In a new opportunity with Commanders and Jayden Daniels, Dan Quinn checks his blind spots

ASHBURN, Va. – Dan Quinn walked out of his office and turned left.

The Washington Commanders coach took the increasingly well-worn path to the job under general manager Adam Peters.

The short walk towards their partner in crime as they aim to return a franchise to its winning days on and off the field.

But when Quinn looked at the door to his left, he thought to himself: Do I really need to ask this question? Does he really need this reminder?

No.

“So I didn’t even go in,” Quinn told Yahoo Sports during a recent visit. “I started walking down the hallway and just turned around and came back.

“I was going over there and I was like, ‘No, he got this.’ … I don’t want to micromanage everything.”

Instead, Quinn is focusing on checking her blind spots.

He knows as to be head coach after more than five seasons at the helm of the Atlanta Falcons from 2015-20. 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 of leadership as defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys.

Quinn remembers the schematic dive he faced after the Falcons fired him, his realization that he needed to adapt his vision defense to deal with more multiple, spread-out offenses. He remembers his reflection on what he most wanted to change if the five words he said to himself – “if I have another chance” – already materialized: improving its delegations.

By taking on Commanders, Quinn accepts that doing less in some areas allows him to think more in others. His job isn’t to call defenses or lead every drill; it’s about establishing a culture and making informed decisions.

“The essence of a head coach is putting it all together,” Quinn said at his introductory press conference in 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 tie everything together. And that’s where I’m at my best.”

Quinn bringing together diverse perspectives to inform his decisions

Developing players is an established art for Quinn, who has coached in college and the NFL since before most of his players were born.

But in Quinn’s 21 seasons in the NFL, he hasn’t teamed with a rookie quarterback in the first round. Drafting Jayden Daniels second overall creates a different dynamic than what Quinn saw with Dak Prescott, Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson.

Therefore, Quinn decided to hire offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, whose resume includes drafting and developing 2019 first overall pick Kyler Murray. He officially hired Anthony Lynn as the Commanders’ passing game coordinator and running backs coach, but made a point of asking 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 awesome? What did you do that wasn’t enough? Quinn asked Lynn on June 5th. “Don’t answer me now.”

They met the next day to discuss how rookie quarterbacks manage schematic volume and how Lynn sought to protect Herbert from the potential “failure” label he knew armchair critics would be eager to bestow on young quarterbacks acclimating to professional football. at a historic pace.

“Guys like Justin or Jayden, who have that work ethic to get things right — everyone still has their moment where they’re still pouring water into the cup and it’s overflowing,” Quinn said. “This position is really crazy. So I want to make sure I’m finding that place with Jayden in the right amount.”

The more precisely the Commanders achieve this balance, the better their chances of securing the franchise’s first winning season since 2015 and first playoff victory since the 2005 season. A contingent of D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents remember the Washington teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s that won three Super Bowls in a decade and played in a fourth. Quinn has communicated with Joe Gibbs, the architect of these teams, as Quinn seeks to restore the success the Hall of Fame coach once established.

The success won’t be the same – Quinn’s teams will aim to leverage pace and a dual-threat quarterback, but pass first to set an aggressive tone on offense, while hawkishness and tension characterize a defense that Quinn hopes can steal some possessions with travel magic that mirrors his recent Cowboys teams (which led the league during 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 foresees veteran Austin Ekeler excelling.

Those dreams of scoring, sliding and returning are still months away.

First comes maximizing the training camp schedule, a task in which Quinn hired assistant coach/offensive passing game coordinator Brian Johnson to check his blind spots. Decade-old Cowboys coach Jason Garrett also visited the 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 for her own professional development, Quinn turned the tables, questioning her about late-game situations as well as difficult coaching.

“There is a level of transparency that is perhaps a little different than when it comes to your own sport, because [we’re] they’re not in direct competition with each other,” Lawson told Yahoo Sports. “Teaching, coaching and leading transcend sport and 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 extravagant how often Commanders players praise the “vibes” and “energy” that Quinn emits, until remembering what has characterized the last half-decade of Washington football.

Team name changes, congressional investigations into sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, and a property sale related to those investigations (and money laundering) have overshadowed losing season after losing season.

Quinn knows the relatively uphill battle he’s fighting to regain victories and integrity, the possibly impossible tightrope of respecting the legacy of former players and understanding the sensitivity toward Commanders’ history. He doesn’t view his daily interactions with players through the lens of what happened before his arrival, he said.

But he learned the window for merging history and present was smaller than he thought after a workout in early May. Quinn arrived at his press conference in a T-shirt that featured a feather reminiscent of Washington’s old logo hanging from the burgundy and gold “W” of its new logo. A firestorm resulted from the 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] be close by.

“Football here in the DMV is super important and even though it’s dormant would probably be one way of saying it, it’s our job to make it come back to life and be super fun.

“Because when a community supports a team, it’s just as fun as it is.”

The way to get there, Quinn is sure, is through hard work. He emphasizes effort, dedication, and attention to detail while imploring linemen to perfect their positioning and hand height, and while calling out not only players but also coaches during practice when they fall short of standard, or as players collaborated to write this spring their “Commander’s Standard.”

“If you’re not going to try hard, stress yourself out, and that has to 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. Let’s find out who wants to be here and who doesn’t.”

Even with lots of smiles, Whitt warns about Quinn: “Don’t take his kindness as 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, as Lawson said in a video clip he played for the team the day after her visit, that the job won’t get easier — instead, they will learn to “deal with difficult things better.” They’ll learn to deal with it together too, Quinn not only talking 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 by defensive end Efe Obada. .

“He really cares about his players, he really cares about the little things,” Dotson told Yahoo Sports. “He didn’t seem super aggressive, but it just resonates with you, sits with you and when you’re out there doing hard things, 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 this passion at his introductory press conference, the equipment team printed t-shirts for the building that read: “MAKING EVIL HARD WITH GOOD PEOPLE.”

The gold letters are vivid on every piece of black fabric, but appropriately span the back of the shirt rather than the front. Players and coaches can only see them in each other – if they check each other’s blind spots.

They know Quinn will.