One of this week’s lingering questions Monday Night Football refers to the perception that Commanders coach Dan Quinn didn’t know his team was facing a play of fourth-and-2 from the San Francisco 13 when they were, you know, facing a play of fourth-and-2 from the San Francisco 13.
After the game ended, Quinn (who was ready to address the viral lip-reading moment) said: “certainly» knew it was fourth down, before essentially admitting that he didn’t immediately realize a post-snap foul on the offense could be denied.
In his press conference the next day (which, because it happened, means he hasn’t been fired yet), Quinn brought up Jayden Daniels’ decision 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, you still shoot, man, to go throw it, finish it, you don’t know if it’s going to be recovered,” Quinn said of his message to Daniels.
It’s more than just picking up the flag. A penalty on the offense, coupled with the officials’ decision not to stop the play, did not alleviate the requirement to get a first down. It remained a “you’ve got to have it” play. This was not an opportunity to throw the ball away.
Daniels addressed the situation during his post-match press conference.
“I just have to execute better in that situation, whether there’s a flag or not,” Daniels said. “You know, fourth down…I gotta be better, you know, in that spot.”
But it wasn’t better execution. It was about better decision making in real time. He decided to abandon the play.
Daniels also confirmed he was aware a flag had been thrown.
“I knew it. I didn’t know what it was – it could have been offside, it could have been on us,” Daniels said in response to the last question of the session. “You know, I don’t really like that kind of thing, you know?”
The final comment is confusing. Why wouldn’t he be “attracted to that sort of thing”? The concept of situational football does not end at the start of a play. Things can happen during the course of a play and drastically change the situation.
In this case, the flag has created one of two new situations. If the defense was offside, it was a free play. In this situation, Daniels should have taken a shot toward the end zone because the penalty still could have been accepted if it didn’t work. If the penalty was for the infraction, he still had to convert.
No one knew what the flag was for, but since there was no obvious jump on the part of 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 this 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.
This is another example of an institutional failure to train Daniels to be ready for every situation and/or a failure of Daniels to want to have all the answers to every possible situation.
Based on Quinn’s comments, Daniels was coached about it after the match. Why wasn’t he coached on this before the game?
The end result further reveals the tangible flaw in the overall approach to ensuring that the quarterback, offensive coordinator and head coach do not take a trial and error approach in professional football.
Again, this is not on-the-job training. Training happens (or at least it should) in meetings, practices, more meetings, more practices, more meetings, and more practices.
That said, the most reasonable explanation is that Quinn and Daniels didn’t know they were fourth. While it’s not as egregious as what happened at the end of overtime against the Giants, it does make the lingering bad vibes about the institutional mastery of situational football a bit worse.
Gn sports
