Adam Peters spoke a lot about wanting to find the right leader, and when he introduced Dan Quinn on Monday, he called Quinn ‘a great leader, communicator, teacher developer, an overall person.’
To Quinn, as he told Chris Russell in joining Rooster Thursday, the latter is the most important praise in his eyes.
“Anybody who calls you a great person, I think that would stand, because that's how you live your life. That’s not just on the sideline or on the practice field or in the meeting rooms, but how you get on with everybody,” Quinn said. “And so, I would say that that's a nice thing to hear behind your name any anytime, so I appreciate that.”
Quinn said Monday he was hoping the Commanders called – and yes, that’s in part because Peters would be his boss.
“No doubt, and I know first-hand the important of that connection – it’s ownership, it's the general manager, the head coach and all of that, blended together to set the course on what the vision for the organization could be,” Quinn said. “When you're in lockstep and shoulder to shoulder with people that are saying the same thing, the same message of how you do it and like these are the standards and the way that you go, like that's a good feeling. The best of the best teams have that, and you gotta work at it just like any relationship; it takes time, but you have to make sure you are 100% supporting each other and going for it, and I knew that would be the case with Adam. We align and communicate in an easy, natural way, and the longer it goes, the stronger that it gets, so we're really pumped to be rocking this thing together.”
One of their common bonds is of course Kyle Shanahan, who was Quinn’s OC in Atlanta and Peters’ head coach in San Fran, and apparently, he gave both Peters and Quinn good recommendations of the other.
“It does help sometimes to have some six degrees of separation in your business, and when you know it’s right, you push it,” Quinn said. “It's different to say that it's a good dude or whatever, but sometimes you just know when people can mesh and fit together to support one another and bounce ideas off each other, and Kyle certainly knew that he knew both of us well. That was definitely something he said, that this makes too much sense.”
One man can be a leader of men, but to Quinn, it takes everyone to be able to lead.
“Maybe as you get a little older, it can change a little bit, you know, early on, I think it's leadership and what can I say or do to show that? There’s definitely a place for that, like there's times you gotta lead and say this is how we're gonna go get it on,” Quinn said. “There’s another side of it, especially in an environment like this, that you see and help develop the leadership and others. That to me is where the best of the best teams come from, where the leadership doesn't come from the top. I'll set the course, trust me, but we’ll be really, really good when we're excellent in the locker room first. That gonna take out into the meeting rooms and then onto the practice field and the way that we go compete together, and so the way that we push one another and lead one another, that's when you can become excellent. The best of the best teams do that, knowing there’s different parts, and those are the moments I look for, to push people into that, because I think sometimes it can be a scary feeling going out there to lead.”
And for all those who say bah humbug to being a leader but are on the train that Quinn is a retread and thus an inferior option?
“When you do something for the first time, there's things that are good and things that aren't, but there's all these lessons, man, and you wanna learn them and you wanna apply them,” Quinn said. “Not everybody gets that opportunity to do that, but if you do, you really have a chance to do some excellent things. That’s what I certainly intend on doing. But you know what’s fun? Winning! So we're not gonna do anything other than just work as hard as we can to make sure we get that done. We can re-evaluate what good hires are and good drafts are and all that in the years to come, but there's nothing like getting it on and getting those wins, and that’s what the measuring stick is. It's a performance business, and I can't wait to get rolling.”
Take a listen to Quinn’s entire conversation with Rooster above!