Falcons coach Dan Quinn hasn’t told his players to get off his lawn yet, but he did make them turn down the loud music.
After some struggles with communication on their patchwork defense, Quinn took the unusual step Thursday of having the team’s DJ lower the volume of the music on the practice field.
Vince Lombardi used to do that all the time, by the way, so it’s clearly an effective strategy.
“We had our DJ turn the music down some this week in practice so that we can clearly hear some of our communications,” Quinn said, via D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was more of an emphasis for us in every single spot that we could look for it, hear it and acknowledge it.
“It starts in the classroom from player to player. Then from a coaching side, I wanted the coaches to the side. I want to hear the players talk.”
Now that they’ve had a chance to introduce themselves, it might help. Losing middle linebacker Deion Jones and starting safeties Ricardo Allen and Keanu Neal to injury has made a mess of their defense, at a number of levels. They put the helmet headset radio on linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, and there were a number of issues last week against the Bengals, when players weren’t on the same page.
“On both occasions, that was Falcons beating Falcons,” Quinn said. “So, that is as difficult as it gets. You generally haven’t seen a lot of that from us where we bust a coverage and mis-communicate to cause an explosive play.”
Perhaps hearing each other will help, at least until they get players accustomed to each other.