Quinn’s Culture Revolution in Washington Is Turning Heads—Even Dallas Is Paying Attention

For the Washington Commanders the turnaround from butt of the joke to near the head of the class has been sudden and impressive.

Led by an organizational belief that the people behind the jobs matter as much, if not more, as the skills being applied to them, the Commanders have not only been reborn, but have set an example for all struggling franchises to emulate.

Even franchise's with equally impressive historical success can look to Washington as a model for how to get their teams back on track. Teams like the Dallas Cowboys, for example, who have a new head coach saying a lot of things that sound very familiar to what Dan Quinn has been saying with the Commanders since his arrival in early 2024.

Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

“To me, it was all about connections,” new Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said to Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer in a recent interview. “Being someone that was a coach that had been in the building, not just as a coordinator but as a consultant, I wanted to get back to the feeling where everyone wanted to get to know each other on a deeper level. Everyone was going in the same direction, and the best way to go in the same direction is to know everybody’s why and know everybody’s heartbeat for why they do what they do, why they make the sacrifice that they do.”

Finding out their 'why' is exactly what Quinn and general manager Adam Peters set out to do as soon as they got on ground with the Commanders. Doing so, they've put together a roster of men who have as much quality to their person as they do in their athletic ability. And that was by design.

Quinn sometimes refers to their character traits as superpowers, connecting the spirit of the individual with the player who makes winning possible.

That character showed up several times in 2024, in those 'winning-time moments,' another conversational point that has become commonplace when interviewing members of this new Washington organization.

And so, things have turned upward in a hurry, because when the business of people is achieved first, the business of winning football becomes a byproduct of it. At least, that is the belief and the goal that Schottenheimer and Quinn share from their time together in Dallas, as well as the former's relationship with his father, Marty, the 2004 Coach of the Year, who won 200 games in 21 seasons as an NFL head coach.