Tag: dan quinn commanders

NFC East news: Commanders hire Cowboys DC Dan Quinn as new head coach

The Washington Commanders are hiring DC Dan Quinn away from the Dallas Cowboys as their new head coach after firing Ron Rivera

The Washington Commanders have a new head coach, poaching Dan Quinn away from the Dallas Cowboys as Josh Harris made his first hire as owner in D.C.

The Commanders announced the Quinn hiring on Thursday morning, completing the 2024 NFL coaching cycle after the Baltimore Ravens hired Mike Macdonald on Wednesday night.

Washington hired Adam Peters as general manager on Jan. 12. The moves represent the first onfield steps to moving on from Dan Snyder and his toxic regime.

Quinn served as Dallas’ defensive coordinator for the past three seasons, and during that stint, the Cowboys ranked a combined fifth in points and seventh in yards. Under Quinn, the Cowboys led the NFL with 93 forced turnovers.

Quinn now gets a redo after previously having mixed results as Atlanta’s’ head coach from 2015 to 2020, taking the Falcons to the Super Bowl after the 2016 season, when they lost to the New England Patriots in overtime — after blowing a 28-3 lead.

He finished his Falcons stint 43-42 overall and 3-2 in the postseason.

The Commanders finished 4-13 in 2023 but will enter the offseason with momentum as they own the No. 2 pick in the 2024 draft and five picks in the top 100.

According to Over The Cap, they also have approximately $70 million in available cap space.

Commanders’ hire of Dan Quinn is yet another positive for formerly dysfunctional franchise

The Washington Commanders’ hire of Dan Quinn as their new head coach is yet another positive step for this formerly dysfunctional franchise.

And then, the 2023-2024 head coaching cycle was complete.

The Washington Commanders, who fired former head coach Ron Rivera after four disappointing seasons, have made former Atlanta Falcons head coach and Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn their man. The Commanders were the last NFL team to hire a head coach, and it should point to significant improvement on the defensive side of the ball right away.

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Under Rivera and defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio, Washington’s defense was a crazy quilt of bad design and execution, where busted coverages were the order of the day.

Washington Commanders had no choice but to fire defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio

Quinn, throughout his stops as a defensive coach — the Seattle Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom” defense was at its peak in 2013 and 2014 when Quinn ran it — has had a knack for making the most out of his players on that side of the ball, and that was the case for the Cowboys as he built that defense over the last three seasons.

As the Atlanta Falcons’ head coach from 2015 through 2020, Quinn compiled a 43-42 regular-season record and a 3-2 postseason mark. The 2016 season was obviously Quinn’s marquee year in Atlanta — quarterback Matt Ryan won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award with Kyle Shanahan as his offensive coordinator, and the Falcons had a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI before everything went very far south.

Quinn is known as a players’ coach who builds consensus and understands the psychology of the roster. We’ll see how the staff plays out, but between this hire and a non-Daniel Snyder ownership group — not to mention the second overall pick in the 2024 draft and a league-high $62,595,334 in effective salary cap space for the 2024 season — things are turning around in the nation’s capital as they haven’t in a long time.