The decision to part ways with Kliff Kingsbury is a tough one for me.
I genuinely admired the guy. By every account, he was a grinder—16-hour days, week after week, throughout the season. Whatever his flaws, lack of effort was never one of them. He wasn’t trying to be cool, wasn’t chasing validation, and didn’t seem particularly interested in trends or outside approval. His offense was his offense. In a league obsessed with copying whatever worked last year, he was the rare coach who was comfortable being a little different and trusting his own process. There’s something admirable about that, especially in a profession built on insecurity.
And the results matter. From 2018 to 2023, Washington’s best scoring offense averaged 20.9 points per game (2020), finishing 23rd out of 32. In 2024, Kingsbury’s offense jumped to 28.5 points per game—fifth in the league. In 2025, despite extreme adversity, the offense still held up. By my count, the offense lost 63 combined starter games to injury: Daniels missed 10, McLaurin 7, Noah Brown 13, Ertz 4, Cosmi 9, Tunsil 3, Biadasz 2, Ekeler 15. That’s not even getting into the fact that the offense lost its superstar quarterback for ten games. And yet, the unit still averaged 20.9 points per game—literally matching the franchise’s best offensive season of the previous six-year stretch—and ranked 22nd, which is better than any finish from 2018–2023. Calling that a failure feels disconnected from reality.
Which brings me to the uncomfortable part. Dan Quinn is a defensive coach, and the defense has been historically bad over the last couple of seasons. That matters. The defensive coordinator he brought in was unproven, and the results were poor. When Quinn took over play-calling, things became more structurally sound—fewer blown assignments, fewer players clearly lost—but it was also aggressively vanilla. Functional, maybe, but not good. You see that vanillaness in how the defense produced 10 turnovers, 31st out of 32 in the NFL. To me, it feels like Kingsbury absorbed the consequences of failures that largely weren’t his.
I understand that Quinn deserves to build a staff he fully believes in, and I don’t doubt that he’s a good leader or a good person. But this move leaves a bad taste. When the side of the ball that was producing loses its coach, while the side that has been actively hurting the team gets more runway, it feels like scapegoating. And if the next round of hires doesn’t work, this decision is going to linger—for me, at least—in how quickly I’m willing to turn on Quinn.
Loyalty matters. Accountability matters more. And right now, it feels like those two things were applied in the wrong direction. Dan Quinn needs to look in the mirror, not in the offensive meeting rooms, because this defense is offensive.
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The Rook
