Commanders promote David Blough to offensive coordinator

Breaking down all aspects of Blough's promotion to offensive coordinator

The Washington Commanders made a very bold move on Friday night to promote assistant quarterbacks coach David Blough to offensive coordinator. The Commanders parted ways with Kliff Kingsbury earlier in the week and interviewed a number of candidates for the position. They talked to Cowboys tight ends coach Lunda Wells, Cardinals pass game coordinator/wide receiver coach Drew Terrell as well as internal candidates Brian Johnson, the Commanders pass game coordinator/assistant head coach and David Raih, the Commanders tight ends coach.

I’m sure Dan Quinn would have also reached out to his friend and former colleague Mike McDaniel, who was fired by the Dolphins this week and is expected to have a lot of interest both as an offensive coordinator and as a head coach. But with the Lions sniffing around Blough and trying to interview him for their vacant offensive coordinator role, the Commanders opted not to wait for McDaniel, who could well end up with a head coaching job anyway, and promoted Blough before he could leave.

It’s an extremely bold and also risky move. We’ve heard about how highly Blough is rated since he was brought in by Kingsbury to be the assistant quarterbacks coach in 2024, having spent the 2023 season on the Detroit Lions practice squad. He’s spent time playing quarterback for a number of good offensive minds. He played under Kingsbury in Arizona, Derrell Bevell, Anthony Lynn and Ben Johnson in Detroit, Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota and even Todd Monken back in his rookie year in Cleveland. That’s quite the array of offensive coordinators and systems to have imprinted on him.

But the jump from being an assistant quarterbacks coach behind Tavita Pritchard for two seasons to now being the offensive coordinator that is going to have to call plays is a big one. With Dan Quinn entering a crucial third year as head coach of the Commanders and coming off a terrible season, he’s betting a lot on Blough being successful, especially when there were a lot of other safer, more experienced options out there. To not wait to see if McDaniel would be available speaks to just how much confidence and belief Quinn has in Blough. He could well be the next Sean McVay, but it could just as easily go wrong and cost Quinn his job.

Dan Quinn has stressed how important continuity and succession plans are. One of the biggest takeaways from his time in Atlanta was failing to have a succession plan when Kyle Shanahan left for the 49ers job. He could have kept Matt LaFleur or Mike McDaniel then, but allowed Shanahan to take them all to San Francisco and had to hire a whole new offensive staff, which led to a huge drop off and ultimately Quinn getting fired. Quinn wanted to build in a succession plan when he took the Commanders job, which is why he hired Brian Johnson as pass game coordinator and assistant head coach. That again speaks to how highly they rate Blough, given he’s jumped over Johnson, the heir apparent to Kingsbury, for this job.

Blough’s connection to Jayden Daniels is clearly a key factor here. As assistant quarterbacks coach, he’s worked with Daniels every day and by now will have formed a strong relationship with the young quarterback. Being able to maintain the key parts of Kingsbury’s system and terminology while having a familiar voice in the meeting rooms is a big part of the appeal here. Quinn clearly didn’t want to have an entirely new staff and rip up everything from the past two years for the sake of Daniels development.

I do understand where he’s coming from, but I would say the quarterbacks picked either side of Daniels in 2024, Caleb Williams and Drake Maye, both just had complete staff overhauls with their respective teams and are both excelling now. So it can be done successfully and there is a risk that trusting Daniels’ development to a guy with such little experience could completely backfire.

So what exactly will Blough’s offense look like? This is the big unknown. As I mentioned before, Blough has worked under a wide variety of coaches in the NFL. I would imagine the ones with the biggest impact on him were probably Kliff Kingsbury and Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson was his offensive coordinator in his last season as a player, when he was on the practice squad with the Lions, while Kingsbury is the one that hired him to the Commanders coaching staff. So if we’re taking an educated guess here, Blough will be looking to implement things he’s learned from both coaches.

What will Blough retain from Kingsbury?

