Washington coach Dan Quinn gives new explanation for last-second meltdown, and addresses his job security

Join the huddle. Sign up here for Commanders updates in your inbox.

Immediately after Washington’s stunning last-second meltdown against the New York Giants, head coach Dan Quinn appeared to be shell-shocked as he talked about his team’s decision making.

“We were just trying to gain more yards and we don’t need to,” he said, shaking his head. “Like it’s easy enough to say, ‘Hey man, let’s clock it right here. We’re early enough. Go get a [field goal].’”

But after a day of sitting on it, Quinn’s assessment has seemingly changed.

He said he believes it was Washington’s slow substitution that caused one of the NFL’s biggest blunders of the season.

The Commanders had the ball on the 26-yard line with 55 seconds left in overtime and only needed a field goal to win. Washington had no timeouts left.

After a 2-yard run, they could’ve spiked the ball to stop the clock with about 10 seconds left to give kicker Drew Stevens a 41-yard chip shot.

But instead, offensive coordinator David Blough dialed up a passing play designed to take a shot downfield.

Washington was slow to substitute players in for the play and ended up snapping the ball with 12 seconds remaining. Daniels dropped back to pass, didn’t see anyone open, scrambled toward the middle of the field and was sacked near the original line of scrimmage. Without a timeout left, the clock ran out and the game ended in a tie. The Commanders never attempted the game-winning field goal.

But Quinn didn’t mind calling a passing play in that situation, he said Monday. He said the substitution took too long, and that is why Washington ran out of time — not because they didn’t spike it.

“It took entirely too long,” Quinn said. “From subbing to clock awareness to clocking the ball. It was a breakdown, and it can’t happen.”

He added that Washington didn’t need to substitute in that situation.

“The urgency to get in [to the play] has to be way faster if we are going to sub. And this is one we don’t need to [sub] and take the time to go back and forth,” he said. “To get another yard or two [on a passing play], that’s fine. Just clock it [after]. But just the execution of this long in, this long out.”

In an ideal world, Quinn said the play would have been snapped with 26 seconds remaining. He believed that would have given Washington enough time to run a play and then spike the ball to stop the clock.

He added that Washington could throw the ball toward the middle of the field if the play was snapped on time. But that would have kept the clock running, cutting it close to spike the ball.

“Twenty-five, 26 [seconds], yeah that’d be in a good spot. If you have more time, all that is viable,” Quinn said. “When you have less, everything gets compounded.”

Quinn’s assessment is a stark departure from Sunday night, when he questioned why Washington ran a play at all in that situation.

If they clock the ball with 10 seconds left, Stevens can make the kick and leave little time left. And if he missed, Washington wouldn’t have won anyway.

But today, he said he was in favor of bleeding the clock as the time ticked under 50 seconds.

“We wanted to use some clock when you got into field goal range. There had been four kicks that had been missed in the game. So burning some time is the smart call,” he said.

But even if Washington wanted to run a play, it doesn’t explain why Daniels scrambled. He could have thrown the ball away, stopping the clock with plenty of time for Stevens to attempt a field goal.

It begged the question of whether Daniels knew Washington had no timeouts left or if it was communicated to him by the coaching staff.

Quinn did not answer directly if that was communicated to the quarterback. But he said the fact that Washington had no timeouts should have been relayed in the headset after every play in that drive, so that Daniels understands he cannot scramble.

“You talk about timeouts, field position, field lines, distances that you need to get to. It needs to be communicated from me to [offensive coordinator] David [Blough], who has the last words with Jayden on each down. Not just at the start of the drive,” he said.

But even when Daniels did fall to the ground, most of Washington’s team did not immediately try to get back to the line of scrimmage to spike the ball. It looked as if nobody knew that there were no timeouts left.

“Conversations in the huddle, that’s a big deal. It definitely looked like the urgency of what I expected in that spot wasn’t there. That’s the part that pisses you off the most,” he said.

The blunder has many calling for Quinn’s job. He only has three wins in his last 17 games and Washington fell to 1-3-1 after Sunday. They remain winless in the NFC East.

Quinn said he is aware that fans are fed up and he has frequent discussions with team owner Josh Harris.

“I’m just as pissed, too. This is a really hard loss, man,” he said. “I have a lot of faith in who we are as an organization.”