ASHBURN, Va. — As the Washington Commanders celebrated their first playoff win in nearly 20 years late Sunday night in Tampa, Florida, Magic Johnson embraced the owner, the star receiver and the moment.
Johnson, wearing a black Commanders hoodie and a thousand-watt smile, listed the multiple reasons the franchise had gotten to this point.
With his arm draped around principal owner Josh Harris, the five-time NBA champion and current Commanders minority shareholder told reporters in the team’s locker room that the franchise had gone from “a losing culture to a winning culture” thanks to a new owner, new vision and new strategy.
Harris, who spoke up as excited Commanders players entered the locker room, added three more reasons for Washington’s surprising success: “talent, culture and people.”
Then Johnson remembered the final ingredient — one the Hall of Fame point guard of the 1980s Showtime Lakers dynasty would be remiss to forget.
“The right quarterback,” he said with a laugh.
Indeed, rookie Jayden Daniels has been that for a franchise that had been in search of a quarterback for decades. But Washington’s one-year turnaround — not just from a 4-13 season but from the NFL abyss for most of the past two-plus decades — has been about all of the things mentioned. It took Harris buying the team from Dan Snyder in July 2023. Harris hired general manager Adam Peters, who led the search that landed coach Dan Quinn. They signed veterans known for leadership and then drafted Daniels with the second overall pick. Quinn’s energetic style, Daniels’ determined play and the veterans’ influence have established standards for the entire team to follow.
The team has won 13 games for the first time since 1991, and Sunday was Washington’s first playoff win since the 2005 season. The Commanders have won six in a row — the past five on either the last play of the game or the final play from scrimmage, including the 23-20 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round.
“It’s night and day different,” said safety Jeremy Reaves, who has been on the team since 2018. “You feel heard. It was a long time where I didn’t feel heard. It’s like everybody’s on the same page and everybody’s working towards the same thing. And that translates to everything that you see on the field.”
QUINN’S DAILY TEAM meetings are an event in Washington.
The uber-positive, ultra-personable first-year Commanders coach who’s as recognizable for his backward cap as his dominating defenses enters the room with music blaring from a speaker in front of the room. The 15-20 minutes that follow are a fast-paced mixture of connection, information, inspiration and, oftentimes, laughs for players and coaches alike.
The daily gatherings are a prime example of the culture shift that has swept through the team’s facility this season. Since Quinn & Co. took over in February, he has emphasized energy and collaboration as the core tenets of his regime and has used his team meetings to set the tone.
“I’ve never seen anything like them,” one staffer said of the meetings.
In the spirit of collaboration, Quinn typically doesn’t do all of the talking. He will often have his assistants present to the team — which is a rarity in the NFL. One week, quarterbacks coach Tavita Pritchard presented cutups of plays, another week it was special teams coach Larry Izzo. Quinn is likely to ask anyone in the room for their input. He’ll even crack jokes to get a point across.
During the team’s prep last week for the wild-card game against the Buccaneers, a straight-faced Quinn informed the team he was going to change the practice schedule the Commanders had used at every step en route to their improbable 12-win season.
The players tilted their heads at him, trying to figure out why they’d change.
“No man, I’m just bulls—ting you. We’re going to do exactly what we do,” he told them, emphasizing the necessity of following the plan that had gotten them to that point.
In a recent meeting, Quinn asked Reaves, a special teams standout and former Pro Bowler, what he thought the unit needed to work on. But it’s not just Reaves, players say, Quinn will ask individuals from different position groups the same question.
“He understands the game is played by the players and what happens in between the lines between the players,” Reaves said. “So he needs the feedback from us to know how to go about things. That’s unique.
“You don’t always get that because you get … a disconnect between player [and] coach, right? Coaches do one thing, players feel another way and there’s this big disconnect that doesn’t mesh. … But that’s not the case here.”
Veteran tight end Zach Ertz called Quinn the “best he’s been around” when it comes to messaging. Backup quarterback Marcus Mariota said these meetings get them ready to go for the week. He also said it helps that players can be themselves.