He’s obviously being promoted to help retain elements of Kingsbury’s system for Jayden Daniels. So what are those key elements of Kingsbury’s system that work so well for Daniels? Daniels has obviously done a terrific job learning the details of Kingsbury’s system and is very comfortable operating out of a no-huddle and in up-tempo situations. I suspect we’ll see them huddle more and slow the tempo down more under Blough, but he will at least maintain the ability to make use of those weapons when they want to continue attacking a specific matchup or need to use tempo to try and catch up in a game.

Another underrated aspect of Kingsbury’s offense was the freedom it gave the quarterbacks. There’s a lot of very rigid offensive systems in the NFL where the play-caller wants the quarterback to follow everything exactly as designed. Obviously you want to provide structure for a young quarterback, but Kingsbury did a nice job putting trust in his quarterbacks to attack matchups they like and make plays. One of the best examples of that came against the Bengals in 2024, on the play that announced Daniels to the NFL.

On third and seven with just over two minutes remaining in the game, the Commanders put the ball in the hands of their young franchise quarterback trusting him to go win them the game. They could easily have tried to run the ball, eat up some clock and kick a field goal, but they went aggressive to try and win the game instead. They were rewarded for that intent. The Bengals show a Cover-0 blitz, with every available defender rushing the quarterback. That means Daniels has almost no time to deliver a throw, but it also means Terry McLaurin is left one-on-one on the outside. McLaurin runs a double move, stuttering at the top of his route to fake a curl before taking off towards the back pylon in the end zone.

As Daniels drops back to pass, he spots the free rusher off the edge. He drifts back slightly to buy some time and spots the corner bite on the double move from McLaurin. Before McLaurin is even level with the corner, Daniels makes the throw. It’s great anticipation, but he also doesn’t have much choice. The defender is there to hit him a mere second later, so Daniels puts the ball up with a lot of trust in McLaurin to go make a play. And what a play he made. The throw from Daniels is on the money and McLaurin runs under the pass perfectly to secure the touchdown, getting his foot and knee down in bounds to complete the catch and win the game for the Commanders.

In a key spot like that, not every offensive coordinator would allow a rookie quarterback in his third game the opportunity to see a matchup like that and take a risky shot, especially on third down. But Daniels is a special talent and has proven he’s worthy of that trust, which hopefully Blough will maintain. It would be great if he did because Daniels is a smart quarterback that can make use of that trust. We’ve seen him use the no-huddle and tempo from Kingsbury to get the offense lined up and force the defense to show their hand, only for Daniels to then check into a better play at the line of scrimmage.

On this play against the Eagles from 2024, the Commanders faced a tough third and eight situation. They respond by going to an empty formation with just Daniels in the backfield. This is something Kingsbury liked to do a lot in order to spread out the defense and try to present a cleaner look for Daniels. With the Eagles fully expecting a pass in this situation, they play with two safeties back deep and both linebackers slightly deeper and wider than they would be on first or second down. This leaves them with six defenders in the box. Now this doesn’t matter against most teams, but most teams don’t have a quarterback like Jayden Daniels.

Daniels spots the defense in this look and walks up to the line of scrimmage to check the play. On the TV broadcast, you could hear him shout “Remington”. I couldn’t tell you why they use that word for this play other than the R means the direction is to the right. What Daniels checks the Commanders into is a trap run scheme with Daniels as the runner. Right tackle Andrew Wylie and right guard Sam Cosmi both sell a fake block on Eagles star defensive tackle Jalen Carter before peeling off and working up to the second level to their actual blocks. Left guard Nick Allegretti then pulls and traps Carter. This provides a nice lane right up the middle of the defense for Daniels to run the ball into. He follows that hole and picks up 13 yards and a first down. Not many teams can convert a run on third and long, even fewer can do it out of empty.

It’s not just in key situations either. Throughout his first two years in the NFL, Daniels has frequently shown he can be trusted to identify the defense pre-snap and check into a better play on a down to down basis, regardless of the situation.

