The Washington Commanders hired two coaches on Tuesday, one being Jesse Madden, grandson of the late NFL legend John Madden. The team also hired Brian Schneider as assistant special teams coach in order to replace John Glenn, who held the position last year. The team announced both moves via X.
Madden has been hired as an offensive quality control coach and this is his first-ever gig in the NFL coaching ranks. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2023 and was part of the 2024 national championship team.
Madden joined the Wolverines as a walk-on in 2021. He was a quarterback at the time and appeared in one game that year before switching to defensive back for the 2022-2023 seasons. He was mostly a scout team player and didn't appear in any games during that span, however, he won the team's Scout Team Defensive Player of the Year in 2022 and was a good student academia-wise.
Now, he'll do the 'dirty work' for Jayden Daniels and the Commanders offense as a quality control coach. These aren't the most glamorous jobs, but they do serve a purpose and while it remains to be seen just what exactly Madden will be doing, he's part of the system and we all know Dan Quinn's coaching staff is a big collaboration more than it is any one person with all the power and influence.
Some teams want their quality control coaches down in the weeds, sorting through the little details that other coaches don’t have the time to look at. For other teams, it’s largely a data entry job, going through information in the team’s video cataloging system and making sure it all lines up correctly. On other teams, they might be making cutups of specific down and distance situations for other coaches to look at as they gameplan.
There are two main consistent features, though: it’s all low-level grunt work and it’s all fairly low-paid work. A lot of these guys are really coaches in name only; from what I’ve read, they rarely, if ever, are working directly with players. And they’re not getting paid much; though I know the numbers have gone up, I once heard someone — maybe Brian Billick? I don’t know — refer to quality coaches as “20/20 guys.” That is, guys in their 20s willing to work for something in the ballpark of $20,000 a year. - John Meerdink, The Power Sweep
Considering Madden's inexperience, he'll likely be working a more minimal role but if he grows and develops, it's certainly easy to see Kliff Kingsbury doling out more responsibility.
Schneider is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, having coached in the NFL for what will be 18-years in 2025. He didn't coach in 2024, but was the 49ers' special teams coordinator from 2022-2023. He held the same title with the Seattle Seahawks from 2010-2020, where he obviously got to know Quinn.
Schneider had success during his time with the Seahawks. From 2010-2020, his unit ranked top-10 in net punting yards twice, top-10 in average kick returns six times, top-10 in punt return average four times, and top-10 in made field goal percentage five times. His time with the 49ers produced far less success, however, as his special teams unit finished in the top-10 of the four aforementioned categories just once, which was punt return average in 2022, during his two seasons in the Bay Area.
