Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n\u201cIt was difficult to face him,\u201d Quinn said. “He was spreading the field horizontally and vertically, and facing Cliff, the same feelings you had: it's going to be difficult, the formation of the confrontations, the rapid shots on the field, the aggression, the audacity. As coach, you were writing down some names., this is something in your future, if I get this photo, this is someone I would want to talk to.<\/p>\n
“I know people talk about his savvy with quarterbacks and it's proven. But he's also a great coach, not just the guy who has to be with the quarterbacks all the time.”<\/p>\n
Washington has the second pick in the draft and is widely expected to select a quarterback; Kingsbury would play a key role in the player's development.<\/p>\n
The Commanders also hired Joe Whitt Jr. as Quinn's defensive coordinator. Quinn said Whitt would call the defensive signals. Whitt spent a year with Quinn in Atlanta and the last three with him in Dallas, as passing game coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust seeing the details, the connection, the style of play,\u201d Quinn said. “To play good defense, you better be a good tackle team, you better get the ball. Those are two things that the units he's been tasked with have been great at over the last three years.”<\/p>\n
The Dallas Cowboys led the NFL with 93 takeaways over the last three seasons.<\/p>\n
For Quinn, Washington represents a second chance. He spent five full seasons with Atlanta before being fired five games into his sixth year. The Falcons reached the Super Bowl in his second season, taking a 28-3 lead against the New England Patriots \u2013 only to lose in overtime.<\/p>\n
Since leaving Atlanta, Quinn said he has repeated five words: \u201cIf I get another chance.\u201d He said there were lessons learned that he wanted to apply.<\/p>\n
“Once you learn these lessons,” he said, “all you want to do is grab them, run and prove it. Let me tell you, I'm ready to run and prove it .<\/p>\n
“I wanted to find potential blind spots… sometimes trying to do too much. I'm a much stronger coach today than when I took over in Atlanta.”<\/p>\n
General manager Adam Peters, hired last month, will be football's top executive, allowing Quinn to focus on coaching. Quinn said he learned to delegate more as the Cowboys' defensive coordinator over the past three years. And Quinn wants Whitt to call the plays so he can oversee the team rather than focusing on one side of the ball.<\/p>\n
This is also what the front office and Washington shareholders want. Peters said they didn't hire Quinn just to improve the defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s without a doubt one of the best leaders in the NFL,\u201d Peters said. \u201cYou can ask anyone who's been around him, coaches, players, he's a top communicator, a great teacher and developer, not only to the players but to the coaches, and he's intelligent, he's motivated. ..he's going to lead this team the right way.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commanders fire Eric Bieniemy, coach Dan Quinn says\u060c John Keim, ESPN editorFebruary 5, 2024, 11:33 p.m. Close John Keim covers the Washington Commanders for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2013 after a stint at the Washington Post. He began covering the team in 1994 for Journal Newspapers and later for the Washington Examiner. He is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10286,1528,4287,6372,9045,4033,10098],"class_list":["post-24067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","tag-bieniemy","tag-coach","tag-commanders","tag-dan","tag-eric","tag-fire","tag-quinn"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24069,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24067\/revisions\/24069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}