Dan Quinn proved everyone wrong after difficult decision leads to a bright spot in loss to Dolphins
The Commanders did have one bright spot in the loss that needs to be acknowledged.
The Washington Commanders lost an ugly game against the Miami Dolphins, falling to 3-8 on the season and officially ending their playoff hopes.
There weren’t many positive takeaways from the game, but we did see a completely different Commanders team than we’ve seen all season. Crucial mistakes down the stretch are to blame for the loss, but for the first time this season, it wasn’t the defense’s fault.
This was the first game since head coach Dan Quinn took over as defensive coordinator, and we saw that it was the right call to make with instant results, which nobody expected.
The Commanders’ defense finally showed up
The Commanders’ defense has been historically bad after four-straight losses by 21+ points, and Quinn made the difficult decision to demote his guy Joe Whitt Jr, and take over. We wanted to see if the change brought some juice to the player who looked defeated, and that’s exactly what we saw against the Dolphins. The defense looked drastically different than what we’ve seen since the season started.
The biggest difference we saw was the passing defense, as the Commanders held the Dolphins to only 142 net passing yards, which is the fewest since Week 8 of the 2024 season. Third and fourth downs were another key area they’ve struggled in all season, but they held the Dolphins to 3-9 on third down conversions, and had two huge plays on fourth down.
The Commanders were up 13-6 when Bobby Wagner had a pass breakup on a pass to Jaylen Waddle to force a turnover on downs, and keep the lead.
That’s a play that Wagner has not made this season, but today was different, and the team reacted to it accordingly. The defense did it again at the end of the fourth quarter when the Dolphins went for the touchdown, but got stuffed by Javon Kinlaw.
The defense will really be tested after the bye week
The Dolphins’ offense has been hit or miss all season, so who knows if the Commanders’ defense will play like this for the rest of the year, but we will find out soon. Quinn can use the bye week to see what worked — and the plays that we haven’t seen all season that were successful — like the corner blitz with Jonathan Jones, and use them moving forward during a tough stretch.
The Commanders have the Denver Broncos after the bye week and then face the Minnesota Vikings for two games featuring second-year quarterbacks (Bo Nix, J.J. McCarthy). Then, the team concludes the season with a four-game NFC East stretch, during which we will see what it’s truly made of.
The main goal for the rest of the season should be evaluating the talent on the roster and seeing who should survive the rebuild this offseason, and today was a great start for guys like Jordan Magee.
It was a hard decision for Quinn to take over defensive play-calling, but it was the right one as well, with the defense playing lights out and full of energy for once.
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