The Washington Commanders will enter the 2026 season with new leadership after parting ways with offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr., according to multiple reports on Tuesday. The Commanders have not yet announced replacements for either coordinator position.
Head coach Dan Quinn met with Kingsbury earlier in the day, and the two sides mutually agreed to separate following discussions about the direction of the offense. Whitt, meanwhile, was dismissed after overseeing a defense that struggled throughout the 2025 season.
The changes come just one year after Washington’s dramatic rise in 2024, when the Commanders went 12-5 and reached the NFC Championship Game for the first time since 1991. That turnaround was fueled by rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, who won Offensive Rookie of the Year while thriving in Kingsbury’s system. That success proved short-lived. Injuries derailed Daniels’ sophomore season, limiting him to seven starts, and Washington collapsed to a 5-12 finish. The offense dropped to 22nd in both yards and scoring after ranking seventh in total offense and fifth in points the year before.
Defensively, the regression was even more severe. Washington finished last in the NFL in yards allowed and near the bottom in scoring defense in 2025, a steep decline from its middle-of-the-pack rankings the previous season. Whitt, 47, was in his first year as a coordinator when he joined Quinn in Washington after previously working under him in Dallas. Quinn eventually took over defensive play-calling duties late in the season as the losses mounted.
Kingsbury, 46, had been viewed as a potential head coaching candidate this cycle after his work with Daniels. The former Texas Tech and Arizona Cardinals head coach returned to the NFL in 2024 following his dismissal in Arizona after the 2022 season and helped engineer one of the league’s most improved offenses in his first year with Washington.
The coaching shakeup continues a period of transition for the franchise. Washington fired former head coach Ron Rivera after the 2023 season and hired Quinn less than a month later. Quinn, a former NFC title-winning coach with the Falcons, now faces the task of rebuilding his staff.
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