Dan Quinn is worried about 1 thing after Commanders' latest loss

The Washington Commanders are back to work, looking to put lessons from their Week 2 loss to use and leave behind the mess as much as they can.

Ultimately, says head coach Dan Quinn, that is what will determine if the Commanders grow from the experience or are doomed to repeat it moving forward.

In his weekly Monday conference call with reporters, the Washington coach was rather blunt, saying his team “didn’t make the plays that we needed to” in the loss. But it went much further than that.

The 'Tell the Truth' Process

Quinn acknowledged that his team didn’t make enough plays early on, and even though they were able to stay in the fight, they came up short regardless. “For us that tell the truth process, you have to tell it, you have to receive it, you have to apply it. So, we spent probably as much time on that as we did on the injury side of things.”

That’s saying something, given that the team is dealing with two season-ending injuries to defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr. and running back Austin Ekeler, along with wounds that threaten the Week 3 statuses of cornerback Jonathan Jones, receiver Noah Brown, tight end Jonathan Bates, and quarterback Jayden Daniels.

Packers tight end Tucker Kraft (85) catches a pass against the Washington Commanders. | Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Exposed by the Tight Ends

One of the biggest areas the Commanders got exposed in was their coverage of tight ends. Given that their Week 3 opponent, the Las Vegas Raiders, has Brock Bowers coming to town with them, that’s a hole they need to get patched really quickly.

The Green Bay tight ends have wrecked the Commanders tonight.

They better get that fixed for next week.

Brock Bowers awaits.
— Scott Abraham (@Scott7news) September 12, 2025

With over 150 yards of receiving contributed by tight ends alone, Quinn identified an early 57-yard gain by Tucker Kraft as particularly rough, and attributed all of the struggles to “eye control in the run game” and players getting caught looking in the backfield on play-action passes.

“We'd better get that part really buttoned up heading into this week,” Quinn concluded.

A Lack of 'Complimentary Football'

It wasn’t just in those individual matchups, however, that Washington let itself down. After a 50-yard return set the Commanders up with great field position and still alive in the contest, the offense was unable to do anything with it, leading Quinn to frustratingly admit that "we had a chance at some points at the end of the half this week, we had a good return out to midfield to start the second half, missed on some points in that one.”

“That's a must for me, the complimentary football. We've got to make sure we get better at that,” he added.

Allowing explosive plays and not getting enough, nearly any, of their own. It sounds too simple, but Week 2 really boiled down to those two factors leading to the Commanders’ first loss of the season.

Within those simplistic generalizations, however, are layers. They belong to each unit, each player, and each coach. Identifying them is one thing, learning from them is another, and putting those lessons to good use, well, that’s yet another layer to deciding whether this team will get better, or if we’ll see a repeat performance in Week 3.

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