The success of reaching the Super Bowl for the Seattle Seahawks appears to have had the inadvertent benefit of keeping both coordinators with the team for at least another season.
Both offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and defensive coordinator Dan Quinn were sought after by multiple teams for interviews in the past several weeks as teams looked to fill their head coaching vacancies. However, Seattle’s run to the Super Bowl forced teams interested in Bevell and Quinn to wait, and wait, and wait some more. But with the Cleveland Browns’ hiring of Mike Pettine on Thursday, all head coaching vacancies have now been filled. Both Bevell and Quinn likely will remain with the Seahawks following next week’s Super Bowl appearance.
Quinn was especially a hot commodity the past few weeks. He was perhaps the top target of the Browns, Minnesota Vikings and Tennessee Titans but all three teams felt they couldn’t wait for Seattle’s season to end. The trio of teams elected to hire Pettine, Mike Zimmer and Ken Whisenhunt, respectively.
“I had a good visit with (Cleveland) and a lot of respect certainly for their organization and Joe Banner and Jimmy Haslam,” Quinn said Thursday. “I also had a good visit with the guys at Minnesota and both of those guys have hired some great coaches. It was a great experience to go through and even more importantly having the support of John Schneider and Pete Carroll to have a chance to be so supportive of that.”
It’s a bit ironic that the ultimate success of getting a team to a Super Bowl could have a negative effect on coordinators hopeful of earning a head coaching job of their own. But Quinn said there is no frustration over his success leading Seattle’s top-ranked defense kept him earning a job elsewhere.
“None. No, certainly not,” Quinn said. “I couldn’t be more fired up to be a part of this and moving forward here keeping the focus on our team, which it is. So none at all.”
His task now is just finding a way to slow down Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos offense.
“There are some terrific offenses out there that the high scoring offenses that we see in a week in and week out basis. There are some really talented and featured players. It’s a real challenge for us each week and sometimes it’s different types of people. It might be a running back, or a quarterback, or a tight end, or their feature receiver. These guys have a number of them so we certainly have our hands full,” Quinn said.