The Washington Commanders did not lose on Sunday, but it certainly felt like it after their baffling game management error in overtime.
The Commanders literally ran out of time during a 27-27 tie with the New York Giants at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md. after the team seemingly forgot they were out of timeouts with the clock running down in overtime. With Washington firmly in field goal range, quarterback Jayden Daniels ran what appeared to be a designed quarterback run with 12 seconds left while deep in New York territory.
After Daniels was tackled in bounds, there was no urgency among the Commanders to get back to the line of scrimmage and spike the ball. By the time they realized what was going on, it was too late for them to get lined up in time, and the clock ran out on them.
The Commanders can’t get the play off in time and this game ends in a tie https://t.co/WmPp6q5hU0
— NFL (@NFL) October 11, 2026
Commanders coach Dan Quinn was livid with the series of events and smashed his headset to the ground after time ran out.
Dan Quinn just destroyed his headset. https://t.co/Q15CXgSEJK
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) October 11, 2026
The only remotely plausible explanation is that Daniels thought the Commanders had a timeout left. That is partly on Daniels, but pretty much everyone from the coaching staff on down has to take responsibility for that. Daniels needed to know the timeout situation, and if he was not aware of it, someone needed to tell him.
The final sequence was at least comparable to the disastrous series of events that got Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus fired two years ago. Quinn is highly unlikely to suffer the same fate here, but he and Daniels are going to have a lot of questions to answer about how this could have happened.
