NBC Sports ranked the best coaches across the NFL with a bearish outlook for Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn
While all the attention around the league has remained centered on the 2026 NFL Draft with free agency at a standstill with the market thinned, there was a bit of fresh offseason content with a bearish outlook on the Commanders.
NBC Sports re-ranked the best head coaches around the NFL with ten new hires now in place to complete the coaching carousel, and Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn did not fare too well.
Quinn ranked 20th in the NFL, which translated to third among the NFC East head coaches with Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer who slotted in at 21st overall.
It's a head scratching ranking for Quinn, who remains one year removed from an NFC Championship Game appearance. Given his plus-.500 all-time head coaching record through eight seasons at 60-59, it's a questionable ranking. Add in the fact that Quinn was one of two head coaches across the NFL to earn an A+ in the NFLPA annual survey, it's a debatable claim.
In fact, Quinn's ranking translated to the third-lowest among any returning head coach with Jets head coach Aaron Glenn, who finished 3-14 in his first season, ranked at the bottom.
It's also a stark difference from ESPN's prior offseason ranking after Quinn slotted as the eighth-best hire since 2021.
Yet NBC Sports pointed to the 2024 season as an outlier, noting it to be "a little too good to be true."
"2025 was just a necessary reminder of the limits of personality(-based coaching) in a league where personnel and play-calling are everything," Patrick Daugherty of NBC Sports added.
2025, indeed, served as a slice of humble pie for the organization, though it may be remembered as more of a 'what if' season than a train wreck given the litany of injuries on both sides of the ball, including multiple injuries that held quarterback Jayden Daniels out for more than half of the regular season. Some of those injuries altered the Commanders' approach, especially offensively, yet that wasn't noted when highlighting what went wrong in year two.
Regardless, it isn't much of a debate that the Commanders enter the 2026 season with plenty of pressure given quarterback Jayden Daniels enters a pivotal year three campaign with the offseason focus centered on insulating the offense with upgraded weapons. Whether the addition of new coordinators, David Blough and Daronte Jones, will be enough to translate into improved efficiency will tell the tale for 2026 with offseason buzz that a coaching change could materialize if 2025 is repeated.