Lions and Commanders meet nearly a year after coaching decisions affected their trajectories

By Canadian Press on January 17, 2025.

ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — Dan Quinn met with new Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters and team brass at a hotel in Georgetown in late January 2024 to talk about their head coaching vacancy.

Then he waited and worried.

“I hope they call,” Quinn recalled thinking.

The same day, Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was scheduled to interview and, instead, told the Commanders and other interested teams he was staying in his current job. Later that week, Washington hired Quinn and by Feb. 4 had an agreement with Kliff Kingsbury to run the offense.

Fast forward 11 1/2 months and all of them will be on the sidelines when the Lions host the Commanders in the divisional round of the playoffs. Johnson has again been a big part of Detroit having one of the top offenses in the NFL, Kingsbury has gotten Washington into the same stratosphere with rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels and all four coordinators involved are garnering attention around the league for head coaching jobs.

Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, who also interviewed with Washington before Quinn got the gig, is as hot a candidate as there is right now. Glenn has spoken with Chicago, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, New Orleans and the New York Jets.

“He is beyond qualified right now,” Johnson, who has also interviewed with the Bears, Jaguars and Raiders, said of Glenn. “He is more prepared to be a head coach than maybe anybody I’ve ever met. He wants that, and I think he’d do a phenomenal job in charge.”

Commanders veteran tight end Zach Ertz echoed that sentiment, saying, “Aaron Glenn is probably one of the best coaches in the league just maximizing his players.”

Johnson has maximized the Lions’ offense, too, and now seems primed to leave coach Dan Campbell’s staff to start his own, knowing better the questions he’s getting in the process and thinking differently about the future.

“I instead of worrying solely about the offense and what we’re doing right here, I’ve been able to have offseasons and summers to think about big-picture view, what a program would look like where I’m running it,” Johnson said.

Kingsbury knows what that is like from running a Power Five college program at Texas Tech for six years, then coaching the Arizona Cardinals for four seasons from 2019-22. Asked recently if he would like to be an NFL head coach again, Kingsbury said “at some point” he would.

“We’ll see how everything plays out, but I’m very happy here,” Kingsbury said. “This has been an awesome, awesome place and has really helped me kind of rekindle my love for the sport.”

There’s no telling if the Commanders would be here if not for the combined leadership by Quinn and play-calling by Kingsbury, a QB guru who has worked with Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray and then Caleb Williams at USC and helped Daniels become a favorite for AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.

“He has meant a lot, obviously, just for my development and my growth from the day I stepped foot here to this point now,” Daniels said last week. “He wants to go out there and dominate, put us in the best position and he wants to win.”

The Commanders have also been asked by the Jets for permission to talk to defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. as a candidate to be the full-time successor to fired coach Robert Saleh. Whitt said Wednesday his only focus was on the Lions because he did not want to cheat his players by letting any of his attention go to interviewing with New York.

Six-time All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner on Thursday praised Whitt’s ability to put he and his teammates in the right positions to make plays.

“He’s found a way to maximize everybody’s talent,” Wagner said. “He’s a great leader, and I think that’s what helped us kind of grow throughout the season.”

Whitt might be a long shot to get a role leading a team after just one season running a defense, and Kingsbury may very well choose another year with Daniels before considering a leap. Glenn also said he has a great job in Detroit, but the former defensive back has also gotten to think about what it would be like to be an NFL head coach sooner than later.

“If you like it, if it’s an opportunity I think that’s best for me and my family, then we’ll take a look at it,” Glenn said. “During the season, you really don’t even mess with it at all because you’re so locked into what you’re doing, and then once the interviews start, you start to come back to some of those things, some of those people that you talked to. You start to think about, ‘Is this a guy that I feel like I can win a Super Bowl with?’ And I always look at it that way.”

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AP Sports Writer Larry Lage in Allen Park, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press