Dan Quinn’s ‘Commander Standard,’ and how it quickly changed a team’s culture

“This is how we’re gonna get down.”

That’s the phrase Washington Commanders coach Dan Quinn always uses with his players as he begins to lay out a plan of attack for the next opponent.

It’s time to get to work. The message is clear, as is the strategy that Quinn, his assistants and players will execute to give themselves their best shot at victory. There are no cakewalks in the NFL, Quinn preaches. Every week, a battle awaits. The game is winnable if everyone executes their portion of the plan, but every contest represents a struggle nonetheless.

“It’s the humility of fighting,” Washington punter Tress Way said in explaining his coach’s messaging. “He’s not prepping us for a week to go out and play somebody and run them off of the field, like, ‘Hey, let’s just go wax these guys, and onto the next.’ This is the NFL. Everybody is really, freaking good at football. (Quinn) gets us hyper-focused and has this humble approach of how we are going to fight, our exact plan of what we are going to do to win that fight — but you better be ready to freaking fight.”

An 11-year veteran, two-time Pro Bowl selection and the longest-tenured member of Washington’s team, Way has played for four head coaches and has heard more than his fair share of game-planning speeches — the majority of which missed their marks.

Way recognized things had changed for the better the first time he experienced Quinn’s detailed mission statement.

“The way he comes in, being that clear and how he says the words, ‘This is how we’re getting down this week,’ I’m sitting there as the punter in the seats and I’m like, “Cool. This is how we’re getting down this week. Let’s do it.’ And you know you’re not doing it any way but together,” Way said.

“Nobody ever feels like they’re on an island. And that’s why guys have found it so easy to get behind Dan.”

Sunday, Quinn will lead his Commanders against the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship Game, Washington’s first in 33 years. The Commanders are just one step away from the Super Bowl one season after a 13-loss campaign and yet another franchise reset.

In only a year, Quinn has managed to do something that nine full-time predecessors could not: serve as the catalyst for the culture change of one of the most dysfunctional and disappointing franchises in the NFL and turn Washington into a bona fide winner.

Quinn has delivered change by being a walking, talking example of consistency, accountability, discipline, excellence and authenticity. He took the roster entrusted to him by second-year owner Josh Harris and first-year general manager Adam Peters and, helped by the play of rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, made the Commanders one of the biggest surprises of the 2024 season. Washington went 12-5 in the regular season, then beat the the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Detroit Lions — the NFC’s No. 1 seed — in the first two rounds of the playoffs to advance to Sunday’s NFC Championship Game.

“Coach Quinn is here just every day, preaching the same mindset, being consistent,” said eighth-year defensive lineman Jonathan Allen, who, like Way, has played under four head coaches in Washington. “He’s been on the same page with Mr. Peters and Mr. Harris, and that’s what it takes to change a culture. From the top up, from Coach Quinn to Mr. Peters to Mr. Harris — they all have one goal that they’re working toward, and that’s the start of any good company, business or team.”

They say the first step to solving any problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem. But when it came to solving the deep-seated problems that have crippled Washington’s football team for the better part of three decades, Quinn preferred to ignore them.

Long before his days as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and defensive coordinator Dallas Cowboys, Quinn played his college ball at Salisbury University (then Salisbury State) on Maryland’s eastern shore, two hours from the nation’s capital. His first coaching jobs were at William & Mary and Virginia Military, two schools located in areas full of Washington football fans during the franchise’s glory years. Two-plus decades of coaching in the NFL with San Francisco, Miami, the New York Jets, Seattle, Atlanta and Dallas familiarized Quinn with Washington’s bleak years.

“I knew some of the history,” Quinn said during a recent post-practice interview. “I knew this was at one time a crown-jewel franchise, but they’d been stuck in the mud, and stuck for a while.”

But when Quinn interviewed for and eventually accepted the Commanders’ head coaching position, he didn’t concern himself with the details of previous owner Daniel Snyder’s 24-year reign of toxicity and futility. He didn’t tally the long list of head coaches and general managers who promised hope, only to leave with the franchise still in shambles.

Harris would sign Quinn’s checks and Peters would work “shoulder-to-shoulder” with him to reinvigorate the franchise. That’s what mattered.

Quinn didn’t dig deep or query players or staffers to learn why his immediate predecessor, Ron Rivera, had failed. That’s because he knew and respected Rivera and a person and coach. But also: All that mattered to Quinn was how the Commanders would operate on his watch.

“I wanted to recognize that regardless of however the team had done ‘XYZ’ before, this is how we’re going to do it moving forward,” Quinn said. “I didn’t want to say, ‘The team didn’t do well,’ because I wasn’t here for that. I knew Ron, so there was zero reason for me to make any judgement on that. But I had ways that I knew we were going to execute going forward. … I had really high standards that I wanted our players and coaches to have, and I was clear on that.”

Quinn, 54, learned about high standards from his three most influential NFL head coaching mentors. He still leans heavily on lessons learned from Steve Mariucci while with the San Francisco 49ers, Nick Saban with the Miami Dolphins and Pete Carroll with the Seattle Seahawks — all three successful yet very different coaches.

Mariucci taught Quinn the importance of maintaining a standard of excellence while directing the franchise built to prominence by Bill Walsh. From Saban, Quinn learned the importance of demanding the same unwavering toughness and physicality in every single practice that he would in games. From Carroll, he learned how to prepare players for Sundays by building competition into everything the Seahawks did on a daily basis.

