team, the person familiar with the matter said, and pitched a vision and philosophy — centered on physicality, sound tackling and forcing takeaways — that meshed well with that of Coach Dan Quinn,” the Washington Post reported.
You know — there’s a few thousand Commanders fans who also have a vision of physicality, sound tackling and forcing takeaways for their defense.
But Joe Whitt Jr., who Jones is replacing, couldn’t get the defense to do any of those things.
Like Jones, Whitt had never been a defensive coordinator in the NFL. But Quinn certainly was more familiar with Whitt’s potential to do the job, having worked together in Dallas, than he is with the gamble on Jones.
In some ways, Whitt and Jones are the same choice. Both played college football at the same time — Whitt was a receiver at Auburn from 1998 to 2000, while Jones was a cornerback at Temple and Morgan State from 1997 to 2001. Whitt started as an Auburn student assistant in 2000, Jones a graduate assistant at Lenoir-Rhyne University in 2001. From there, both climbed the ladder to various positions, jumping from one team to another (Jones did more jumping, including a stop as a defensive backs coach with the Montreal Alouettes in 2011).
But at all those stops in the league – Miami, Cincinnati and Minnesota — no one jumped up and said Jones is our David Blough — until Quinn.
It may just be Jones’ time. ESPN reported that Jones had interviewed with five teams, and a source with one team called his interview “impressive.” One person who had coached with Jones said last week that it was “just a matter of time” before he landed a defensive coordinator’s job.
As he did with Whitt, Quinn must have figured Jones’ time is now.
But nobody knows until you are the guy who can’t hide anymore in the list of coaches in the media guide, the one who becomes the face of success or failure of his side of the ball for the franchise.
• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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