Commanders' culture reset won’t matter without long-term results

The Washington Commanders stunned the NFL world in 2024 by completing one of the most remarkable turnarounds in league history, going from 4-13 the prior season to 12-5 and qualifying for the NFC Championship game. But the job was far from finished.

Year 2 of the Dan Quinn era has brought a shift in standards, in which a Super Bowl run is the hope and playoffs are the expectation. Through six weeks, the Commanders are 3-3, ranking 12th in the NFC playoff picture.

It's still early. But for all the talk about Washington's winning culture under Quinn, the team's on-field product has some ways to go in pursuit of measuring up.

Commanders must get better at the finer margins after indifferent start to 2025

Quinn has talked a big game about how he's going to do things the right way, how he's going to lead with passion and resilience, and won't tolerate any nonsense. Everyone is going to be held accountable, with the mindset beaten into their brains to be relentlessly obsessed with constant improvement every day.

It's much harder to back up that talk with substance consistently. Mistakes will happen, and everybody is human. But when it's the same repeated mistakes without any signs of growth, there comes a certain point where rhetoric can only take you so far.

The Commanders have been prone to several repeated mistakes in 2025, especially on the defensive side of the ball. There have been glaring missed tackles. Busted coverages. Costly penalties. Players are inexplicably regressing or being set up to fail due to scheming issues. All of that was on display in Washington's Week 6 loss to the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, and that's not even mentioning the three offensive turnovers.

It was by far the worst loss of the Commanders' season. It's important not to get too caught up in the moment because only a week before, Washington had its best win of the campaign, beating the Los Angeles Chargers on the road. That game was a pure culture triumph — a contest where Quinn's squad was locked in and ran circles around its opponent in the execution department.

Progress isn't always going to be linear -- sometimes, you take a step forward and then another one back. But setbacks like Monday's are especially frustrating because everyone in Washington knows what the best version of this squad is capable of. The Commanders are not a bad football team that wins sometimes. They are a good team that loses sometimes.

Washington has the third-best point differential in the NFC. All three of the Commanders' wins have been more conclusive than all three losses. But the regression from last year in close games has hit hard, and it magnifies the little things between the margins that they aren't doing well.

There's no reason why fans shouldn't have faith in Quinn and company to right the ship. The Commanders have the right vision and a strong foundation from which to build it. But it's going to take an uncomfortable look in the mirror to address how much work is still to be done.