Despite folding all of those lessons into his coaching philosophies, Quinn has remained mindful to go about the job in his own way rather than by trying to imitate his mentors.

“Coach Quinn has been so organic and just himself, and he’s just a guy that you want to play hard for,” said Allen, who played for Saban at Alabama. “He just gets it. He’s one of the guys, but he’s also just a great leader and a great coach to play for. I love it. Whenever you get an opportunity to play for a coach and organization that all they care about is winning, that’s the goal of an NFL player, so it’s awesome.”

As Quinn explained his expectations for his new players and his goals for the team, he also made it clear that for Washington to succeed, some of the loudest voices and strongest displays of leadership had to come from the locker room.

To help fill those roles, he identified three highly successful veterans for Peters to acquire in free agency: linebacker Bobby Wagner, whom Quinn had coached in Seattle; tight end Zach Ertz, who, like Wagner, had a Super Bowl ring and multiple Pro Bowl selections; and running back Austin Ekeler, a second-team All-Pro pick in 2024 and member of the NFL Players Association’s leadership team.

“I didn’t bring Wags here to coach,” Quinn said of Wagner, the future Hall of Fame middle linebacker who has has consistently ranked among the league leaders in tackles during his 13-year career. “I brought him here to play, but I knew the standards he would have, and I thought he didn’t have to do anything, just be himself turnt up. And I thought the same thing with Zach and Austin Ekeler, who both had really high standards as ballplayers and teammates.”

When he got all of his veterans together for their first offseason conditioning sessions prior to the draft, Quinn invited a group of Navy SEALs to team headquarters for bonding exercises to help the Commanders begin to develop a strong sense of brotherhood. Quinn then split his players up into groups and challenged them to compose a list of standards by which they believed successful teams operate. When the players reconvened, they compared notes and formed their tenets for the season — a list strong on commitment, accountability, dedication, unity, consistency. They called the document “The Commander Standard.”

This, according to Quinn, was the laying of the foundation for Washington’s new culture.

“Culture for a group,” Quinn said, “is all about how do they do business together, because it has to be an everyday thing. … Environment is different from culture. Like, I’m upbeat by nature, and if you’re around here, you’ll feel an energy in people and that’s how I live. I am positive. But that doesn’t make it your culture. The culture is the way you do everything together. It’s the meetings, it’s the discipline at the practice, it’s the way we communicate together, and standards that you have for one another. And, so, sometimes I think people think of a happy place and assume that’s culture. No, that’s our environment.

“But we’re strict about what we do, we correct and teach a lot,” he continued. “I don’t think you have to be an (a–hole) to do it right, but you can’t look the other way either. So if Zach drops a pass, that’s on the tape. Bobby misses a tackle, that’s on the tape.”

And those gaffes are pointed out in front of the whole team, even if they are committed by esteemed leaders.

“That is the consistency that any ballplayer or coach would want,” Quinn said.

That consistency further strengthened Quinn’s credibility in a Washington locker room where, in the past, some players struggled to trust and respect coaches and other team officials because of double standards they say they observed.

As the Commanders navigated offseason practices, training camp preseason and the regular season, Quinn’s messaging never changed. As expected, his leaders set a strong tone for the type of work ethic, professionalism and unquenchable thirst for improvement his players adopted throughout the season.

“We have a lot of leaders, but we do it in our own way,” wide receiver Jamison Crowder, a 10th-year veteran, said. “I’m more so a lead by example type guy, and we have some more vocal, like the Bobby Wagners and the Zach Ertzes and those guys, but we have a lot of guys just helping out young guys with some things to do on the field, off the field, locker room, or the training room, whatever it may be, giving them advice. You see that a lot, and that’s huge. Guys see that and they just kind of follow suit.”

Player leaders certainly have set a strong tone for the Commanders. They have helped them weather adversity, like a lopsided 37-20 loss to the Bucs in the season opener, or the three-game losing streak from Weeks 10 through 12 that may have fractured previous Washington locker rooms. But players also credit Quinn’s leadership for their ability to pull their way out of that hole and then reach the playoffs as a wild-card team after closing the regular season with five consecutive wins.

Every Monday starts the same way for Quinn and his players.

The coach leads a meeting he calls “Tell the Truth Mondays.” During that session, the coach and his charges review their game from the day before. Good plays draw praise. Bad plays draw scrutiny and correction. The coach — and the tape — tell the truth, even if said truths are uncomfortable. Once the session ends, Quinn encourages his players to either savor the win for a few more hours or let themselves feel the anguish of defeat further. Tuesdays are a day off for rest, recovery, family time and the final flushing of any feelings over the previous game’s outcome.

By Wednesday morning, the book on that game has closed. Win or lose, it’s never mentioned again. The attention shifts to the upcoming opponent, and Quinn again sets the tone for how the Commanders will take the next step of a quest that once felt so improbable, but now feels much closer to reality.

After three decades of suffering, change has finally come to the Commanders. Is a trip to the Super Bowl the next step? Perhaps, but Quinn hasn’t allowed his players to discuss that, because the Eagles await on Sunday, and that’s all that matters.

Instead, when the Commanders filed into the meeting room Wednesday morning and took their seats, they heard a familiar refrain.

“This is how we’re gonna get down.”

(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)