Dan Quinn’s odds of winning the coach of the year award got a little longer tonight. Or a lot.
Two major coaching flaws stand out from Thursday night. Both from the fourth quarter.
First, facing fourth and two from the Eagles’ 26 with 8:01 to play and down 12-10, Quinn opted to eschew a potential go-ahead field goal from 44 yards and went for it. It failed.
And so instead of potentially giving the Eagles the ball, down one point with less than eight minutes to play, the Commanders set the stage for a touchdown drive that, with the extra point, made it a two-score game.
“Bold call,” Quinn told reporters after the game, unprompted by a question. “But I would also say we were prepared for that moment. Don’t love the execution. But we’ve been an excellent fourth-down team. So going into it we knew we’d have to take our shots against a tough division team on the road. We thought that was an appropriate one. Certainly don’t like the execution and the result.”
Still, the game changes if the Eagles are trailing when they get the ball back. Maybe Quinn didn’t have faith that his defense would make a stop. He should have at least considered the fact that kicker Jake Elliott had missed two field goals and an extra point.
Despite that, it was still a two-score game even after an interception followed by a 39-yard touchdown run from Saquon Barkley. At 26-10, the game was not over.
And yet there was no urgency from the Commanders. They started the next drive with 4:38 to play. Way too many seconds ticked away as they approached the end zone. The closer they got, the worse it seemed.
Asked by reporters whether the Commanders were hoping to conserve more time on that drive, Quinn said, “Yeah, we were trying to. . . . It wasn’t about going slow or that part. So, yeah, we wanted to get the score in quick. Try to get it in before the two-minute [warning], for sure.”
If that was trying, I’d hate to see how it would have looked if they weren’t.
It took the Commanders 2:38 to go from their own 30 to the Philly 24. At the two-minute warning, they converted a fourth and two, and 19 seconds evaporated before the next snap. Then, after a four-yard gain to the 16, 23 more seconds disappeared. Next, after a one yard gain, the clock ran from 1:18 to 56 seconds. After a 10-yard gain from the 15 to the five, another 22 seconds elapsed between plays.
Eventually, the Commanders scored with 31 seconds left.
If they’d moved with a little more urgency, they would have had enough time (given the two timeouts still in hand) to get the ball back — even after a failed onside kick.
It was bizarre to watch. Everyone associated with the game acted like it was over once the lead moved to 16 points. It wasn’t. (At one point, I wondered whether the Commanders even realized it was the fourth quarter.)
Details matter. Especially when even the most casual fan knows that basic details like the importance of getting to the line and getting the play in and getting the snap off and getting the ball down the field become critical to having any chance to force a two-score game to overtime. Whether that’s primarily on offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, it all flows up to Quinn.
It’s almost as if, after the interception that pushed the score to 26-10, the Commanders didn’t want to risk another turnover and another score, which would have made the outcome of 33-10 seem embarrassing.
In the end, it looks respectable at 26-18. It’s not all that respectable that they failed to get their final eight points with more than 30 seconds on the clock.