Josh Harris is earning his wings as an NFL owner. This likely isn’t what he had in mind.
The Washington Commanders’ first search for a new coach under Harris ended up producing not one, but two airplane-related incidents. Neither was particularly flattering.
Dan Quinn was introduced Monday as Washington’s newest coach. Quinn is a fine hire, a good man and deserves to be judged by his credentials and results, not the process that led to his hiring.
“There is nothing I enjoy more than doing hard [stuff] with good people,” he said in one of his most memorable lines of the introduction.
Sometimes, this team has a way of making the stuff harder than it needs to be.
Instead of the national media talking about Quinn, most of Monday was spent slinging mud toward Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, the presumed favorite for the job who bailed on his interview after Harris and company had left Washington in their private jet.
ESPN insider Adam Schefter relayed Monday that one of the members of the traveling party saw the news on social media midflight.
“There were media reports,” Schefter said on Pat McAfee’s show. “One person on the plane turns around and said, ‘Is this true? He’s not interviewing with us anymore?’”
Schefter turned red-hot as he discussed what he considered the inappropriate timing of the move by Johnson. He was further set off by a Saturday report from ESPN’s Jenna Laine.
“Was told that Ben Johnson was ‘turned off’ by Commanders ownership, that they’re ‘basketball guys’ and felt they were a little too confident in their football opinions,” Laine wrote.
For an ownership group that has prided itself on being the opposite of Dan Snyder so far, the back-and-forth feels a little too Snyder-esque for comfort.
It’s clear Johnson’s withdrawal rankled the team and disrupted the search. The team maintains that it was committed to seeing the process through to the finish, which may have cost them an opportunity to land Raheem Morris or Mike Macdonald.
“Obviously the NFL has its own unique approach, its own unique rules,” Harris said. “It’s a very thorough process. Certainly, there are times where you’re allowed to talk to people, not allowed to talk to people. So what that does is it creates a longer process. It was very thorough.”
Regardless of how the process played out, the Commanders landed a fine leader in Quinn. Johnson showed his age through his behavior, but that’s no reason for a continued back-and-forth — particularly given how long this franchise has been playing in the mud.
Quinn, by the way, was sent home from his in-person interview last month with the Commanders on a commercial jet out of Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport — hardly the sort of treatment that would be expected of a frontrunner candidate.
That’s all water under the bridge, or under Gate 35X, now.
Harris and company sent the private jet to pick Quinn up when he was the final choice, and he’ll be given every opportunity to succeed or fail on his own merits in Washington.
He was asked Monday about what he learned from his struggles at the end of his time with the Atlanta Falcons. He said he spread himself too thin with personnel decisions and other things.
“The lesson for me was, it’s the players and the team,” he said. “It came from a good place of trying to help and solve problems, but make sure: Keep the main thing the main thing.”
That’s harder to do in Washington than in most places, but it’s advice that everybody in the building, Josh Harris included, would be wise to heed.
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