Over the last two weeks, you’ve probably heard the narrative that the Washington Commanders are playing with house money. People believe the Commanders, who won just four games last season, are just happy to be here in the first year of a “recalibration.”
Not head coach Dan Quinn.
Quinn and general manager Adam Peters always believed this team could win, and making the playoffs wasn’t the end goal. Their goal is to win the Super Bowl. As things currently stand, Washington is 60 minutes away from becoming NFC champions if they can find a way to beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.
The betting lines were released for Sunday’s NFC championship game, and unsurprisingly, the Eagles are a solid favorite.
So, does Quinn prefer to be the underdog on Sunday?
“We just don’t let the outside narrative kind of drive it,” Quinn said Wednesday. “And internally, we’ve got a lot of expectations about how we can play and what we do, but we never went too far outside of things.”
Then, Quinn gets fired up.
“Did we feel dismissed or put off?” he said. “Yeah, of course some, I think that happened in the opening game. I felt dismissive. ‘Hey man, hang in there, it’s going to be a long time.’ I was like, ‘Hey f-you, that’s not how it’s going to go down.’ And I was upset, but it wasn’t disrespect, it was dismissiveness, and I felt some kind of way, but it didn’t motivate me more to say that’s how they think of us. It wasn’t disrespect, it was, we’re going to be a lot better than what we just showed today. And eventually, we’ll show that. So, it’s not a prove it to everybody else or underdog story, it’s how we get down.”
Quinn does an excellent job of blocking out external noise, something previous Washington coaches always failed with. Quinn describes the bond these players have with one another and the coaching staff as real. All players, rookies, newcomers, and veterans acknowledge it.
We hear of Washington’s comeback story. The franchise has mostly struggled for 30 years. We hear of Daniels, the phenomenal rookie quarterback. But what about Quinn’s comeback story? Remember, he was fired during the 2020 season. But what a story it would be for Quinn to go from “28-3” back to the Super Bowl with a new franchise.
