After drawing praise all season, head coach Dan Quinn reviews linebacker Jordan Magee in year two with the Washington Commanders
While Washington enters the offseason with a long list of question marks in terms of both re-signing and acquisition targets on both sides of the ball, linebacker Jordan Magee gives the Commanders and head coach Dan Quinn a building block to address a potential hole this offseason.
With Bobby Wagner set to close the book on his 13th NFL season and head into the offseason as a 35-year-old unrestricted free agent, second-year linebacker Jordan Magee has been a mainstay in the linebacker room as a possible next man up under Quinn.
"He's definitely somebody that just has my attention, the intensity that he plays with, the intensity that he brings," Quinn said last week.
The big question heading into the regular season finale is whether Magee does materialize as the heir apparent to Wagner after the veteran's up-and-down second season with the team.
After playing 12 combined snaps through the first three weeks, Magee made his first start of the season in the week five win against the Chargers, the first of seven in 2025, while appearing in all 16 games heading into the regular season finale. His 58 snaps vs. Kansas City marks a season-high, but he's also played at least 24 snaps in seven of the last eight games along with a unit-high 48 in the Christmas Day loss vs. Dallas.
“I think the traits I saw first as the ball player - number one, the speed, him being square at linebacker, his closing ability," Quinn said when asked about his confidence in the second-year linebacker. "[General manager] Adam [Peters] has a cool ranking service of like, as you get into this part of the draft, like who's the one person that you want on your team? And he asked all the scouts before the day even began and he was the first one of that group that like he did, he said it, he said it. And so, I thought that's a pretty good sign about the traits that were shown about him. It's harder to know in the process. I see him calling it , leading it, doing those things, but if you get on the board, you see his football acumen, then you could see that we'l develop him into that.”
While Magee enters the season finale as likely the biggest player to watch on the Commanders' defense in addition to a trio of offensive players, Quinn wants to see "the leading part" of Magee's game to know he's ready for the position.
"Doesn't mean you have to be loud and rah-rah, but you have to be somebody that can take command, that can give information quickly," Quinn said.
"The part that you want to do is like how do you train somebody into that space? And some of it is, in practice you have a number of them that can have it on, so they're hearing my communication. So, what we would never want is on the first time you heard it, like, ‘Oh, that's what Dan sounds like or that's what it sounds like. And so, you go through that process in the practice. So, when he takes his reps in the practice, when if he was with the second or the third group, it's the same exact process that I would do with [LB Bobby Wagner] , ‘Hey, this down in distance, remind this player alert for this.’ So, there's a little bit of directing that comes of it."