Dan Quinn's second season is collapsing faster than fans expected
Posted November 8, 2025
In his first head coaching gig, Dan Quinn inherited a 6-10 Atlanta Falcons and made solid progress in Year 1. He finished 8-8 in 2015, his first year in charge.
He built on that the following season, climbing all the way to 11-5 and a trip to the Super Bowl. Quinn made the divisional round of the playoffs in his third year, then slid back below .500 in 2018 and 2019. After beginning 2020 with five straight losses, he was fired.
It is not atypical for successful coaches to follow a similar pattern of steady rise and gradual decline. However, in his year and a half as head coach of the Washington Commanders, Quinn has supercharged the entire process.
The turnaround under his leadership last year was astonishing, taking a moribund 4-13 club to a 12-5 record and the conference championship game. The collapse of his club seems almost as remarkable.
Commanders have regressed considerably in Dan Quinn's second season
Since we are in the middle of it, perspective is impossible. And fans don’t know whether the coach will be able to pull his team out of its current freefall.
Consider the other coaches who took over teams alongside Quinn in 2024. There were seven in all. He was one of three with prior NFL head coaching experience.
Two of those coaches — Jim Harbaugh with the Los Angeles Chargers and Mike Macdonald with the Seattle Seahawks — had winning records like Quinn. Harbaugh was the only other new man to make the playoffs last year.
Two of the other members of that group are no longer with their teams. They had the two worst records last year. Jerod Mayo was fired immediately after his first season with the New England Patriots. The Tennessee Titans cut Brian Callahan loose after a 1-5 start this year.
Discounting Callahan, Quinn has the worst record in his second season out of the new coach cohort of 2024. Three of those coaches have winning records — including Dave Canales, who took his Carolina Panthers squad to 5-12 (up from 2-15) in his first year and now has them at 5-4 this year. Harbaugh and Macdonald have continued to build on their successful inaugural seasons.
The Falcons have been disappointing under Raheem Morris. After going 8-9 last year, much bigger things were expected in 2025, but they have stumbled to a 3-5 record. One of those wins, as Commanders’ fans know, was a thorough thrashing of Quinn’s team in Week 4. Washington surrendered 435 yards in that game, a warning of the defensive implosion that was to come.
With eight games remaining, the Commanders are likely to be favored in one, with two others being toss-ups. They will be clear underdogs in the other five. That in turn means that 6-11, or worse, is a very realistic outcome for the campaign.
Talk about whiplash — an eight-game improvement in his first year. A six-or-more game drop off in Year 2. What are fans to make of this roller coaster?
Injuries and luck are both largely uncontrollable factors. As fortunate as the team was last year, they have been cursed this season. But that isn't the only problem in Washington.
What Adam Peters needs to decide is whether the players he has assembled are not as good as we hoped, or whether the coaching staff he and Quinn have built is not getting the most out of them.
Or, perhaps, it is a bit of both.
This requires careful consideration. Why have highly-touted draft picks like Johnny Newton and Ben Sinnott failed to make a mark? Why has the offensive line seemed to regress despite some significant investment? Why has every defensive player suddenly forgotten how to tackle?
Washington has reached the point where they are not simply losing close games because of a bad bounce or questionable call. They have been manhandled in three straight games, and Quinn doesn’t seem to have an answer.
The franchise is in a much better place than it was under previous ownership in 2023. If Peters has made some mistakes, there’s a good chance the young front-office leader will learn from them and improve.
New ownership seems genuinely invested in confronting and solving problems. The previous group seemed interested in running and hiding — and in distracting with one amateurish stunt after another.
Hopefully, 2025 will prove to be a blip. A confounding blip, but a blip nonetheless.
The team still has talent and quality coaches. It has a quarterback. It should once again get things headed in a positive direction over the next few seasons, even if this one remains a veritable disaster.
Tanner Jeannot’s contract is now being praised - not for his performance, but for how it compares to the player he replaced
Tanner Jeannot continues to prove the doubters wrong, and it looks like the Bruins dodged an even bigger mistake.
Tanner Jeannot has quietly been a force in the bottom six for the Boston Bruins. The concern was that the Bruins were about to pay $3.4 million annually for a player who couldn't score more than 15 points and whose physicality had taken a slight step down. However, through 16 games, the power forward is on pace for 33 points and is making the other team think twice about messing with his linemate, Fraser Minten.
Let's face it: If the Bruins hadn't traded Trent Frederic at last year's trade deadline, it's doubtful that they would've added Jeannot to the bottom six. He is now filling the Frederic role for this team, and even though the fans didn't love the Jeannot contract, Edmonton Oilers fans will tell you that it could be much worse.
The Oilers signed Frederic to a shocking eight-year contract extension this past offseason. The deal comes in annually at $50,000 more than Jeannot's, and the money didn't come with nearly as much scrutiny as what the Bruins faced for some reason. When looking at both players' careers side-by-side, there isn't too much of a difference.
Nevertheless, the Oilers made their decision, and they could already be regretting it. Through 15 games for Edmonton, Frederic has been a non-factor and has just one goal. It'd be easy to chalk it up to just a bad start, but considering Frederic had just four points in 23 games for Edmonton last season, it could be a large enough sample size to be a trend that sticks.
The Oilers have given Trent Frederic plenty of opportunity
Bruins fans likely all had the same reaction when they saw that Frederic was going to start the year on a line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. A common refrain for linemates of those superstars is that an average Joe could play alongside them and find a way to score 20. The stock for Frederic was through the roof as the season began.
Kris Knoblauch is notorious for changing his lines constantly, but the Frederic experiment ended quite quickly. The foot speed and offensive instincts were so low compared to his linemates that it was just never a fit, which is a hard thing to do when paired with one of the two stars, let alone both.
The good news for the Oilers is that the eventual buyout won't cost too much in relation to where the salary cap is going. The bad news is that they could've had a more effective version of Frederic for fewer years if they had gone after Jeannot instead. Nevertheless, the Oilers' loss is the Bruins' gain.
