ASHBURN, Va. — Dan Quinn left his office and turned left.
The Washington Commanders head coach walked the increasingly well-trodden path to general manager Adam Peters’ office.
The short walk to his partner in crime, as they look to return the franchise to its winning days on and off the field.
But as Quinn looked toward the door approaching to his left, he thought to himself: Do I really need to ask this question? Do you really need this reminder?
No.
“So I didn’t even get in,” Quinn told Yahoo Sports during a recent visit. “I started walking down the hall, turned around and came back.
“I was going there and I thought, ‘No, he’s got that.’ … I don’t want to micromanage everything.”
Quinn, on the other hand, focuses on checking his blind spots.
He knows as become head coach after more than five seasons at the helm of the Atlanta Falcons from 2015 to 2020. Quinn also knows how to call a defense, from his days with the Super Bowl-winning Legion of Boom in Seattle to his most recent era. recently as defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys.
Quinn remembers the schematic deep dive he faced after the Falcons fired him, and realized he needed to adapt his look defense to handle more multiple and spread offenses. He thinks about reflecting on what he most wanted to change if the five words he kept repeating to himself: “Yeah I have another opportunity” – ever materialized: improve their delegations.
As she takes charge of the Commanders, Quinn accepts that doing less in some areas allows her to think more in others. His job is not to call the defenses or direct each drill; is establishing a culture and making informed decisions.
“The essence of a head coach is putting it all together,” Quinn said at his introductory news conference in February. “It’s the chemistry, it’s the message, it’s the style of play. It is the attitude. It’s arrogance.
“The essence of this work is to bring everything together. And that’s when I’m at my best.”
Quinn brings together diverse perspectives to inform her decisions.
Developing players is an established art for Quinn, who has coached at the college and NFL level since before most of his players were born.
But in Quinn’s 21 NFL seasons, he hasn’t been associated with a first-round rookie quarterback. Selecting Jayden Daniels second overall creates a different dynamic than Quinn has seen with Dak Prescott, Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson.
So Quinn was intentional in hiring offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, whose resume includes drafting and developing 2019 first overall pick Kyler Murray. He officially hired Anthony Lynn as the Commanders’ running game coordinator and running backs coach, but he made sure to ask Lynn about his time as head coach when the Los Angeles Chargers drafted quarterback Justin Herbert sixth overall. .
“I want you to think about your time with Justin: What did you do that was too much? What did you do that wasn’t enough? Quinn asked Lynn on June 5. “Don’t answer me now.”
They met the next day to discuss how rookie quarterbacks handle schematic volume and how Lynn sought to protect Herbert from the potential “flop” label he knew armchair critics would be eager to bestow on young quarterbacks who They were acclimating to professional football at a historic rate.
“Guys like Justin or Jayden who have this work ethic to do things right, everyone still has their moment where they’re still pouring water into the glass and it overflows,” Quinn said. “That position is very crazy. So I want to make sure I find that spot with Jayden just the right amount.”
The more precisely the Commanders strike that balance, the better their chances will be of securing the franchise’s first winning season since 2015 and first playoff win since after the 2005 season. A contingent of D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents remember the Washington teams of the late ’80s and early ’90s that won three Super Bowls in a decade and played in a fourth. Quinn has reached out to Joe Gibbs, the architect of those teams, as Quinn looks to restore the success the Hall of Fame coach once established.
Success won’t be the same: Quinn’s teams will try to take advantage of pace and a pass-first, dual-threat quarterback to set an aggressive tone on offense, while ball-chasing and tension characterize a defense that Quinn hopes he can steal some possessions. with takeaway magic that reflects his recent Cowboys teams (who led the league all three of Quinn’s years in Dallas). Even special teams will look different in the first few years of a new set of rules; There, Quinn figures veteran Austin Ekeler will excel.
Those dreams of scoring, sliding and coming back are still months away.
