Commanders head coach Dan Quinn slammed his headset down on the sideline as the clock hit zero in overtime of Sunday’s 27-27 tie with the Giants and he got a chance to share what he was thinking as the Commanders blew their chance at a game-winning field goal try by letting time run out with the ball on the New York 24-yard-line.
Quinn said at his postgame press conference that he felt “gutted” for the players and that the tie “feels like a loss” because of how many opportunities the team failed to jump on over the afternoon. The biggest one came after Giants running back Cam Skattebo fumbled away his team’s own chance at a game-winning field goal on the first play after the two-minute warning and the Commanders drove downfield to poisition themselves for a field goal.
Instead of spiking the ball with around 12 seconds left, the Commanders ran a pay that saw quarterback Jayden Daniels kill a few seconds before going down for no gain. They didn’t immediately line back up to spike it and it’s unclear if they even would have gotten that snap off in time given how much time had already come off the clock.
Quinn said it is “my responsibility and no one else’s” to make sure that the Commanders don’t find themselves in that situation.
“The sequencing of that does not fall on him,” Quinn said. “It’s an outside throw or a clock, out of bounds throw or a clock. That has to come from me. . . . We can finish the kick earlier, we don’t need to gain more yards. That’s on me.”
One of the Commanders’ owners has already weighed in on the inexcusable errors at the end of the tie. If others share Magic Johnson’s view of the magnitude of the blunders, Quinn’s future in Washington may be limited.