The historical success of Washington head coaches
July 8, 2024
by Steve Thomas
We’re in the slowest part of the NFL’s annual calendar right now, so there isn’t much Redskins Washington Football Team Commanders Washington football news to stress over. As a result, this week, I thought I’d dive into some historical team data. What seems to be one of the most relevant facts about the 2024 team is that Dan Quinn is heading into his first season as the team’s head coach. Quinn’s ultimate success remains to be determined, but today, I thought I’d look at the success and failures of the Washington’s former head coaches, in particular their first seasons in Washington.
Before you start writing ugly comments in the comment section, I don’t necessarily think we can read too much, if anything, into this as some sort of barometer of Quinn’s potential success. He’s in a totally different situation, with different ownership, players, and assistant coaches that, for the most part, are no longer a part of the team. This is merely a fun little exercise to hopefully provide some interesting entertainment and nostalgia during a very dead week, one in which I don’t have time to do another film study. That having been said, let’s dive into a little bit of team history.
Washington’s head coaches, and their respective records and winning percentages, since 1971 are the following:
George Allen: 1971 – 1977 (67 – 30 – 1; .691)
Jack Pardee: 1978 – 1980 (24 – 24 – 0; .500)
Joe Gibbs: 1981 – 1992 (124 – 60; .674)
Richie Pettibon: 1993 (4 – 12; .250)
Norv Turner: 1994 – 2000 (49 – 59 – 1; .454)
Terry Robiskie: 2000 (1 – 2; .333)
Marty Schottenheimer: 2001 (8 – 8; .500)
Steve Spurrier: 2002 – 2003 (12 – 20; .375)
Joe Gibbs: 2004 – 2007 (30 – 34; .469)
Jim Zorn: 2008 – 2009 (12 – 20; .375)
Mike Shanahan: 2010 – 2013 (24 – 40; .375)
Jay Gruden: 2014 – 2019 (35 – 49 – 1; .418)
Bill Callahan: 2019 (3 – 8; .273)
Ron Rivera: 2020 – 2023 (26 – 40 – 1; .396)
The most obvious fact that jumps off the page here is that no head coach has left Washington with a winning record since Joe Gibbs’ departure after the 1992 season, including Gibbs himself in his second stint with the team. Another point to note is that George Allen actually had a better winning percentage than Gibbs during his first stint, minus, of course, Gibbs’ three Super Bowl trophies. None of the rest of these coaches had sustained overall success that resulted in a winning record. Other than Allen from 1971 to 1977 and Joe Gibbs’ first tenure, three other Washington coaches earned a ten win season: Jack Pardee in 1979, Norv Turner in 1999, Mike Shanahan in 2012, and Gibbs during his second tenure in 2005. None of that should be news.
Considering that Dan Quinn is about to start his first season as head coach in Washington, what’s more interesting to me is how these former coaches did in their first season at the helm. Removing the four coaches who only had the job for a year or less, here’s the list:
George Allen: 1971, 9 – 4 – 1
Jack Pardee: 1978, 8 – 8
Joe Gibbs: 1981, 8 – 8
Norv Turner: 1994, 3 – 13
Steve Spurrier: 2002, 7 – 9
Joe Gibbs: 2004, 6 – 10
Jim Zorn: 2008, 8 – 8
Mike Shanahan: 2010, 6 – 10
Jay Gruden: 2014, 4 – 12
Ron Rivera: 2020, 7 – 9
As you can see, considering that Allen’s 1971 debut is the only winning season on the list, this is a pretty low bar for Quinn to exceed.
In terms of playoff appearances, clearly, Joe Gibbs’s first tenure and George Allen, were the most successful periods of team history, with Gibbs’ team appearing in four Super Bowls, winning three, and Allen’s team appearing in the 1973 Super Bowl. Gibbs’ first tenure, in particular, is one of the most successful runs in NFL history. Washington’s playoff appearances under the other coaches were in 1999 under Norv Turner, which resulted in a loss in the divisional round thanks to a botched field goal attempt with 1:17 left in the game, 2005 during Gibbs’ second stint, which resulted in another divisional round loss, and Wild Card round losses in 2012, 2015, and 2020, under Shanahan, Gruden, and Rivera, respectively.
Here’s a list of quarterbacks at the start of each of the debut seasons for these coaches:
Allen, 1971: Billy Kilmer
Pardee, 1987: Joe Theismann
Gibbs, 1981: Joe Theismann
Turner, 1994: Heath Shuler
Spurrier, 2002: Shane Matthews
Gibbs, 2004: Patrick Ramsey
Zorn, 2008: Jason Campbell
Shanahan, 2010: Donovan McNabb
Gruden, 2014: Robert Griffin III
Rivera, 2020: Dwayne Haskins
In looking at this list, since 1971, only coach was able to acquire a new, young, highly-regarded quarterback that he wanted at the beginning of his coaching tenure in the same fashion as Quinn and Jayden Daniels this year was Norv Turner in 1994, with Heath Shuler. That’s it, over the last 53 seasons. Washington traded for Kilmer in 1971, but by that time, Kilmer was a 10 year NFL veteran. Joe Gibbs inherited Joe Theismann, who came to Washington in 1974 via a trade of his rights after Theismann spurned the Miami Dolphins in 1971 in favor of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. Campbell was drafted by Joe Gibbs in 2005, McNabb was acquired from the Eagles via trade, and Jay Gruden inherited Robert Griffin. Haskins was drafted in 2019 in the final year of Jay Gruden’s tenure.
As you can see, the pairing of Quinn and Daniels is almost unique in the team’s modern history, particularly considering that the Heath Shuler experiment in 1994 was a bust from nearly the first moment. This would suggest that Washington has an opportunity to do something nearly unprecedented in modern team history; i.e., build a complete team for the first time in decades. Somehow, for a variety of reasons, none of Washington’s coaches, with the exception of Turner / Shuler, were able to simultaneously start a new era of Washington football. Ironically, in that case, the new era was a failure from day one.
As I said at the beginning of this exercise, prior history doesn’t mean much when it comes to football teams over decades, since everyone from the owner, the front office, coaches, and players have changed several times. The failures of the past head coaches cannot be imparted onto Dan Quinn, and I don’t mean to imply that here. What you can see, though, is that the collective failures of every head coach not named Joe Gibbs or George Allen is pretty stunning and is indicative of the serious, organization ineptitude brought on by former owner Daniel Snyder. The fact that the winning percentages of every other coach range from just .333 to .500 is no accident.
In my view, the current organizational structure of the 2024 Washington team bodes well for the future. It’s going to be exciting to see how it goes in the 2024 season.