What has Dan Quinn told his Commanders team about the NFL standings or the playoffs?
“Zero, zero,” Quinn replied to the media on Tuesday.
The former Atlanta Falcons head coach won a division and finished second in the division three times. To conclude the 2016 season, he won the NFC title and nearly won a Super Bowl.
So he knows the ropes. He also knows the dangers of allowing players to look too far ahead. They can easily forget what is right in front of them and not being prepared, lose their opportunities.
“That’s not a coaching cop-out either. I just honestly want to stay in the pocket of where we’re at. I don’t want us to miss a step on this journey, and I don’t want to miss the next step that we have to take. And that’s this weekend and then the next one and the next one.”
When the Commanders won their Week 9 game at the NY Giants, they weren’t dominant, but they did do enough to prevent the Giants from having the ball and a chance to take the lead in the second half (27-22 final).
Quinn and Adam Peters have changed this entire culture, from 4-13 in 2023 to talking about how high a seed the Commanders can be in the NFC playoffs in 2021.
“I’m just kind of thinking about today, today’s practice and Thursday’s game, man. And like I haven’t talked to them much past that. It’s just let’s go battle for it this weekend. And I did the same thing last weekend when a lot of talk was, there’s two games in 11 days, and that I said, maybe we just got one game this week, and we got one game next week. And so, we’ll worry about next week then.”