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Which coach will be most instrumental in ensuring that the Commanders get beyond the NFC Championship game this season?
Washington Commanders keys for 2025 is a short series of three articles — this is the last — in which John Portis and Bill-in-Bangkok, together, explore newcomers to Washington’s roster that need to punch above their weight for the Commanders to progress to the next level of competition.
Since last year’s roster went to the NFC Championship, in essence we are discussing which offseason additions could propel the franchise to the Super Bowl in 2025.
The qualifications for the first two player-oriented articles were simple: any Commander that was not with the franchise at the start of last season was eligible for consideration. This included players acquired from in-season trades, free agent additions, and the draft.
In this 3rd article, we have, for practical reasons, waived the requirement that the coach be new in 2025; instead, each of us was able to pick a candidate from among the entire coaching staff.
Obviously, this is opinion — not an exact measurement or evaluation. Rather, the intent is to “prime the pump” a little bit and encourage discussion about which player(s) might make the biggest impact in the coming season.
To make this a little different, and hopefully more fun, newcomer John Portis and long-time veteran Bill-in-Bangkok have agreed to provide their thoughts on one candidate in each article.
We encourage you to not only comment on the players we have chosen to highlight, but to add your own thoughts or candidates for consideration. To keep things tidy, we ask you to focus your thoughts on the group under discussion for the day.
We are finishing with the coaching staff this morning, and look forward to the start of training camp, which is right around the corner.
Part 1 - Washington Commanders key additions for 2025: Defense
Part 2 - Washington Commanders key additions for 2025: Offense
For the final installment of Key Additions 2025 we are going to bend the “newcomer" requirement. Okay, we are going to remove it completely. If we didn’t, it would be a short article because Brian Schneider, the assistant special teams coach who took John Glenn’s place this off-season, is the only new hire. Despite interviews or interview requests from other teams for current staff members Joe Whitt Jr, Brian Johnson, Tavita Pritchard, and David Blough, all the remaining coaches were retained for the upcoming season.
Considered a “retread” hire, Dan Quinn was initially met with some trepidation, as some in the media painted the former head coach as the fallback option to former Ravens defensive coordinator Mike McDonald and Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, who notoriously canceled an in-person interview with Adam Peters while Washington’s decision-makers were in mid-flight. Meanwhile, the Commanders front office and beat reporter John Keim maintained Quinn was always one of the top choices for the job.
Hogs Haven writer Bill-in-Bangkok discussed fan reaction to Dan...
