Commanders Reacts Survey: Trading up in the April draft and your feelings about head coach Dan Quinn

Poll questions!!

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NFL. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Washington Commanders fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in regular email surveys.

In this week’s Reacts survey, we’re asking two questions.

Question 1

The first question asks how you would feel about the Commanders trading up into the first round of next month’s draft similar to the way the Redskins traded up in 2019 to select Montez Sweat 26th overall after having drafted Dwayne Haskins with the 15th overall pick — this time to grab an offensive tackle.

For new fans, those with short memories or those who are too young to have witnessed it at the time, here’s a reminder of that 2019 trade:

The Redskins acquired the No. 26 pick via a trade with the Indianapolis Colts for the No. 46 pick and a second-round selection in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Washington currently holds picks 2, 36, 40, 67, 78, 100, 139, 152, and 222 in this year’s draft, and all 8 of its own picks in the 2025 draft (Washington traded William Jackson III to the Steelers for a conditional 2025 pick, but the conditions were not met and no pick changed hands). Don’t be shy about ‘building your own trade’ in the comments.

Here’s the draft order in the latter half of the first round:

Question 2

There was a widespread feeling at the time of Dan Quinn’s hire that somehow, Josh Harris and Adam Peters failed to ‘get their guy’.

Despite the search committee being sealed tight — a propensity for secrecy that was on display on the day that Ron Rivera was fired and which has been reinforced by the total lack of information on the quarterback evaluation — speculation had been rampant for weeks that Ben Johnson was the only ‘real’ candidate for the job. His (very) late withdrawal was perceived by many as a brutal blow to the Commanders’ process. When this was followed by reports that a Washington offer had been rebuffed by former Ravens DC Mike Macdonald in favor of the Seahawks, and the Commanders ended up being the last NFL team to hire a head coach this offseason, many people believed that the search process had failed and that Dan Quinn represented the only remaining option of that failed process.

There were others who saw Quinn as being exactly the guy that Harris and Peters had said they set out to find — a leader of men. John Keim, in particular, had spend a couple of weeks prior to the announcement of the hire warning on his podcasts that Ben Johnson might not be the leading candidate and talking about Dan Quinn as a strong candidate for the job.

In today’s second question, we simply ask you if, with respect to the Dan Quinn hire, you now feel better, worse, or about the same as you did when the hire was first announced in early February.

Comments & Results

Of course, we invite you to answer the survey questions below, but also feel free to expand on your answers and provide nuance in the comments section. I rely on those comments when discussing the results of the survey when they are posted in a separate article the next few days.

POLL QUESTIONS