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The Commanders and Baltimore Ravens mutually canceled the joint practice they had scheduled for next week. Coach Dan Quinn indicated the short turnaround from Monday night’s preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals to the Aug. 23 preseason finale against the Ravens made it too difficult to host the Ravens in an additional gamelike setting. Quinn and Ravens Coach John Harbaugh discussed their plans Wednesday night.
Rookie wideout Jaylin Lane’s role is expanding. Already the likely punt returner and a breakout player in the slot, Lane has been getting more snaps as an outside receiver, including with the first-team offense in Tuesday’s scrimmage.
“That’s another element, another dimension,” Quinn said. “What do you do from a player who’s outside? There’s deeper routes, deeper overs. With his speed, we wanted to go into that. We know what we’ve seen out of breaking people off man-to-man.”
When a coaching staff adds more to a rookie’s plate in preseason, it’s a good sign it sees him as a contributor during the season. In some ways, the Commanders’ exploration of Lane’s skill set is reminiscent of how they handled cornerback Mike Sainristil last year.
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It was during Quinn’s interview with new team owner Josh Harris and new general manager Adam Peters in January 2024 that he outlined his plan for setting up the first offseason around a rookie QB. After his firing over three years earlier as the Falcons’ coach, Quinn spent time analyzing what he’d do differently the next time. One thing that stood out: He hadn’t built his Atlanta coaching staff to withstand success.
After the Falcons went to the Super Bowl in the 2016 season, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan left to become coach of the 49ers and took assistants such as Mike McDaniel and Mike LaFleur with him. Matt LaFleur, meanwhile, left to join Sean McVay’s staff with the Rams.
“So you had this brain drain,” Peters said. “But you’ve got to understand you’ve got to have somebody next. That was one of the things that, in his interview, he talked to me about — building a deep coaching staff and having the next guy and the next guy, anticipating success.”
Quinn hired Kliff Kingsbury as offensive coordinator. He hired Brian Johnson as pass game coordinator. He retained Tavita Pritchard, who’d been hired a year earlier as quarterbacks coach. And he hired former NFL quarterback David Blough as assistant quarterbacks coach.
“I wanted a big staff, hoping that things would go well and teams would want to interview our guys and we’d have people from within to replace them,” Quinn recalled in an interview before practice at training camp last month. “And that way, when things happen, it’s not different voices, different systems. So we were thinking ahead, and all of this is before Jayden even arrived.”
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