The Commanders have two games remaining and the playoffs loom just beyond the mountain of the regular season.
Yet, Commanders head coach Dan Quinn is determined not to allow his team to look too far ahead. He knows the discussions that are happening in the media and fan base but said Monday to the press that if he doesn’t like his team’s focus, he will not look the other way. He will address it.
“Yep. And I know that, I don’t have my head in the sand, but I do really stay true to the process with the players,”Quinn said. “And I promise you all the things that are going on through my head, the what ifs aren’t part of it. I just don’t see the benefit in that for us; we’ve got a lot of stuff to improve upon.”
Quinn knows there is no use his players getting involved in the playoff seedings, the playoff implications, the playoff scenarios. They can’t control what any of the other teams do anyway, so, why not remain focused on what you can control? What you can address?
“If I can stay our chasing of constant improvement, that’s where we’re at. And so for us, we kind of talk about when we came back from the bye [week] we were at a base camp, and we’re trying to get to a next spot, a new next spot. And so that’s what Atlanta is in six days. And so, we know we’ve got a lot to improve upon and so we just dig in on that and that way we don’t have to get caught up in the what ifs.”
It’s what Kirk Cousins talked about way back in his years in Washington. He wasn’t understood by many when he notoriously said, “I’m a little more process-oriented than that.”
Whether he was understood by many is insignificant. He was right, and so is Quinn. Be busy, be focused on what you need to address and in how you can improve. Work your process.