LANDOVER, Md. -- Dan Quinn ripped off his headset, slammed it to the ground and screamed an expletive after the clock hit zero. Following an angry sigh, he untangled himself from the headset cords, walked a few steps onto the field and stood there, his hands on his hips as the moment set in.
Players and coaches crowded the field for postgame handshakes and solemn walks back toward the stadium tunnel. But not Quinn. As the world moved around him, he stood still, looking at no one, talking to no one.
"I'm gutted for our team," he said afterward. "And that's the hardest part."
In a critical meeting with the New York Giants on Sunday, the Commanders squandered a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter, then frittered away one final chance to secure a needed victory with a baffling decision at the end of overtime that left them with a 27-27 tie.
"I'm in total disbelief my Commanders had such poor clock management in today's overtime game against the Giants," NBA legend and Commanders limited partner Magic Johnson wrote on X after the game. "All we had to do was kick the field goal and we would have won the game!"
Washington allowed two touchdowns in the fourth quarter that sent the game into overtime. Both teams failed to score on their first possession of the extra period, turning the remainder of overtime into a shootout. First team to score wins.
The Commanders seemed poised to be that team after they recovered a Giants fumble with just less than two minutes left. They quickly ate up yards -- a 16-yard catch by Terry McLaurin, a 6-yard catch by Antonio Williams, a 16-yard scramble by quarterback Jayden Daniels, a 13-yard catch by Treylon Burks -- to get into field goal range. Running back Rachaad White collected two more yards on a run to give the Commanders a second-and-8 from New York's 24-yard line with about 50 seconds left. Both teams were out of timeouts.
The Commanders let the clock tick away as they huddled and slowly got set at the line of scrimmage, presumably to spike the ball or throw it out of bounds to stop the clock and let kicker Drew Stevens attempt a game-winner.
Nope.
Daniels fielded the snap with 12 seconds left, danced around the line looking for room to run, then fell to the ground at the eight-second mark.
Seven … Daniels remained seated on the ground as the clock kept ticking.
Six … He was still down.
Five … White tried to help Daniels up.
Four … Tight end John Bates yelled and waved furiously a few feet away to tell his teammates to hurry back to the line of scrimmage.
Three … "They don't have a timeout! What are they doing?!" Fox play-by-play announcer Chris Myers screamed on the broadcast.
Two … Daniels finally stood to his feet.
One … "Oh my goodness," Fox analyst Jonathan Vilma chimed in.
Zero.
Giants players celebrated, knowing they had been spared a defeat. The Commanders, meanwhile, looked around in disbelief before trudging off the field. The tie felt like a loss to them.
"I'm just shocked, honestly," Giants linebacker Abdul Carter said as he recounted the final seconds. "… I'm like, 'All right, they gonna get a snap.' Then I seen they were still laying on the ground. I was like, 'Oh, game over.'"
The Commanders were shocked, too. A win would have completed an ideal week after an injury-filled month. The Dallas Cowboys fell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday night, and moments before Washington took the field, the Philadelphia Eagles fell to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
The NFC East was cast wide open, and a Washington victory Sunday would have put the Commanders squarely in the mix. Instead, they now sit 1-3-1, still at the bottom of the division and two games behind the 3-1-1 Giants.
"We just have to be better," Daniels said afterward. "We have to be better. Situational football. Starts with me. Everybody will say the same thing, but we have to be better at situational football."
Washington's locker room after the game was silent as players and coaches tried to wrap their minds around the outcome.
Multiple players said the team as a whole simply has to be better, acknowledging the mistake in the moment and the other chances Washington had earlier in the game to put it away.
"It just can't happen," McLaurin said. "That's really unacceptable as an offense."
Many also said, matter-of-factly and without offering specifics, that they were just running the play that was called.
"We get the personnel from our coach, we're going 13 personnel (one running back and three tight ends), I run on the field, I get the play call and execute the play," said tight end Ben Sinnott, who later offered a "no comment" when asked if he was aware the team didn't have any timeouts left.
Added left tackle Brandon Coleman: "They call what they call. We got to execute it. And we all got to be on the same page. That's what it was."
Center Lucas Patrick had few words regarding the final play.
"I don't know," he said tersely. "Ask DQ."
The lack of urgency by Commanders players to get back to the line after Daniels went to the ground on the final play raised questions as to whether they were all aware they had already used their two allotted timeouts in overtime.
Left guard Chris Paul, however, said it was made clear in the huddle that the team knew the circumstances.
"I don't think 5 didn't know," White said of Daniels. "I think he was trying to get up. … He tried to put it on himself, for sure, and I respect that."
White added: "The play was the play. Like, real s--. The play was the play. Coach called it. I don't knock it. I don't know. But it sucks, obviously. … A tie to me, it ain't a win."
Quinn blamed himself for trying to gain extra yardage, and said, "The sequencing of that does not fall on (Daniels). It's an outside throw or a clock. And that has to come from me. I don't even have to put him into that spot. … We don't need to gain more yards, so that's on me. … We were just trying to gain more and we don't need to."
Quinn, like many of his players, also cited the team's missed chances earlier in the game. Like the multiple penalties in the red zone in the first quarter, and the defense's inability to keep the Giants from scoring twice late in the fourth quarter to tie the game.
But the final call on the final call, he said, was "ultimately mine."
-- David Aldridge and Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
