What will a Dan Quinn-led team look like? "I would say, if I had to say two [words] right now, it'd be explosive and physical," the Washington Commanders' new head coach said in Monday's introductory press conference. "The explosive comes offensively and on the return game from big plays, through the run game, through play action, through the passing game, ones that can change field position. And those are the explosive plays that you have to to keep going and being aggressive to go.
"On defense, that's the energy-generating football that takes place on an interception, on a score for returning on defense, a force fumble, the sacks, the ones that create negative plays for an offense to put them in some disadvantaged situations, we like playing from 2nd-and-12 and 13 and 3rd-and-long. So how do you do that? You've gotta be bold. You've gotta be aggressive. Having the players to do that, that's part of what we do. And then we train them to do it over and over and over again."
One of the key parts of that answer is "having the players to do that" and "that's part of what we do" in the next few months with free agency and the NFL Daft upcoming.
But, Kevin Sheehan points out, Quinn didn't like the word "rebuild" being used when describing the undertaking the Commanders must do to get the roster ready to do what the new head coach wants it to be able to do.
"Your words, no mine," Quinn said about the word rebuild. "I'm really honestly glad that you brought it up and I know it's a big topic and I would say this is a recalibrate. You know, finding our north again, and that starts with our identity of our club. So no, you will not hear me say the word rebuild at all. This is about assessing what we have. How do we add to that? And then how quickly we can accelerate this process together.
"Now, how do you do that? Connection, staff, offseason into training amp and then ultimately putting all these guys to find the best group to help us go play as well as we can, as fast as we can."
Sheehan points out this is very different than Ron Rivera's five-year plan talk from four years ago. He has some thoughts on Quinn's points that "there is no time for long-term rebuilds" anymore in the NFL and you can hear the rest on the audio player above!