Here we have a second and 11 play from the Commanders game against the Bears this season. The Commanders line up with three receivers to the right and a tight end close to the formation on the left side. The Bears are bringing a blitz, sending both linebackers on a cross dog stunt, but they’re trying to disguise it pre-snap. However, Jayden Daniels is known for his film study during the week and he clearly identified something from this look that tipped him off. So prior to the snap, Daniels makes a signal to his three receivers, changing the play to get them into a better look.

Daniels knows with the blitz coming, it’s likely to be man coverage on the outside, so he has all three receivers run quick in-breaking routes, but at different depths and timing. The inside receiver runs a shallow cross, the outside receiver runs a delayed under while Deebo Samuel in the slot runs more of a slant route. With the blitz coming, the shallow cross clears out any inside coverage defender, which opens a nice lane for Samuel to break into on his route. Daniels quickly sets up and throws to Samuel, who catches the pass and nearly breaks the tackle. Unfortunately he can’t quite break the tackle, but still picks up nine yards to set up a very manageable third and two.

So I anticipate there will be plenty of change, which I’ll get to shortly, I hope that Blough will retain that trust and willingness to give Daniels freedom at the line of scrimmage to attack a matchup he likes and check into different plays if he sees fit. That to me is one of the more underrated parts of Kingsbury’s system and one that Daniels clearly excels at, so hopefully Blough will maintain that going forward.

The other benefit of maintaining Blough is he will already be familiar with the plays that Daniels likes and doesn’t like, so he won’t be starting from scratch when putting together his offensive system. Any new coordinator coming in would have had to have spent significant time to work with Daniels and figure out which concepts he likes most, which he doesn’t like and adapt his playbook to that. But Blough will already know, for example, that Daniels loves a slot fade concept.

This is just one example of Daniels executing his favorite slot fade concept from the 2024 season. Terry McLaurin aligns in the slot and runs a slot fade, or spray fade, where he works vertically, but can widen his route and fade it towards the sideline. He can do this because the outside receiver works underneath, occupying the outside cornerback and leaving McLaurin all that space to work with outside.

Daniels was a master of this concept in college and picked up a ton of yards on it, and it’s easy to see why here. McLaurin runs his fade towards the sideline and Daniels, despite being pressured by a free linebacker up the middle, delivered a beautiful throw. He throws the ball with plenty of loft, allowing it to drop down perfectly into the arms of McLaurin, who makes a similarly impressive catch on the sideline while managing to get both feet down in bounds.

What could Blough bring in from other systems?

If the Commanders wanted to just maintain Kingsbury’s system, they wouldn’t have agreed to part ways with him. So expect some significant changes too. It’s impossible to say for sure what exactly those changes might be because Blough is an unknown commodity at this point, having only coached for two years as an assistant quarterbacks coach. However, there are some educated guesses we can make here. We’ve heard multiple reports that Dan Quinn moved on from Kingsbury over philosophical differences in offensive approach. Quinn talks all the time about wanting to run the ball and marry the run and pass via play-action.

We assumed that meant Quinn would likely target a Shanahan-tree coach due to the Shanahan system having long been one of the best at establishing the run and setting up play-action off of it. But one of the best coaches in the league for the last few years at doing that style has been Ben Johnson. Blough played under Johnson for multiple years with the Lions. Blough first signed for Detroit in 2019, when Johnson was hired as an offensive quality control coach. Johnson was soon promoted to tight ends coach in 2020 and eventually became the pass game coordinator in 2021 after Anthony Lynn, currently on the Commanders staff, was stripped of play-calling duties following an 0–8 start.

Blough then left Detroit for a year to play under Kevin O’Connell with the Vikings in 2022, but he returned to the Lions practice squad in 2023, by which point Ben Johnson was firmly established as the offensive coordinator. That 2023 season was Blough’s last as a player, and I think it’s fair to assume he likely spent a lot of time with coaches like Johnson as his thought process transitioned from being a player into life after being a player. After that season on the practice squad, Kingsbury had no hesitation in hiring him to the Commanders staff in 2024.

