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The New York Giants will face the Dallas Cowboys this Sunday at MetLife Stadium. The two teams have plenty in common and every team has players and coached who grew up following and admiring other teams.
Count Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn as one of them.
The Morristown, New Jersey native grew up a Giants fan in the 1970s and 80s. In his Monday presser with the Cowboys beat pool, Quinn revealed his past love for the Giants.
“Growing up for me, I grew up probably 20 miles west of Manhattan. So, I grew up kind of my first love of football was in New Jersey and watching the Giants play growing up. So, that was a team I followed growing up,” Quinn told reporters.
“Growing up there, it’s not really a college football area in the northeast. And, so, pro football it’s Jets and Giants and hoops and there’s hockey. There’s everything but college football in that kind of pocket, but that was my team growing up.”
And, of course, his favorite player was none other than Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, the ubiquitous front man of the legendary Giants defense of that era.
“LT was my favorite player, no doubt about it. I had the poster on the wall, the whole thing,” Quinn added. “He was the one that if you were a young kid coming up, their defense was pretty rugged back then and I certainly admired Bill Parcells and that style and the attitude that the guys played with. But it was fun to be in a tough NFC East game of one that you watched as a kid growing up all those years. It was cool to — that’s where my first love of the game came from.”
This year, Quinn — who began his coaching career in the college ranks over a quarter century and took the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl a few years back as head coach — is fortunate enough be coaching a player that is being to compared to Taylor in rookie linebacker Micah Parsons.
“Anytime you talk about a guy who just changed the game so much, it’s a cool thing,” Quinn said of the comparison. “And, so, for Micah, we just want him to be the best version of himself. Like, he plays at different positions than that. He’s an outside linebacker some, a defensive end some, but he’s also an inside linebacker more of the time where we blitz him from off the ball.
“So, back then, it was Harry Carson and Gary Reasons and others. LT and [Carl] Banks off the edges. So, you knew where everybody was going to be most of the time. With this one, we try to put him in different spots and different ways to find matchups. So, it’s different game than it was then. But for certainly he was my favorite player coming up.”
Parsons is in line for Defensive Rookie the Year as well as Defensive Player of the Year. He has had a profound impact on the Cowboys’ defense and overall outlook. They are in first place in the NFC East right now and Parsons has a lot to do with that.
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