Who’s to blame for Washington’s season-defining blunder? 

· Yahoo Sports

Every NFL season brings a few moments that defy explanation. The quarterback who throws a 50-yard bomb through a hole somehow smaller than a football. The wide receiver who slips the bonds of gravity. The running back who shrugs off a full ton of defenders. And, of course, the team that commits an error so egregious, so unthinkable, that the entire fan base is left wondering why these guys aren’t fired on the spot. 

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Sunday brought us the usual assortment of thrilling games and odd endings, but there was no game which ended in a more inexplicable smash-your-TV fashion than Washington’s utter flop against the New York Giants. After 69 minutes and 46 seconds of vintage NFC East football, and still with the chance to win the game on a field goal in overtime, the Commanders instead melted like cotton candy in the rain:

This isn’t 4-D chess here; the correct play should have been to spike the ball and kick a 41-yard field goal. Instead, the Commanders ran some kind of messy short-yardage play that went nowhere, ending with everyone sort of casually milling about at walkthrough speed until someone realized that, hey, this game is seconds away from being over. And by then, it was far too late, and the Commanders came away with a tie when a victory was right there for the taking. 

How did they manage to botch the kind of play that ought to be automatic? Who’s to blame here? Let’s line up the suspects: 

The buck always stops with the head coach, full stop. Quinn accepted the blame for the utter mismanagement, saying after the game that he should have had Daniels simply spike the ball. Plus, on a broader scale, the fact that the players seemingly weren’t prepared for this kind of critical contingency falls squarely on Quinn’s shoulders. After Washington’s spectacular 2024, he and the Commanders have nose-dived, and this game punched through to a new level of futility. 

Has a lot to answer for, from not throwing the ball out of bounds to not running his team with necessary urgency in the waning seconds to allowing himself to get sacked. His postgame explanations were less than convincing; he has to be more locked in than he showed in those final seconds on Sunday. 

Blough calls the plays for Washington, while Quinn handles the in-game decisions. Still, the fact that the play was run at all — instead of just opting to spike the ball — is the most damning part of the sideline decisionmaking. When you’ve lost the support of effervescent minority owner Magic Johnson, you’ve truly lost everything:

Sure, they were just following the play that was called, but running 15-plus yards downfield helped slow down the team’s return to the line of scrimmage. 

Moved with all the urgency of teenagers asked to go clean their rooms. The exception: right tackle Josh Conerly Jr., who you can see in the above clip trying to get Daniels to, you know, hustle it up and get to the line. 

“Accidentally” kicked the ball while ambling back over to his position as the referee attempted to spot it. A-plus gamesmanship right there. 

They did absolutely nothing wrong, but Washington fans should try blaming them anyway, to take the heat off their own team’s atrocious mismanagement. 

A win would have changed the entire calculus of the season for Washington; the Commanders at 2-3 would have been in a three-way tie for second in the NFC East. (It’s OK to laugh at that.) But now they have to wear the shame of this lost opportunity for the rest of the week, right up until next Sunday, when they … play 5-0 San Francisco in prime time. 

Yeah, it’s going to get worse before it gets better for Washington. Soon enough, there’ll be more than enough blame to go around.

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