So, with Dan Quinn’s desire to run the ball and set up play-action, and Blough’s time spent under Ben Johnson who is one of the best in the NFL at doing exactly that, it’s fair to assume the Commanders are hoping Blough will be able to implement some of what Johnson did with the Lions when Blough was there with him. So what are the key aspects that the Commanders will be hoping Blough learned from Johnson that he can implement in Washington? There’s quite a few.

The first is a diverse run scheme. Johnson’s success with the Lions and now as head coach of the Bears comes from a foundation of a run game that can cause issues schematically for any front in football.

This clips shows a variety of different run schemes used by Ben Johnson’s Lions in 2023, when Blough was on the team. A lot of these schemes will look familiar because the Commanders have used plenty of them these past two years as well. The first play of the clip is a basic counter scheme, with the left guard pulling to the right side of the line to kick out the edge defender and the tight end following him to wrap around for the first linebacker. The second play is the natural complement to counter: power. Power is the same idea, but the roles of the two pullers are swapped. On power, the tight end, or in this case the fullback, kicks out the edge defender while the guard pulls and wraps around for the linebacker instead.

Then we have a trap scheme. On trap, both the left tackle and left guard fake blocking the defensive tackle lined up between them. On a normal counter or power scheme, they would double team that defensive tackle, but here they both take a step towards him as a fake before suddenly both working up to the second level. That leaves the defender unblocked, only for the right guard to pull and surprise him with a trap block. The fourth play of the clip shows a variation of trap, often known as tackle long trap. This time it’s the edge defender left unblocked and it’s the right tackle that pulls instead of the guard, but he gets across and surprises him with a kick out block in the same fashion as we saw before.

Finally, the clip ends on a wide zone run scheme. While Johnson had a preference for gap scheme runs, he definitely incorporated plenty of zone runs too. Here he uses a wide zone run to the left with a fullback inserting into the scheme to force the defense to overcommit to the left side of the line. That creates an overflow to that side, opening up a huge cutback lane for running back Jahmyr Gibbs, who takes that lane and shows off his explosiveness as he turns it into a 31-yard touchdown run.

So that’s a lot of different run schemes and it only scratches the surface of what Johnson did with the Lions and what he’s still doing with the Bears now. The Commanders have most of these schemes installed already and have used them at various points throughout Kingsbury’s time in charge of the offense. But what makes Johnson so special is his ability to layer those schemes and set up plays later in the game. Let’s take that Gibbs touchdown from the final play of that last clip as an example. That play is great in isolation, but it happened as the result of a set up by Johnson earlier in the game.

The first play in this clip isn’t the Gibbs TD we just saw, but a run that set it up. We see the Lions work out of 21 personnel, with two backs and one tight end. The tight end aligns to the right of the formation while the fullback lines up to the weak side on the left. Just before the snap, quarterback Jared Goff motions the fullback across the formation from weak to strong, which changes things for the defense.

That fullback is going to insert into the blocking scheme, creating an extra gap to whichever side of the line he blocks on. By shifting just before the snap from the weak side to the strong side, the defense suddenly has to adjust their run fits to ensure they can cover an extra gap on the strong side of the run. The Buccaneers do adjust to that fullback motion, with both linebackers immediately flowing to the strong side of the line to try and fill that extra gap being created.

They do their best to get there, but the Lions offensive line generates good push up front and the running back picks up a nice gain. It’s a nice run on its own, but it most importantly taught Johnson something. He saw how the Bucs linebackers flowed to the play side of the run with the fullback on the strong side, creating the chance to hit a cutback lane, so Johnson made a note to come back to that look.

