When the Arizona Cardinals fired Kliff Kingsbury in January 2023, the coach who jumped from college play to NFL head coach had built a reputation.
He was a sharp play-caller with creative offense that jump-started Kyler Murray’s career in 2019. Opposing coordinators wondered how to end the looks he gave them early each season, with time in the college trenches fueling Kingsbury’s creative and diverse schematic wrinkles.
But a shift would occur midway through the season. Opposing coordinators competing at the highest level of the game began to solve the problems the Cardinals gave them. One team would successfully counter Arizona’s game plan, and the next team would follow that blueprint – often with their own trump card.
The result: In the four years Kingsbury was their head coach, the Cardinals’ winning percentage always dropped in November and December. Arizona won 56.9% of their first nine games in those years (20-15-1). Afterwards: They won just 26.7% (8-22) to end the season.
The disparity and the repeated nature of the annual decline put Kingsbury’s coaching reputation in the shadows, fair or not. He took the 2023 season off before Dan Qunn hired him to coordinate the Washington Commanders’ offense during a cycle in which Kingsbury had many suitors.
Kingsbury deserves some of the credit for the standout rookie year of Jayden Daniels, who was drafted second overall by the Commanders before having a career-best start. But the coordinator also can’t escape the reality that has followed him from Arizona to Washington.
The Commanders’ production and ability to win games is declining after a strong start to the season. Their third consecutive loss, a 34-26 loss to a reeling Dallas Cowboys team, reflects that.
And while the responsibility extends well beyond Kingsbury, Daniels’ post-game sentiments eerily reflected the tropes that shaped Kingsbury’s tenure in Arizona.
“Defensive coordinators look at teams that have success against [their next opponent] and how can they integrate that into their plans,” Daniels said. “You start seeing trends and watching film, but you have to be able to adapt on the fly. We were able to adapt right away, but we didn’t do it early enough. And that starts with me seeing it, the recipients seeing it, everyone seeing it all as one whole.”
In consecutive NFC East games, Commanders’ performance has declined
The 2024 Commanders have drastically exceeded preseason expectations.
Their head coach, general manager, quarterbacks and both coordinators are all in Year 1 in Washington. Even team ownership remains the newest thing in Year 2. And yet, through their first nine games, the Commanders’ 7-2 clip equaled or exceeded the franchise’s win total from eight of the past 11 seasons. Washington jumped out to an NFC East lead and then had a chance to regain it last week during a Thursday night visit to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Instead, the Eagles have now won seven in a row and sit comfortably atop the division at 9-2. The Commanders have lost three straight games, including two straight division games, and have fallen to 7-5.
“When you have a home game and you’re going for the division, you want to take advantage of that,” Quinn said. “If you miss them, it stings.”
Against the Eagles and Cowboys, Washington has managed to stay close over the past two weeks, even while scoring down through three quarters. The Commanders led 10-6 entering the fourth in Philadelphia; hosting Dallas, they trailed 10-9 after three quarters.
Both times, the fourth quarter spiraled out of control and a culturally young Washington team struggled to keep up.
The Eagles outscored Washington 20-8 in the fourth quarter, the Commanders’ only contribution being a touchdown in the final minute against Zach Ertz. The Cowboys outscored the Commanders 24-17 in the fourth during a period most appropriately and professionally described as crazy.
The Cowboys scored a 99-yard touchdown on a kickoff return, then the Commanders followed a field goal with an 86-yard touchdown that Terry McLaurin picked up 58 yards after the catch. Washington kicker Austin Seibert – whose field goal attempt was good 71 seconds earlier – missed the extra point that tied the game, and the Cowboys then returned Washington’s onside kick attempt for a touchdown before intercepting Daniels’ final Hail Mary. (No guarantee after the Commanders beat the Chicago Bears in a Hail Mary last month.)
The play – which featured several missed field goals, a blocked field goal, a blocked punt and a missed extra point attempt – required managing emotions and schematic adjustments.
“As I’ve learned, you don’t ride the roller coaster, you stay balanced the whole time because it’s a long season,” Daniels said. “A lot of things can happen in a game in the NFL. So man, just try to stay calm and control the things you can control.
The Commanders controlled their attacking possessions and end-of-game scenarios much more reliably to start the season. As defenses have increased their exotic pressure and more effectively suppressed Washington in early declines, commanders have been unable to respond.
Washington’s postseason expectations are still viable — and would make sense
Regardless of how the next few weeks in Washington unfold, there will be reason to consider 2024 a success for the franchise. The team’s functionality and efficiency are better than they have been in years, and the culture under Josh Harris’ ownership group appears to be light years ahead of predecessor Dan Snyder’s era.
The commanders have discovered a grit and strength that will lay the foundation for Quinn’s tenure. They’ve created a framework for their franchise quarterback’s success from the first few weeks of his rookie year, giving them the opportunity to chase postseason success while exploiting the best market hack of the NFL’s salary cap era : A quarterback’s rookie contract.
Even as Daniels’ performance has dipped in recent weeks (he has three touchdown passes and three interceptions in the last two weeks after starting his career with a 9-2 ratio), he’s still creating explosive plays, like McLaurin’s 86 chance yards to save the game and Daniels’ own 17-yard rushing touchdown that gave Washington a lead in the third quarter.
The quarterback will be fine. Maybe the coordinator too. But with the ghosts of Kingsbury’s late season reappearing, the coordinator and all of Washington’s staff have a chance to break the trend he started his NFL career with.
Quinn talked about that lesson as he praised his team’s effort and process while acknowledging that it would be nice to need late-game heroics less often. Commanders can’t just keep learning lessons, Quinn said. They also need to apply what they have learned. How can they leverage the belief they create?
“Because we’ve been in this and we’ve been tested more as a freshman group than most,” Quinn said. “And you want to be able to do that [not just learn] these winning moments at the end of the game. It’s about winning them. And we won a few.”
Washington is currently in the last NFC wild card spot, with a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to Next Gen Stats. On either side of their farewell, games against the Tennessee Titans and New Orleans Saints await.
They close out their year with another round of Eagles and Cowboys games on opposite sides of the Atlanta Falcons.
Quinn will occasionally encourage his players to dig deeper into execution and attention to detail. He will continue to preach confidence and attitude, he said. The hope: The many high notes of the Commanders season will begin to wrap up in more consistent form.
Kingsbury will hope so too.
“I don’t want it to be up and down, up and down,” Quinn said. “Every time we go: this is the edge, this is where we’re going, this is the moment to capture it.”
