49ers legend opens up about what Dan Quinn would bring New York Giants

The New York Giants have requested permission to interview Dan Quinn, who is seeing strong interest among teams looking for a head coach 

Dan Quinn is the first head coaching candidate the New York Giants have requested to interview to fill their vacancy, and one of Quinn’s former players and assistant coaches believes he should be the first choice for the job.

“I think he has a very unique style of toughness and great leadership, and a vision,” Super Bowl Champion and former San Francisco 49ers All-Pro defensive lineman Bryant Young told FanSided by phone Thursday.

Quinn was Young’s defensive line coach with the 49ers from 2003 through 2004, a span that saw Young produce 83 total tackles, 6.5 sacks, 19 tackles for loss, forced two fumbles, and recover one.

But, it was Quinn’s hands-on coaching style that struck Young almost immediately upon his promotion from Quality Control assistant to position coach, that he had the chance to be special.

“He’s super energetic, knowledgeable, very passionate,” Young explains. “He’s a great teacher of the game. Dan makes it fun to play and be around him.”

During those practices early in his professional coaching career, Quinn wouldn’t just hold up cards with the plays or drills on them, he’d hop right in and show his linemen who to pursue the ball downfield once the quarterback passed it.

“He would just be excited about practice every day,” Young says. “And so energized. The first day we had a chance to be on the practice field together, he put his cleats on, and I was like ‘I wonder what he’s doing with cleats on,’ so, lo and behind, as we were chasing the ball or the ball was thrown, he was also running and ‘getting after the stack,’ as he would say.”

That teaching style — and the results it yielded — helped Quinn, a Morristown native, quickly climb the coaching ladder.

Quinn went on to coach defensive line for the Miami Dolphins, Jets, Seattle Seahawks, prior to a two-year stint as the University of Florida defensive coordinator and defensive line coach.

During Quinn’s two years with the Florida Gators, his former player, Young, was a member of the coaching staff where he saw his former coach in a whole new light.

“You can definitely see people in their younger selves, and having the traits of what it would take to be a head coach someday,” Young says. “Certainly, I’m sure he would admit, too, there were a lot of things he knew and things he didn’t know. But, he definitely had the foundation and the makings of being a head coach one day.”

Quinn’s chance would soon come enough.

After spending two seasons as Pete Carroll’s defensive coordinator, where he won a Super Bowl ring, Young was hired to be the Atlanta Falcons’ head coach in 2015. Two years later, Quinn led the Falcons to an 11-5 record and a berth in Super Bowl LI.

That game, of course, became a bit of a punchline after the Falcons barnstormed to a 28-3 lead over the Patriots, only to watch as Tom Brady led New England all the way back to a 34-28 win.

“It never really leaves,” Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said of the Super Bowl loss, during a recent appearance on FanSided’s The Matt Lombardo Show podcast. “There’s always part of it that you use as motivation, moving forward. The key is, you can’t let it consume you.”

For Quinn, the game serves as a low-water mark on his coaching career.

While Atlanta would return to the postseason the following season, the Falcons produced a meager 14-23 record from 2018 through his firing in Week 5 of the 2020 season.

How Dan Quinn’s Dallas Cowboys success sets him up to be successful head coach

It would have been easy for Quinn to ride off and take a television job, or step away from football entirely after how the back-half of his tenure in Atlanta unfolded.

But, at 51, Quinn took on a new challenge. As defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys.

Quinn’s immediate success turning around a defense that finished the 2020 season ranked 28th in total defense while allowing a whopping 29.6 points per game into a group that punched above its weight throughout the 2021 campaign en route to finishing seventh in total defense and holding opponents to 21 points per game have made him a hot commodity this hiring cycle.

In addition to the New York Giants wanting to speak with Quinn, he has already interviewed with the Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, and Miami Dolphins.

Watching from afar, Young isn’t surprised that Quinn was able to turn around the Cowboys, and in turn, turn around how he is perceived by front offices in search of a leader for their franchise.

“It’s a credit to who he is,” Young says of Quinn’s performance this past season. “His understanding of the game, not just how much he knows … but, his infectious personality, and how he makes it fun for everybody just being in the room. He’s very authentic, very knowledgeable.

“There are certain people, and Dan is definitely one of them, that brings a sense of calm to a room, and this energy, an authentic genuine personality. It’s about toughness, it’s about calm, but it’s also just being prepared, as well.”

This past season, that preparation helped turn rookie Micah Parsons, who finished with 104 total tackles and 13 sacks, into a legtiimate Defensive Player of The Year candide. It was Quinn, who was instrumental in moving Parsons from inside linebacker to his natural position off the edge that turned the Penn State product into one of the game’s more feared defensive weapons.

Likewise, the Cowboys’ secondary, under Quinn’s tutelage, became one of the more prolific in the NFL, led by Trevon Diggs’ assuault on the leauge’s interception record, pulling down 14 this season.

“I think that type of attitude that Dan brought to Dallas certainly helps him,” Young points out. “It’s who he is. I had an opportunity to coach with him in Atlanta, and just understanding who he was as a person, even before then, you could see it behind closed doors.”

Wherever Quinn lands, be it East Rutherford or elsewhere, Young  believes that Quinn’s collaborative style among assistant coaches, knowledge of the game, and the fact that he empowers his assistants to have a real role in the team’s success will set him up to win and win often.

“There’s a mutual respect and understanding,” Young says. “You know he’s in charge, but it was never a big ego in terms of ‘I’m the head coach,’ it was always about ‘what’s the best way we can do this, and be on the same page?’ He was always welcoming of different opinions. He wanted you to understand it was okay if you had a different opinion. He welcomed that. He always wanted to make sure that every guy and every voice was heard, and that you felt relevant in the room. He brought that. Understanding, too, if we adopt an idea that it was ‘our idea,’ and we were leaving on the same page when we left that meeting.”

There is strong interest in Quinn across the league who just might get the chance to write his next head coaching chapter. Young emphatically believes it will have a better ending than his last.

“I always hope that his opportunity will come again, because he’s such a great person, great personality, and the way he’s doing it is unlike any other that I’ve been around,” Bryant says.”Just watching him from a players’ perspective, and having a chance to work with him as a coach, I’ve always been hopeful that he would get another opportunity to be a head coach. Whatever program or organization he goes to, I think he’s going to do a fantastic job.”