Anyone who has worked a night shift, spent a restless night camping, or waited in the chill for the first rays of light on a hunting trip knows that the last hours of darkness are the longest, coldest, and most trying. The fans of the Washington Football Team know this more intimately than most. It isn’t necessary to list all of the sins committed by former team owner Dan Snyder. There simply aren’t enough column-inches to do the task justice. Nor is there any need to punish the faithful by reliving a tranche of transgressions. But, the one constant in Snyder was a total inability or desire to learn from mistakes and failure. Behaviors and decision-making never changed despite horrific headwinds. It was a quarter-century of worse-than-awful. Imagine then being one Josh Harris. The ownership transferred in May. With the wicked warlock dead, the munchkins dancing jubilantly, and pall lifted from the land he had to do the least palatable thing imaginable: Sit on his hands and wait.
Watching last-year’s squad while scheming the future was an exercise in patience for Harris comparable to the Labours of Hercules. Ron Rivera was one of Snyder’s last gasps for respectability. He was everything Snyder wasn’t: In short, a stand-up guy. Ron took slings and arrows that no Head Coach should endure. Rivera took on all the dirty work as the franchise was pummeled by media. There was just one problem and it was insurmountable: He was lousy at evaluating talent. His drafts eventually resulted in a team that was non-competitive. Adding to the misery index was the inescapable reality that he was not going to work even one day after the end of the season. Everyone knew it including the players. Every season has some purpose. Last year’s was to suffer Dan Snyder’s farewell kiss goodbye replete with all the despondency merited. Black Monday unleashed Harris from the restraints. The first bit of light then started to creep into the Eastern sky.
Action…at last!
The first order of business had been long decided. Football teams have various structures. The WFT had just finished a run with “Coach-centric” structure. Basically the Head Coach is a bit of a Roman Emperor. Everything runs through him. It has worked for some teams. It has failed more often than not. Then again some teams have the owner as the decision maker. This is usually a hot mess wearing a nice suit. Football is a business unlike any mainstream venture. Placing an amateur at the wheel usually results in significant damage. A more reliable and predictable model is to have a General Manager controlling personnel with a Head Coach underneath focused only on the personnel on-hand. Harris’ decision to go this route is not to be overlooked. It sent a message to the football world that sanity had returned to the building.
If going the General Manager route, then the task was to hire a good one. Adam Peters was THE Hot Candidate. The 44-year old had already been in the NFL for 21 years: First as a scout for the New England Patriots; then as a college scouting director for the Denver Broncos. Finally, Peters had spent 7 years with the San Francisco 49ers ending his tenure there as Assistant GM. He was regarded as head and shoulders above the field. He was also going to be expensive. It took Harris less than four days to land Peters. After waiting for nearly a year it was no time to be timid.
Setting the GM into place proved to be the easier of the two main hires. The Head Coach hire proved to be more much less direct. There are two avenues to hiring a Head Coach: One is to hire a Coordinator with a great reputation. The other is to hire a former Head Coach. Some uncharitably call this “Recycling.” With very little research one can find successes on both sides of the ledger. There are also no shortage of failures. Washington’s hire of Joe Gibbs as a somewhat obscure Offensive Coordinator turned out to be the stuff of dreams. A subsequent hire of THE Hot Coordinator Norv Turner was the stuff of nightmares. Charlie Weis often states that the job of a Coordinator is pure football while the job of a Head Coach is only occasionally football. The two jobs are radically different. Suffice to say there is a large learning curve involved.
Searching for a Coach
Harris assembled a team including his fellow owner Magic Johnson, former NBA executive Bob Myers, and former Vikings GM Rick Spielman to assist Peters in hiring the new coach. There was no shortage of shiny Coordinators out there as candidates. Ben Johnson was the marquee name on the street. At 38 years-old he was a large part of resuscitating the Detroit Lions from decades of irrelevance. The fit seemed logical. Peters and crew interviewed a large number of candidates including Ravens’ Defensive Coordinator Mike Macdonald. They also interviewed Dallas Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn. With the decision supposedly made the search team was on the Gulfstream flying to Detroit when they were notified that Johnson was backing out. Why he got gun shy is not completely known. When he received some backlash that it was a bit of an amateurish move he claimed that he didn’t really want to work for “Basketball people.” Whatever the real motivations the timing was awful.
When an organization is spectacularly lousy for decades the assumption of blame for any bad situation will fall directly on top of it. Johnson’s cold feet brought the vitriol back to the surface. The hiring team pivoted to Quinn. Rumblings turned into howls. The gang can’t shoot straight was at it again. Nothing says failure, said many, like hiring a former fired Head Coach. Adding fuel to the fire was Quinn’s last game in Dallas where his Defense was offensive. He also had the misfortune of having a 28-3 halftime lead over the Patriots in a Super Bowl which evaporated. Kyle Shanahan is an amazing Offensive mind. He just has one Achilles tendency; ignoring the run in the second half of games when conventional wisdom says just the opposite. Quinn gave the offensive reins to Shanahan in that Super Bowl. It was a bad decision as he’ll wear that 28-3 number for a good long time.
But, Quinn had something going for him that gave him a decided edge. When most people fail at something the human reaction is to find someone or something to blame. “Anything other than me.” Quinn didn’t do that. He owned the failure immediately. So much so that he hired a consulting firm to try to determine why and how he failed in Atlanta. The method selected was the notorious “360” evaluation. That’s where input is sought from all levels of the organization, above, below, and outside personnel give their perspectives. Having suffered through several of these rest assured it is not for the feint of heart. Players, executives, staffers, the owner, and even players that Quinn had cut were contacted for anonymous phone interviews. He learned what went wrong and why. From there came an action plan should he ever get another chance to be a Head Coach. It would sit on the shelf until needed.
What Dan Quinn has said publicly about the results of the 360 is limited. First, he was over-extended. That’s a common refrain from ex-coaches. Delegation is a high-order skill that is frequently under-developed. The other was that he had no succession plan when Coordinators left the building. Look no farther than Philadelphia where the team lost both Coordinators at once. Philly went from a narrow Super Bowl loss to a mess last season. With two new people manning those jobs the Head Coach needs to have a very good year or his job is in question. Quinn’s thinking is that his successor Coordinators are already in the building. They just need mentoring so they are ready when their time comes.
Falcons’ fans are quick to spew venom on the Quinn hire. The “28-3” line is repeated incessantly. There are even a few that claim Quinn’s habit of wearing his ballcap backwards is disqualifying. But, voices from inside the industry are largely on the other side of the ledger. THE ATHLETIC runs an anonymous survey of agents every year. One agent said this: “Dan Quinn is the perfect hire as head coach for the needed culture change,. I love the pairing with Peters. They have so much work to do beyond football.”
Second time coaches tend to have success. Check out this list: Pete Carroll, Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin, and Andy Reid. All of them won Super Bowls with their second team after not winning with the first. Failure is not a terrible thing if one learns from it.
So, at long last rays of sunshine are in the sky. The difficult part now is waiting for any warmth to come from them.
