"It's a cool time, man. We're just getting rocking," Dan Quinn, the new Washington Commanders head coach, told Craig Hoffman at the start of a conversation Wednesday on the Hoffman Show. "Lotta energy here in the building and moving forward, hitting on some staff stuff, that's A No. 1, top of the pile right now and keep hitting these process as we go, man."
In preparing to get back into head coaching after a six-year stint as the top man in Atlanta, Quinn initiated a 360 review and self-evaluation process, which included speaking to 40-50 players – including Hoffman's Take Command co-host Logan Paulsen.
Quinn told Hoffman that he got feedback about his strengths in areas where he didn't need to change a thing and also, "some blindspots" where players "to make sure I want him to know this."
"Going into it, I had fresh eyes, Craig," Quinn said of the review. "I didn't want to go in 'I bet it's this, I bet it's that.' I just said hey, I'll see the information when I get it, I didn't try to like predict what it would be.
"After reading it, I wasn't surprised to hear that some thought, probably, I was pushing [myself] too thin, helping here, helping here, helping here. And that's [something] that we all do, right? We can help with this, we can help with this, I wanted to make sure I stayed right down the middle with the team, the staff, the players and focus on the things that we could get better at."
Quinn said he was able to apply some of the takeaways during his time as the Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator.
"And that was really the goal behind it, man, to say, can I find these things to absolutely nail it?" he continued. "Then I had the chance to work on it. It's one thing to recognize it, right? Then it's another thing to put it into play."
In building a competitive team in Washington, Quinn has faith in the organizational structure and general manager Adam Peters to "do a fantastic job with personnel." But that's only part of the equation for the Commanders' new head coach.
"The secret sauce of most good teams," he added, "is that play style, being that dog-ass competitor, and all the things we do: it's the speed, the way that we would hunt on defense, the way that we would spring off the ball, the explosive plays, finishing plays."
"That to me is what separates teams. Yeah, you get the personnel right and all the teams have scheme-wise, challenge people with motions and leverages and blitzes and disguises, but it's that last piece, man, that makes it," Quinn continued. "And that's the attitude, the swagger, the toughness, the tackling, the finishing, the hitting, that's what brings all of this together.
"And when you can hit on all three of those, Craig, and there's a lot of good teams that have good personnel and you can be short on another. And there's a lot of teams that have good scheme, but maybe don't have the finish of it. But when you put all three – talking about out fishing, hitting, tackling, speed and the effort and just straining so damn hard for your teammates – that's the separator. And that's what we're gonna strive to do."
For Quinn this isn't just a gameday part, but something that will be instilled from the way the team trains to practices and what fans should be looking for in the personnel connection, the scheme connection and the play style connection.
Quinn says that the team is going through the evaluation process of the roster in-house with a prioritization of must-haves, need-to-haves, and want to upgrade.
"Who are we? How can we play to our identity? How can we feature these unique players? Do they have traits that maybe we haven't seen yet? Do maybe they have to change positions?" he told Hoffman.
Quinn also shares the conversations he had with Kliff Kingsbury – who is "a rare competitor" – ahead of his hiring as offensive coordinator, listen for that answer and much more from Hoffman's conversation with Washington's new head coach on the audio player above!