The second play of the clip shows when Johnson did come back to that look. The Lions flip the formation, but have the fullback start aligned to the strong side. You can see immediately how the Bucs respond, with all three second level defenders all lined up over that strong side of the offensive line. By the time the running back gets the ball, you can see how the Bucs are all flowing hard to the front side of the play, which leaves a huge opportunity for the cutback. Right tackle Penei Sewell does a great job reaching across the face of his defender and sealing him off on the back side of the run, which gives Gibbs an opportunity to cut his run back.

Gibbs takes that opportunity to cut back and suddenly the entire defensive front of the Buccaneers is taken completely out of the play. Once Gibbs makes his cut, he’s left one-on-one against safety Antoine Winfield Jr. Winfield is one of the better young safeties in the league, but Gibbs is just too explosive. He bursts past Winfield and goes all the way to the end zone for a 31-yard touchdown.

It’s great detail and smart play calling to set things up and remember to come back to it later in the game to exploit it. But what makes Johnson so great is that he doesn’t just work within a single game. He knows opposing defenses study multiple games of film to try and pick up on tendencies. So he sets up stuff in one game to exploit in the next.

The first play of this clip is the tackle long trap scheme we saw in the package of run plays from earlier. The left tackle and left guard combine to double team the defensive tackle, leaving the edge defender unblocked. Typically the guard would be the one that pulls and kicks out the edge defender, but the Lions break a tendency by having the right tackle pull instead. This means the block takes a little while longer to develop, which lures the defensive end into a false sense of security that he’s not getting blocked before suddenly the tackle emerges to kick him out and create a lane for the running back to work in.

It’s a good scheme, but the important thing to remember is that play occurred in the wildcard round of the playoffs against the Rams. The Lions went on to win that game, so a week later they faced the Buccaneers. On the second play of the clip, we see Johnson show the Bucs the same look, but with a new twist. The right tackle is the one to pull again and work toward the defensive end. The end reads the run and initially crashes hard down the line, expecting a kick-out block from the tackle. But the Lions throw in a twist. The right tackle bluffs the block and instead loops around him to the edge. The defender is left stranded inside as the running back cuts back behind him and follows the tackle to the edge.

These are the levels of detail and layering that make an offense exceptional. But it’s not just in the run game either. Johnson used that run game and layered on top of it to build into the play-action game, where the Lions were perhaps at their most explosive. He had an extensive bootleg package, something that Jayden Daniels can excel at, but of course they were always set up well too.

This clip shows two plays, one setting up the other. The first is a wide zone run scheme from 12 personnel. The Lions line up both tight ends to the left of the formation and run a wide zone to the right. The Lions get some good blocks and the back finds a cut back lane to get up to the secondary on a 10-yard gain. But that was just the set up. Later in the game, the Lions came back to the exact same look but flipped, with both tight ends aligned to the same side, but this time to the right side.

The Lions fake the wide zone away from the tight ends, as they had run before, before Goff rolls out to his right on a play-action bootleg. You can see the impact this has on the defense, with all the linebackers biting up hard on the run, having already seen the same run look before. This creates open space behind them to attack. Goff could have worked back over the middle to attack that space, but finds a wide open receiver out in the flat as his primary option on this bootleg play.

So that was how Johnson sets up the chance to get into the bootlegs, but once he’s set them up, Johnson has a wide variety of things he can get to from those bootleg plays.

Here we see a nice package of bootleg plays from Johnson. The first play of the clip is a fairly standard bootleg play with the tight end sifting across the formation into the flat as the primary option for a nice easy completion and a solid gain. Having already shown that look, the Lions came back to another bootleg look later in the game. On third and one, they fake the bootleg we just saw with the tight end motioning across the formation and sifting out to the flat. The Bucs all flow out to the tight end in the flat, assuming the ball is going that way. That enables the other tight end, who initially faked a block inside, to leak out on the back side of the play. Goff works back across the field and finds him wide open for a first down and a huge run after the catch.

