“I know it’s a big topic and I would say this is a recalibration. Finding our north again, and that starts with our identity of our club. So no, you will not hear me say the word rebuild at all. This is about assessing what we have. How do we add to that? And then how quickly we can accelerate this process together. There is no timeline on that, but we will push it hard to see how good we can get and how fast we can get.”

That was Dan Quinn’s message for what was ahead for the Washington Commanders. Quinn said this on Feb. 6 of last year before he even knew what most of his roster would look like.

He likely knew that Jayden Daniels would be on that roster. But he couldn’t have known Daniels would be … well … like no other rookie quarterback in the history of the NFL.

Yet Quinn doubled down on it when training camp opened: “Somebody asked me over the summer said ’rebuild.’ That sounds like real estate to me. That’s why I said ’recalibrate.’ It’s not rebuilding like we’re buying an old house. How quickly can we become good.”

How quickly? This quickly — going from a 4-13 mark last season and the bottom of the NFC East to a 12-5 regular-season record and the organization’s first playoff victory in 19 years, going on the road to defeat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 23-20, on Sunday night on what has become their signature — winning on their last play from scrimmage.

If that’s Quinn’s version of recalibration, then sign me up.

Recalibration is simply the act of calibrating something again. But what Quinn has done is calibrate something again that was ancient, something that happened in the 20th century with this franchise — pride and success.

If that is Quinn’s idea of recalibration, he should consider marketing it. Start a website. Go on Dr. Phil. Open up Dan Quinn Recalibration Clinics around the country. He would put Tony Robbins and his self-help empire out of business.

“This is a really connected team,” Quinn said after Sunday night’s win. “They believe in one another. And you have to have connection to also have belief. I think they kind of go hand in hand.

“Like I said, early on we didn’t know who we were — not that we didn’t know who we were — that’s not a fair thing to say. Early on, we didn’t have an identity yet. We didn’t have the belief in one another yet, meaning the opening game.”

Yet Quinn did when he spoke of recalibration when he took the job.

This, of course, may be how Quinn walks through life. He may be chronically positive. But the results are the stuff of dreams, because what he took over when he came to Washington was the stuff of nightmares, a shameful, embarrassing organization with new owners trying to find a way to climb out of the grave that Dan Snyder had dug for football in Washington, dragging one of the greatest fan bases in the league into tomb with him.

It is as if he took someone who walked into the Dan Quinn Recalibration Clinic emaciated, smelling and wearing rags and left looking like a model. Or Jayden Daniels.

Quinn also spoke of the “secret sauce” of building a football team early in training camp. “Where the real secret sauce is, is finding the unique things that a player can do and then featuring them in that role,” he said. “Whether they’re a starter or not, but on the roles that they play, they’re excellent at.”

He and general manager Adam Peters have done an excellent job of doing that. But the secret sauce began losing its flavor as the season wore on. The running game has lost steam, and both the offensive and defensive lines have been manhandled of late, including Sunday night against Tampa.

The main ingredient is no secret, and if the world didn’t know about Daniels before, they learned about him Sunday night, when he once again put this team on his slender shoulders and carried them to victory, completing 24 of 35 passes for 268 yards and, perhaps most importantly, no interceptions and no turnovers – their fifth straight win on the last play from scrimmage.

“I’ve been on teams that were exceptional, but they were maybe not in a lot of close ones. So, when that becomes the norm, I think you live in that moment more often. And I think that is probably what has taken place with this group — they have a lot of belief in one another.”

Then Quinn spoke of the obvious. “Jayden certainly is a big factor in that.”

I’ve seen coaches ruin talent, so Quinn and his staff get credit for nurturing Daniels’ talent and connecting it throughout the locker room.

“That’s just the brotherhood that DQ (Quinn) set, the brotherhood and togetherness we have within the locker room,” Daniels told reporters after the game.

It’s Dan Quinn’s Recalibration Refuge. The line forms around the block.

• Catch Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.

• Thom Loverro can be reached at [email protected].