“Sometimes, at least team meetings that I’ve been a part of, you are on eggshells. How’s the head coach going to react to certain things or is he going to pull up tape and show maybe me in a bad light?” Mariota said. “But for [Quinn], it’s very much just like we’re all family. … That type of easiness really allows guys to just enjoy this.”
Then there are the meetings the night before games. Quinn invites a special guest to address the team. They’ve had speakers such as Johnson; Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps; ESPN studio host Scott Van Pelt, a Maryland native and noted Commanders fan; and former Golden State general manager Bob Myers, who is also an advisor for the Commanders — in hopes of bringing the team together and motivating them for the game ahead.
“They all stick out to a certain extent,” Ertz said. “Phelps was special. You could tell his obsession about being great. Magic was just all about the process, and the process of winning was a great message that he had. … They bring in a lot of people that aren’t football people, but they have similar experiences being around elite people.”
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Terry McLaurin: It’s unbelievable to be a part of this Commanders team
Commanders wide receiver Terry McLaurin praises the positivity of the team’s culture after its win over the Buccaneers.
WITH TWO SIGNINGS in March, Washington added three Super Bowls, 11 All-Pros, 11 Pro Bowls and a combined 23 years of NFL experience to a franchise that had gone 32 seasons since its last title.
The players — linebacker Bobby Wagner and tight end Ertz — were the fruits of a strategy by the organization to bring in players, including running back Austin Ekeler, with deep résumés to provide leadership for a reimagined roster.
They’ve also produced. Ertz, 34, has caught 66 passes, including seven for touchdowns, while Wagner, also 34, was named second-team All-Pro after leading the team with 132 tackles in the regular season.
“When you have guys that do it,” Reaves said, “and have done it for a very long time at the highest level and they’ve got all the wisdom and they’ve been in winning cultures and winning situations and winning teams, Super Bowls, that holds a little bit more value.”
Their leadership shows in different forms but has been equally valuable.
“I never wanted the pressure on them to be anything more than ballplayer first. Neither of them were brought here to coach,” Quinn said. “I knew they had very high standards, really high. And I thought that alone is a standard of what excellence and winning can look like. And I thought that alone is important if you’re trying to do something together in that fashion, look to those examples first.”
Wagner will address the team whenever necessary — as he did at the start of the practice week following three consecutive losses (the Commanders beat the Tennessee Titans 42-19 four days later). Teammates and coaches say he sits next to Daniels in team meetings and acts like an older brother — teasing him about his NBA opinions or basketball prowess.
He also leads by example. Defensive coordinator Joe Whitt said on the players’ day off, Wagner is at the facility as long as the coaches, watching film.
“That’s what makes him special, and that’s why he’s going to have that [Hall of Fame] jacket on here when he gets finished playing,” Whitt said of Wagner, an 11-time All-Pro, earlier this season.
Wagner’s example on the field has been just as important. Quinn recalled a day he watched in awe as Wagner made sure to perform a tackling drill — one that he’d probably done 10,000 times in his career — perfectly each time. Wagner is also quick to lift up teammates and dispense wisdom whenever a teammate needs — something he learned during his 11 seasons in Seattle, where Quinn was his defensive coordinator for two seasons.
“Sometimes people don’t know the questions to ask, so you try to give away the knowledge you have,” Wagner said. “I watched guys like [former Seahawks] Kam Chancellor and Marshawn [Lynch], even [Richard] Sherman, Russ [Wilson]. You saw what they meant to certain people, so you just wanted to aspire to be like those guys.”
Ertz is the less vocal of the two, but his habits are similar to Wagner’s. Each day in practice, while Washington’s special teamers work, Ertz works on his footwork between fields with tight ends coach David Raih. After a Week 5 win over the Cleveland Browns, Ertz, unsatisfied with his performance that Sunday, made sure to get in some extra reps with fellow tight end Cole Turner.
“Absolutely going at each other like bulls in the ring,” Raih said of the blocking battle between the two. “So if you’re a young player watching that, he’s very impactful.
“Think about how much success he’s had, one of the most decorated guys in the building and he comes to work every day. He loves being one of the guys.”