The final play of the clip is another little twist Johnson added. This one is a bootleg screen, where they fake the hand off on a zone run to the right and Goff begins to bootleg out of it. Receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown motions across the formation initially on a jet sweep fake, but after the fake he spots up in the flat as part of a screen pass. The right side of the offensive line all fake blocks inside before then peeling off and climbing out in front of St. Brown, setting up a nice screen pass that picks up 15 yards.

The extent of runs working into play-action in Johnson’s offense is almost limitless. Every single run has multiple variations of that run, but also multiple options off of play-action to go with it. That’s why Johnson was the top head coaching candidate for multiple years before eventually getting the Bears job. It won’t be easy for Blough to replicate that level of detail, especially early on. There aren’t many, if any, as good as Ben Johnson in the NFL right now and it takes all play-callers time to get up to speed with calling plays and sequencing them correctly. What makes the likes of Johnson elite is how they’re able to set things up and layer concepts, which could take time for Blough to learn on the job.

But that’s what Dan Quinn is looking for from his offense and is hoping Blough will be able to replicate in Washington. It’s a huge leap of faith to put in a completely unknown play-caller who’s going into his third year as a coach, but clearly Blough’s been extremely impressive in that building for two years and has given Quinn confidence he can make the step up.

What does this mean for Jayden Daniels?

Blough’s relationship with Daniels is obviously a huge part of this move. I’m not sure Quinn would have hired Blough from another organisation to this role with such little experience if he didn’t already have an established relationship with the quarterback. That relationship means Blough will be able to retain much of what Daniels likes about Kingsbury’s offense while trying to blend that with the things he’s learned from the likes of Ben Johnson elsewhere. It’ll be interesting to see if Daniels ends up going under center a lot more often next season. Johnson’s offense puts the quarterback under center a lot, but Blough knows Daniels has been working primarily out of the shotgun for the vast majority of his college and professional career.

The pistol could be a compromise, but I suspect Quinn would prefer Daniels to get under center more and help those run plays set up play-action more. It’s no secret the best play-action attacks work from under center, as the run fakes take longer and thus get the linebackers to bite up for longer, creating space behind them for receivers to attack. But Daniels will also have to get more comfortable not only working under center, but dropping back and turning his back to the defense on those play-action fakes. Some quarterbacks don’t like turning their back to the defense because they lose track of players and have to quickly locate them again after the fake, which isn’t easy. That could take some adjustment time, but I have no doubts Daniels will get use to that over time if required.

The next question will be how often Daniels is asked to huddle. Kingsbury hardly ever used a huddle and Daniels excelled at getting everyone lined up without a huddle, where he could use tempo to get set quickly and snap before the defense is ready, or slow things down and get a nice long look at the defense to adjust the play at the line of scrimmage before snapping the ball. Blough will certainly look to keep that as part of his offense, but the question will be how much. I suspect Daniels will be asked to get in the huddle far more often and call long, wordy plays rather than just make hand signals at the line of scrimmage.

The hope for the Commanders is that by marrying Kingsbury’s scheme and aspect of a scheme like Ben Johnson’s via Blough, they will be able to put together a stronger and more consistent run game and play-action game that should take a significant amount of pressure off of Jayden Daniels. While Kingsbury put a ton of trust and confidence in Daniels, there were definitely times in the last two seasons where it felt like Daniels was having to go into super hero mode and do everything himself too often. Those situations are when Daniels can expose himself to injuries by scrambling around more often.

Another aspect that will be interesting to see is if this leads to Daniels attacking the middle of the field more. In college, one of the big talking points regarding Daniels is that he tended to attack outside the numbers rather than over the middle of the field. At LSU, he had star receivers like Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr., who consistently won matchups outside, which is why Daniels favored that type of throw. In the NFL, he’s made some of his best throws attacking over the middle, especially to the likes of Zach Ertz, but he’s also been a bit inconsistent over the middle. He’s missed a few throws high and behind targets when throwing over the middle, which can be quite dangerous. I have no doubt Daniels can improve in this area, it’s just not something he’s been asked to do a lot of.

