One of the lingering questions from this week’s Monday Night Football relates to the perception that Commanders coach Dan Quinn didn’t know his team was facing a fourth-and-two play from the San Francisco 13 when it was, you know, facing a fourth-and-two play from the San Francisco 13.
After the game ended, Quinn (who was ready to address the viral lip-reading moment) said he “definitely” knew it was fourth down, before essentially acknowledging that he didn’t instantly realize a post-snap foul on the offense could be declined.
At his day-after press conference (which, by virtue of the fact that it happened means he hasn’t been fired, yet), Quinn addressed the decision of Jayden Daniels to throw the ball to a wide open Sourdough Sam, who was standing in his 49ers mascot costume well beyond the back of the end zone.
“Even when you know there’s a penalty, like, you still take your shot, man, to go throw it, complete it, you don’t know if it’s gonna get picked up,” Quinn said regarding his message to Daniels.
It’s more than the flag getting picked up. A penalty on the offense, coupled with the decision of the officials to not stop the play, didn’t alleviate the obligation to get a first down. It remained a “gotta have it” play. It didn’t become an occasion to throw the ball away.
Daniels addressed the situation in his post-game press conference.
“I’ve just got to execute better in that situation regardless of a flag or not,” Daniels said. “You know, fourth down . . . I have to be better, you know, in that spot.”
But it wasn’t a matter of better execution. It was a matter of better real-time decision-making. He decided to essentially give up on the play.
Daniels also confirmed that he knew a flag had been thrown.
“I did know. I didn’t know what it — it could have been offsides, it could have been on us,” Daniels said in response to the last question of the session. “You know, I’m not really into that type of stuff, you know?”
The final comment is confusing. Why wouldn’t he be “into that type of stuff”? The concept of situational football doesn’t end when a play starts. Things can happen during a play that dramatically change the situation.
In this case, the flag created one of two new situations. If the defense was offside, it was a free play. In that situation, Daniels should have taken a shot to the end zone because the penalty always could have been accepted if it didn’t work out. If the penalty was on the offense, he still needed to convert.
No one knew what the flag was for, but since there wasn’t an obvious jump by the defense (which we see all the time, and which quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers always use to go for the jugular), the best decision in that situation would have been to try to get the first down, no matter what. The worst decision would have been to just throw the ball out of the end zone, which is the decision Daniels made.
It’s another example of an institutional failure to coach Daniels to be ready for all situations and/or a failure of Daniels to want to have all the answers for all possible situations.
Based on Quinn’s comments, Daniels got coached about it after the game. Why wasn’t he coached about it before the game?
The end result further reveals the tangible flaw in the overall approach to ensuring that the quarterback, the offensive coordinator, and head coach aren’t taking a trial-and-error approach to pro football.
Again, it’s not on-the-job training. The training happens (or at least it should) during meetings, practices, more meetings, more practices, even more meetings, and even more practices.
All that said, the more reasonable explanation is that Quinn and Daniels didn’t know it was fourth down. While not as egregious as what happened at the end of overtime against the Giants, it makes the lingering bad vibes regarding the institutional command of situational football a little bit worse.