Where does the Commanders' most recent hire rank among the head coaching hires across the NFL over the last five years?
The first two years of the Dan Quinn era could not be more of a mixed back for Washington Commanders fans.
After reaching the NFC Championship game for the first time in over 30 years following a 12-5 finish, Washington fell flat in 2025 after a regular season finale win at Philadelphia secured the fifth and final win of the season. Big picture, the divisional win put Dan Quinn at .500 through his two seasons with the organization and ahead of year three, the question is which year will prove to be the outlier?
Still, there was not much concern heading into this offseason that ownership would move on from either Quinn or general manager Adam Peters would be at risk of losing their job with both tasked with fixing the long list of issues. But where does Quinn stack up across the league?
ESPN ranked every head coaching hire since 2021 with Quinn checking in at tenth overall, the second-best hire in the NFC East behind Eagles' Nick Sirianni.
"Quinn deserves more time to prove that 2025 was an anomaly, but Falcons fans will point out that their former coach peaked early in his Atlanta tenure and never reached those heights again," ESPN wrote.
It's a valid argument for Quinn, who reiterated the mission to avoid a repeat of the 2025 season.
"That's our main focus so we're never in this space again, and that's what we want to dig in hard on," he said after wrapping up his second season as head coach.
While the coordinator search on defense took the entirety of the month as both sides of the ball look to finalize the unit and key assistants ahead of the 2026 season, there was a reported belief that the uncertainty for Quinn beyond this season impacted Washington's search as they looked to shoot for some of the top possible candidates to replace Joe Whitt Jr.
Quinn is in his second stint as a head coach after taking the same position with the Atlanta Falcons from 2015 to 2020 where he posted consecutive winning and losing seasons after starting 8-8. The highlight was Atlanta's Super Bowl appearance in 2016 that eventually became a meme after blowing a 28-3 lead over the final 16 minutes of the game, while he was fired after just five games during the 2020 season.
Heading into 2026, Quinn stands at 60-59 through eight seasons as an NFL head coach.