The value of having such veterans who can both set an example and mentor can’t be overstated, according to Reaves.
“When you have guys that do it, have done it for a very long time at the highest level and they’ve got all the wisdom and they’ve been in winning cultures and winning situations and winning teams, Super Bowls, that holds a little bit more value even to me,” Reaves said.
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR KLIFF Kingsbury recently mentioned a video that received more than 378,000 likes on Instagram. It was of a man pacing in his living room moments after Daniels had completed an improbable 52-yard Hail Mary pass to beat the Chicago Bears in Week 8.
“We got us one!” the man shouted.
That “one,” the team believes, is a franchise quarterback. Daniels, who won the Heisman Trophy at LSU, has taken the NFL by storm this season.
“I felt like that guy [in the video] after the first seven-on-seven session [in the spring],” Kingsbury said. “It was just next-level kind of operation, finding the checkdowns and not forcing things. You could tell he studied it like crazy over the little break we had. We all kind of looked at each other like, ‘Wow, that was really good.’
“We knew then that we had a chance to have a special player and just getting to see the humility, the hard work, all the things he’s put into it, it just has evolved since then.”
Daniels’ emergence has the Commanders hoping they’ve finally ended their decadeslong search for an elite QB, and he has been fundamental to their success.
Since winning the Super Bowl following the 1991 season, the organization had started 35 different quarterbacks, including eight in the previous four seasons. During that span, Washington had drafted four quarterbacks in the first round: Patrick Ramsey (2002), Jason Campbell (2005), Robert Griffin III (2012) and Dwayne Haskins (2019). None became the long-term answer, though Griffin had an electric rookie season. Washington traded for veterans such as Mark Brunell, Donovan McNabb and Alex Smith. It developed Kirk Cousins, only to watch him leave in free agency.
The futile search left Washington in quarterback purgatory. And not coincidentally, the franchise struggled, posting a combined winning percentage of .417 — fourth worst in the NFL — during that span.
Those fortunes changed in April when the Commanders drafted Daniels.
Daniels has talent — he can throw and run. He has also played his best in the season’s biggest moments, leading five winning drives — three were touchdown passes on Washington’s final play from scrimmage, while the two others were last-second field goals. Daniels ranked second in the NFL in total QBR in the final two minutes of regulation during the regular season, and he was first with four touchdown passes in those moments.
“It’s what you live for. That’s what you kind of play the sport for, to when it’s time, to go out there and make plays,” Daniels said. “I’m just competitive, man, I just want to win. I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.”
That attitude spreads to others.
“Jayden has such poise in these winning-time moments, and that’s contagious as well,” Quinn said.
That poise carries over after his heroics. After Washington kicked a winning field goal to beat Tampa Bay on Sunday night, Daniels calmly got off the bench without much expression, which is not all that surprising to those within the team. Quinn said the most emotion he has ever seen from Daniels wasn’t after any of his winning drives but rather when his backup, Mariota, threw the winning pass to beat Dallas in Week 18.
“In other moments where he’s the one in charge, he’s iced up,” Quinn said.
Commanders coaches said Daniels’ focus under pressure was evident in the 36-33 home victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 16. Daniels threw his second interception of the game with three minutes, eight seconds remaining and Washington trailing by two. The Eagles capitalized with a short field goal before Daniels went to work, leading the Commanders on a nine-play, 57-yard drive that he capped with a 9-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jamison Crowder with six seconds remaining.
“You could just tell from the look in his eye, if we get the ball back, we’re going to go win it. And that was like his feel,” Kingsbury said. “That’s one of the most brazen throws he’s probably made. He was just trying to make a play. There was no like, ‘Oh, we lost the game,’ or, ‘That’s on me.’ He was like, ‘All right, if we get the ball back, I’m going to go win it.'”
It was a performance in the clutch even Johnson would likely appreciate, and one of many examples of Daniels’ importance to Washington’s remarkable one-year turnaround.
“Everything, bro,” defensive end Dorance Armstrong said when asked what Daniels has meant to the team this season. “That’s our quarterback. It runs through him. He ain’t doing nothing but putting in work, keeping his head down and continuing to get better.”
