Commanders hire Steve Wilks to help Dan Quinn's defense

Nobody announced this one. Wilks has been in the building for a week already, and the news only broke Wednesday afternoon.

Mike Garafolo

@MikeGarafolo

The #Commanders have hired Steve Wilks to work with the defensive coaches under Dan Quinn and Daronte Jones, per me and @RapSheet. The decision to hire Wilks was made last month. He started last week. Wilks will help with game planning. He won't be with the team on game days.

So this isn't a coordinator swap. Wilks isn't calling plays and he isn't on the sideline. According to ProFootballTalk, he shows up on Sundays and leaves after Wednesday practice. That's the stretch of the week when the game plan actually gets built. Then he's gone before the team travels or kicks off. It works out to an extra veteran brain in the defensive meeting room for half the week.

The obvious read is that Washington is panicking. The team is 1-4-1 after losing Monday night to the 49ers, and Jones is a first-year NFL play caller. The people breaking the story pushed back hard on that read, though, and said the plan was in place before Washington's season went sideways.

Ian Rapoport

@RapSheet

This has been planned all season, enacted now.

Mike Garafolo

@MikeGarafolo

The #Commanders have hired Steve Wilks to work with the defensive coaches under Dan Quinn and Daronte Jones, per me and @RapSheet. The decision to hire Wilks was made last month. He started last week. Wilks will help with game planning. He won't be with the team on game days. t.co/IQAjVQZPKb

Whether you buy that or not, the timing is going to get noticed. Jones came over from Minnesota in January after coaching the Vikings secondary, and he's had ups and downs in year 1. Quinn is a former defensive coordinator himself and is supposed to be the defensive mind of this operation. When a defensive head coach starts adding defensive help 6 games into the season, people will ask questions about Quinn's own future, fair or not.

Wilks has a long résumé. He went 3-13 as the Cardinals head coach in 2018. He went 6-6 as Carolina's interim coach in 2022 after the Panthers fired Matt Rhule, and they passed him over for the full-time job anyway. He also ran the 49ers defense in 2023, the year San Francisco made the Super Bowl, which makes it a little awkward that his new team just lost to the Niners. Last year was rougher. He was the Jets defensive coordinator until they fired him in December.

Rich Cimini

@RichCimini

Steve Wilks, fired by the Jets late last season, finds another job in the NFL.

Mike Garafolo

@MikeGarafolo

The #Commanders have hired Steve Wilks to work with the defensive coaches under Dan Quinn and Daronte Jones, per me and @RapSheet. The decision to hire Wilks was made last month. He started last week. Wilks will help with game planning. He won't be with the team on game days. t.co/IQAjVQZPKb

Wilks spent the time since then in college football. He took a special assistant job at Appalachian State in April and had been consulting there before Washington called. Now he's back in the league in a role that doesn't really have a name, somewhere between a consultant and a coordinator.

Watch the defense over the next few weeks. Wilks has been game-planning for a week, so his first real influence should show up soon. If Washington's defense steadies, the part-time arrangement looks smart. If it doesn't, Wilks will be the most experienced coordinator in the building, and the questions around Jones and Quinn will only get louder.