Editor’s note: This story has been updated and republished after its original publication date of June 25, 2024.
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 path to his accomplice, as his goal is to return a 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 last summer. “I started walking down the hallway, 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 on the Super Bowl-winning Legion of Boom in Seattle to his most recent era 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. Think about your reflection on what you most wanted to change if the five words you kept repeating to yourself…Yeah I have another opportunity” – ever materialized: to improve their delegations.
Since taking command of the Commanders, Quinn has accepted that doing less in some areas allows him to think more in others. His job is not to call 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 in his introductory news conference last February. “It’s the chemistry, it’s the message, it’s the style of play. It’s the attitude. It’s arrogance.
“The essence of this work is to bring everything together. And that’s when I’m at my best.”
Now, Quinn has the Commanders on the brink of a Super Bowl berth that would surprise almost everyone outside the building. They play the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday’s NFC championship game with a trip to New Orleans on the line.
The habits he started developing last summer worked.
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 are 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.”
Achieving that balance was critical to securing the franchise’s first winning season since 2015 and first playoff wins since after the 2005 season. A contingent of residents from DC, Maryland and Virginia remember the Washington teams of the late ’80s and the early ’90s who won three Super Bowls in a decade and played in a fourth. Quinn has checked in with 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 typically look 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 which Quinn hopes 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).
First came 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 end-game situations and tough training alike.
“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 have overshadowed one losing season after another.
Quinn knows the relatively uphill battle he’s fighting to regain victories and integrity alike, the 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 his arrival, 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.Commanders head coach 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 its 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 when he calls out not only players but also coaches during practices when they don’t reach the standard, or when players collaborated to write this spring. : your “commander standard.”
“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 will also learn to handle it together, Quinn not only talks about brotherhood but also assigns lockers to shuffle players by position, with Daniels between safeties Percy Butler and Jeremy Chinn while the receivers are flanked by linebacker Frankie Luvu and defensive end Efe Obada.
“He really cares about his players, he really cares about the little things,” former catcher Jahan Dotson told Yahoo Sports. “He didn’t come off as 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.