Many of the offenses Blough played in preferred to attack over the middle of the field. Ben Johnson, Kevin O’Connell and even Kingsbury in Arizona looked to attack the middle of the field consistently. As I mentioned, Kingsbury did some of this with Daniels in Washington, but often leaned into attacking more outside the numbers, where Daniels was at his best in college. Blough’s familiarity with Daniels and his preferences could lead to him staying outside the numbers more often, but Blough will also know just how impactful attacking the middle of the field can be from the various offenses he’s played in, so that will be another unknown factor to keep an eye on going forward.

Does this change the offseason plan?

Blough is the first domino to fall here. I fully expect there to be more changes to the coaching staff. I can’t imagine Brian Johnson, for example, is pleased about being passed over for the job by the inexperienced assistant quarterbacks coach. He may look to leave and pursue other opportunities now. Offensive line coach Bobby Johnson has already left and needs replacing. Tight ends coach David Raih might stay now that Blough is staying, but he could also look to follow Kingsbury wherever he lands.

I suspect Quinn will want to surround Blough with as much experience as possible on the coaching staff. Anthony Lynn becomes an even more essential member of the staff now. Blough did play under Lynn in Detroit and the pair have obviously worked together on this staff for two years now. Lynn is exactly the type of experienced coach, with play-calling and even head coach experience, that I would imagine Quinn wants to have supporting Blough.

Someone like Darrell Bevell would also make a lot of sense to join the staff. Blough played under Bevell in Detroit and Bevell is now likely to be available after the Dolphins fired head coach Mike McDaniel, who Bevell had been working for. Bevell also was the offensive coordinator in Seattle when Dan Quinn was the defensive coordinator there, so there’s plenty of familiarity there. Sean Ryan was a quarterbacks coach for Blough with the Lions and like Bevell, is likely to be available after the Dolphins fired McDaniel.

I’m sure they would love to try and poach the likes of Mark Brunnell, the Lions quarterbacks coach, or Hank Fraley, the Lions offensive line coach to fill out Blough’s staff, but I’d be surprised if the Lions willingly let them go. Similarly, a candidate Quinn interviewed for the offensive coordinator role, Lunda Wells, would be another I expect Quinn would love to have on staff. Wells has been on various different staffs, working with offensive lines and tight ends. He’s known for his help with putting together game plans and Quinn rates him highly from their time together in Dallas. But without a promotion available, I’m not sure they’d be able to get him away from Dallas now.

Outside of staff changes, I wonder if Adam Peters is willing to be more aggressive with his approach to the offense during free agency and the draft. Going into this offseason, I thought Quinn would likely hire a Shanahan-tree coach, like McDaniel, and trust that the core of the offense suited that system extremely well. A few lowkey additions would have sufficed for a coordinator like McDaniel to hit the ground running, allowing Peters to allocate most of his resources to rebuilding what has been a terrible defense for the past two seasons.

But with a young coordinator that has never called plays before, I wonder if Peters now will alter that plan. He might look to be a bit more aggressive in adding some more weapons to help give Blough as many options as possible to work with. That could be signing a big name tight end in free agency, going after one of the top running backs in free agency or even spending the seventh overall pick on a top wide receiver prospect. I still think the focus will be more on the defense, but perhaps not quite as heavily as I was anticipating.

Whatever happens, it will be extremely interesting to see how it all plays out. I’m surprised Dan Quinn was willing to make this bold move entering a critical third year for him, but I think that speaks to just how highly they rate Blough in the building. It’s impossible for us on the outside to know how he will do, they won’t know for certain how he’ll do inside the building either. But Quinn must have a lot of confidence in Blough to potentially risk his likely final chance as a head coach on Blough’s ability to put together a strong offense that develops and makes use of Jayden Daniels incredible talent.