First comes maximizing the training camp schedule, a task in which Quinn hired assistant head coach and offensive passing game coordinator Brian Johnson to check his blind spots. Jason Garrett, the Cowboys’ head coach for a decade, also visited OTAs at Quinn’s invitation, offering another set of eyes Quinn trusted as “someone who would give me an honest assessment of what he saw.”
And when Duke women’s basketball head coach Kara Lawson visited her for her own professional development, Quinn turned the tables, probing her on both end-game situations and tough workouts.
“There’s a level of transparency that’s maybe a little different than when it comes to your own sports because we’re not in direct competition with each other,” Lawson told Yahoo Sports. “Teaching, coaching and leadership transcend sport and the industry.
“Most good leaders could be good leaders in any sport or industry.”
Quinn’s message: ‘Do hard things with good people’
A visitor would find it almost corny how often Commanders players praise the “vibes” and “energy” that Quinn emits, even remembering what has characterized the last half-decade of Washington football.
Team name changes, congressional investigations into sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, and an ownership sale not unrelated to those investigations (and money laundering) have overshadowed one losing season after another.
Quinn knows the relatively uphill battle he is fighting to regain victories and integrity, the possibly impossible tightrope of respecting the legacies of former players and understanding the Commanders’ sensitivity to history. He doesn’t view his daily interactions with players through the lens of what happened before he arrived, he said.
I started walking down the hallway, turned around and walked back. I was going there and I said, ‘No, (general manager Adam Peters) has that.’ …I don’t want to micromanage everything.Commander Trainer Dan Quinn
But he discovered that the window for merging history and present was smaller than he thought after a practice in early May. Quinn arrived at his press conference wearing a T-shirt that had a feather reminiscent of Washington’s old logo hanging from the burgundy-and-gold “W” of his new logo. A firestorm ensued over reference to a long-considered offensive.
“There are many layers to this organization,” he said. “You have to be able to look back to move forward. I want (former players and coaches) to be present.
“Football here at the DMV is very important and even though it’s been dormant, that would probably be one way to say it, it’s our job to bring it back to life and make it super fun.
“Because when a community gets behind a team, it’s a lot of fun.”
The road there, Quinn is sure, is through hard work. He emphasizes effort, routine and attention to detail while imploring linemen to perfect their hand placement and height, and calling out not only players but also coaches during practices when they fall short of standard. , or when players collaborated to write this spring. : the “commander standard” of hers.
“If you’re not going to put in extreme effort, stress and it should hurt a little bit right now, and if you’re not going to compete in everything we do, this is not the place for you,” defensive coordinator Joe Whitt said. Yahoo Sports. “The way we live is not for everyone. It really isn’t. “We’ll find out who wants to be here and who doesn’t.”
Although smiles abound, Whitt warns of Quinn: “Don’t take her kindness for any kind of weakness. He is the strongest man I have ever met.”
So Quinn delivered spring messages to his players about going beyond their work ethic and embracing them, as Lawson said in a video clip he played for the team the day after his visit, that the job won’t get any easier: In change, they will learn. to “better manage the effort.” They’ll also learn to handle it together, with Quinn not only talking about brotherhood but also assigning lockers to shuffle players by position, with Daniels sandwiched between safeties Percy Butler and Jeremy Chinn while receiver Jahan Dotson is flanked by linebacker Frankie Luvu and the defensive end Efe Obada. .
“He really cares about his players, he really cares about the little things,” Dotson told Yahoo Sports. “He wasn’t super aggressive, but he just resonates with you, he sits with you and when you’re out there doing the hard shit, it doesn’t get any easier. You have to adapt to it.
“DQ loves doing hard things with a big group of people.”
So much so that, after Quinn announced that passion at his introductory press conference, team staff printed T-shirts for the building that read, “DOING HARD SHIT WITH GOOD PEOPLE.”
The gold lettering is vivid on each piece of black fabric, but fittingly, it spans the back of the shirt rather than the front. Players and coaches can only see each other if they monitor each other’s blind spots.
They know Quinn will do it.