The Washington Commanders’ “recalibration” training camp is scheduled to begin with the full roster Tuesday (rookies reported last week). I call it the “recalibration” camp because those were new head coach Dan Quinn’s comments back in February when asked if he thought he faced a rebuild of this football team.
“Your words. Not mine,” he told reporters. “All right. So, I’m really honestly glad that you brought it up and I know it’s a big topic and I would say this is a recalibrate, you know, finding our north again, and that starts with our identity of our club. So no, you will not hear me say the word rebuild at all … I honestly do not see that word as part of my thinking at all.
His words. Not mine.
Nearly half of the players who finished last year’s 4-13 Ron Rivera “send me my Super Bowl ring” season are gone. Training camp will be filled with many new faces. According to vocabulary.com, to recalibrate is to adjust the settings on a device that precisely measures, senses, or moves. Wiping out half the football team isn’t an adjustment. It’s a teardown.
Why would Quinn deny the existence of the word? He didn’t wreck the place. He’s taking over a rehab project. Everybody knows that.
This seems to be a management disease, even when new management had nothing to do with trashing the place. New Wizards bosses Michael Winger and Will Dawkins refused to acknowledge they inherited a rebuild when they took over the condemned property that was the basketball team last year, preferring to use words like reshuffle or reshape.
I know their boss, Transparent Ted Leonsis, would rather have dinner with Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas than use the word rebuild. Maybe it’s a business issue — fear of having to sell tickets and sponsorships based on the beginning of a rebuild.
Typically, no one pays to watch someone put up new drywall, except on HGTV. Perhaps you can sell a rebuild near its end, where the Washington Nationals are.
Then again, I think Washington football fans have been starving for a teardown and new faces — especially on the sideline with a new coaching staff led by Quinn, along with offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt.
Then there’s the changes in the front office. New general manager Adam Peters has cleaned house since he arrived in January — except for the two Martys, Mayhew and Hurney. They remain from Rivera’s clown show. I figure they must have too many bowling shirts in the building with the name “Marty” embroidered on them to get rid of them.
But when fans show up for the five sessions of training camp open to the public (the Baltimore Ravens have 20 open training camp sessions; you would think if Commanders new owner Josh Harris was trying to reconnect from the Dan Snyder-damaged fan base, they would have more than five open sessions), they’ll be excited to see the new faces on the field — among them linebacker Bobby Wagner, running back Austin Ekeler, tight end Zack Ertz and Peters’ first draft class, led by the foundation of the rebuild, quarterback Jayden Daniels.
There will be a lot of interest in the construction of the offensive line and if third-round draft pick Brandon Coleman from TCU can win the job at left tackle; if receiver Jahan Dotson can recover from his disappointing sophomore season; if the new coaches can figure out a way to get something out of last year’s first-round bust, cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, and many other position battles.
“That’s what our whole program is based on, the competition,” Quinn said in June.
What about quarterback? Will Daniels, the team’s top draft choice and last season’s Heisman Trophy winner at LSU, have real competition from free agent quarterback Marcus Mariota? After all, Daniels got most of the reps during minicamp in June.
When Quinn was asked if that meant Daniels is the likely starter, he answered, “Well, in true competition, that’s why we set it up as we did to have Marcus have some and Jayden to have some. So, no great declarations other than like being true to who we are as competitors, there’s no doubt that Jayden’s making unbelievable progress here and we’ll have a really fun camp, but he’s earned that opportunity to go compete. We wouldn’t have given him those spaces and those times and those reps if he hadn’t. But it was really clear that he’s put in the work and he was ready to do that. So, it was by intention for sure that he was able to do that.”
That’s an answer right out of the Rivera press conference manual — nonsense.
It’s nonsense to believe anything other than Daniels being the Commanders starting quarterback when they open the season in Tampa Bay on Sept. 8. If not, then the recalibration may have become a recollapse.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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