Washington’s overtime scar is permanent. But can Jayden Daniels and Dan Quinn move on post-meltdown?

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ASHBURN, Va. — Let’s start with the meltdown. Because five days removed, and seemingly a thousand hot takes later, it is the only thing that matters for the Washington Commanders.

And how could it not?

Everything Washington does from here on will be viewed through this prism.

It won’t just be Dan Quinn making a fourth-down decision. It will be the coach who authored the biggest blunder of the NFL season making another dicey choice.

It won’t just be Jayden Daniels trying to execute a last-second drive. It will be the quarterback who forgot how many timeouts there were left trying to learn from his mistakes.

And it won’t just be David Blough calling a shot to the end zone. It will be the offensive coordinator who tried to go for a touchdown instead of a game-winning field goal making another gamble.

That is how bad the disaster in Landover was against the New York Giants — a permanent stain on a résumé.

So how do you move from it? Well, Quinn acknowledged they can’t. He called it a “scar that has to be permanent.” All they can do is learn to navigate a post-disaster world.

“You still think about stuff like that, right?” Daniels said. “But it can’t help me. I can’t dwell on the past too much because I got a game on Monday night to worry about.”

In case you somehow missed it, the sequence in question came in Washington’s overtime game Sunday. The Commanders had the ball at the 24-yard line with the clock ticking under a minute. They needed only a field goal to win.

But, instead of sending out the kicker, Washington took a shot at the end zone. Daniels dropped back to pass and scrambled rather than throwing the ball away. And, if that weren’t enough, even after he made the fatal mistake, none of the Commanders rushed back to the line of scrimmage so he Daniels could spike the ball to stop the clock. Time expired. The game ended in a tie.

A calamity of errors.

Even two days removed, offensive lineman Sam Cosmi couldn’t make sense of how it all could have gone so wrong — on so many levels.

“I still don’t know,” he said. “It was an interesting situation.”

In the immediate aftermath, the fanbase called for Quinn’s job. NBC’s Mike Florio dubbed it “one of the worst” blunders ever. Fellow NFL players, including Pro Bowl pass rusher Micah Parsons, took shots at Daniels.

“Jayden Daniels probably cost my man Dan Quinn his job, to be honest with you. I’m a big Jayden Daniels fan, but he probably cost a lot of people their jobs this past weekend,” Parsons said.

Even former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said the whole debacle made him “throw up in his mouth a little.”

But, as the world shouted its opinions, the Commanders went inward. Quinn called a team meeting Monday morning and took responsibility. Daniels also addressed the group before a two-day break.

“You gotta stand up there in front and be a man,” he said. “Everybody is a part of it, but it is ultimately on me. I was saying my two cents and letting the guys know it would never happen again.”

When the meeting ended, the rest of the team tried to get away. Daniels called his old LSU mentor Sherman Wilson, the Tigers’ director of player retention, to get an unvarnished truth. “He’s like a big brother to me,” Daniels said.

Fellow leader Amik Robertson went home and watched rom-coms, including “Anyone But You” starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney.

“I didn’t want to watch ‘The Notebook,’” Robertson said. “Just wanted to get away from football.”

But, when they returned to the facility Thursday, they all realized there isn’t any getting away from this one. The criticism will certaintly be a lead story when Washington plays a primetime game on “Monday Night Football” against the 49ers.

“I can’t say it’s not warranted,” Daniels said.

It will follow them the rest of the season and maybe longer.

“It’s difficult. Some [moments linger] longer than others,” Quinn said. “But that’s part of the job, to make sure these are the specific moments that we wanna learn from and apply and move it forward.”

On Thursday morning, Quinn offered the only encouragement he could find for his group. He acknowledged the situation, that his team is now 1-3-1 thanks to the gaffe. And if the Commanders are looking for a reprieve from the chatter, they won’t find it.

But he said there is hope. They still have 70% of the season remaining in a rather feckless NFC East, where no team is running away with it.

“There’s so much that’s in front of us, and it’s gonna be an absolute battle,” he told them.

If they can learn to live with the scar, he said, maybe they can salvage their season.

It’s the only option they have left.