During Saturday’s rookie minicamp, Commanders coach Dan Quinn wore an unlicensed T-shirt with a portion of the team’s abandoned logo. It became a thing, both as to questions of whether the team will or should bring back its old logo and name — and as to the sale of bootleg merchandise that the team will have to combat.
On Sunday, the team had no comment. On Tuesday, Quinn addressed the now-infamous T-shirt in remarks to reporters.
“I think one of the parts of me taking this job, I was excited to bridge the past and the present,” Quinn said, via Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post. “What a cool privilege that is to do. I also recognize there’s a lot of layers to that. So it was a great lesson for me. What I really hate is that any attention that would’ve been taken away from these rookies and this awesome crew. Nobody wants to do that.”
The simple reality is that Quinn: (1) reasonably believed it would be OK with management to wear the T-shirt; (2) deliberately defied their perceived wishes; or (3) failed to read the room properly. Each option is a problem. Our guess, based on things we’ve heard about the organizational reaction, is that it’s No. 3.
Coaches need to have good judgment, in many ways. If not in every way. It appears Quinn exercised poor judgment in this case. While he might have learned an important lesson along the way, the bigger question is whether that same flawed thinking will manifest itself in other ways moving forward.
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