Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn, is the leading favorite at Gambling.com to be the first NFL coach fired this season at +300 odds.

The Commanders’ second-year skipper, who took a rookie quarterback to the NFC Championship Game two years ago, somehow sits ahead of Todd Bowles (+350), Jets coach Aaron Glenn (+400), and a pair of coaches with far less to show for their tenures. 

The real names that should top this list

Aaron Glenn, “defensive guru” in Detroit, got hired by the New York Jets and went all of last season without the team recording one interception. He has better odds at keeping his job than Dan Quinn. Let that sit for a moment.

But Glenn and Bowles aren’t even my real issues with this list. My real issue is that Zac Taylor and Shane Steichen both have shared +900 odds to be the first coach fired this year. Zac Taylor of the mediocre Cincinnati Bengals and Steichen, head coach of the soon-to-be god-awful Indianapolis Colts, have better odds to survive than Quinn.

Taylor has done less with more than anybody else in the league. Cincinnati hasn’t been in the playoffs in 3 years. Do you think Dan Quinn would even be mentioned on this list if he had Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins? If he was coaching a team that has had Jessie Bates III, Trey Hendrickson, and some actual defensive talent over the years? Taylor has been the consensus hot-seat coach the last two years, and he’s got better odds than Quinn in 2026. That’s absurd.

Steichen has a 25-26 record and has never made the playoffs. He couldn’t coach up Anthony Richardson. The offense is boring and stagnant, the defense is poor. All you know about the Indianapolis Colts is Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck retiring early, a couple great wide receivers in the 2000s, and not much else.

He’s +900 to be fired first. Quinn is +300. Make it make sense.

Washington should be grateful for Dan Quinn

Quinn took a rookie quarterback and the new-era Washington Commanders, assuming all risk in the post-Dan Snyder era, to the NFC Championship Game two years ago and for the first time in over 30 years. He also took the cursed Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl, a game they win 99 out of 100 times if Tom Brady isn’t on the other sideline. He lasted five seasons and five games with Atlanta and is only heading into Year 3 with Washington, where things have been pretty good.

Do you remember what this team looked like three years ago? Ron Rivera left with a 26-40 record, a .396 win percentage across four years.

Quinn’s currently batting .500. One of those two seasons, his starting quarterback got hurt. Still .500, still over .100 points higher than Rivera’s win percentage. The last Commanders head coach to have a .500 record was Marty Schottenheimer for one year in 2001, when the team went 8-8. Schottenheimer didn’t go to the NFC Championship Game with a rookie quarterback. Quinn did that and it was beautiful work.

A lot of this energy comes from what I’d call the “new money” fan contingent. We got a quarterback, we got new ownership, abandon the old frustrations, we need to be better immediately. Who’s better than Dan Quinn right now?

The alternatives don’t hold up

You want Brian Flores? He got extended. Zac Taylor? Looked brilliant in 2019 and 2021, but stinks now. Aaron Glenn? He might be free soon enough. Steichen, who did nothing with the Colts? What a joke.

What about college coaches? Dan Lanning, choke artist supreme at Oregon? Kalen DeBoer, who can’t get his footing at Alabama? You think Kirby Smart is coming up? Curt Cignetti is a college guy, and college guys are becoming more and more separated from the NFL right now. That gap will converge eventually once the paid-athlete dynamic evolves, but we aren’t there yet.

Look around the coordinator sweepstakes. Raheem Morris maybe has a good year defensively with the Rams and you want him? I watched him in Atlanta (he was also very bad in Tampa Bay). A lot of these guys stink, but Dan Quinn doesn’t.

The real problem isn’t coaching

For every mistake Quinn has made, team leadership has given him twice as many. Good teams draft players who stick around. Quinn inherited a roster that required a purge to where only 12 players remain on Washington’s roster from just three years ago: Terry McLaurin, Sam Cosmi, Andrew Wylie, Daron Payne, Percy Butler, John Bates, Dyami Brown, Tim Settle, Quan Martin, Chris Paul, Jeremy Reaves, and Tress Way. That’s it. The issue is drafting for depth, not the head coach.

If this year goes off the rails and it’s another mediocre, disappointing season, then we can have this conversation. Quinn has earned that runway. But firing him mid-season? That’s a ridiculous premise.

Washington has a massive tone-setting Week 1 matchup against Philadelphia, and Quinn deserves the chance to coach it without this nonsense hanging over him. He’s a good coach. This line is a disgrace.