After Dan Quinn was fired as the Falcons head coach during the 2020 season, he took an opportunity to break down his coaching style and defensive approach.
Quinn said he “wanted to kind of do a 360 on the whole process” in order to better understand what works well and what needed to be tweaked before his next job. That job turned out to be the defensive coordinator position with the Cowboys and Quinn said his reflections led him to the realization that he wasn’t going to do the same things he’s done in the past.
“That included defensive cutups from 2013 to 2020, and that brought me into some of the system changes that I wanted to implement on the next lap around,” Quinn said, via the team’s website. “I didn’t want to do just another rinse and repeat. And, so, that was a big piece on what I wanted to do.”
The result is that Quinn plans to use things from what the Cowboys did last season “as well as some new things that I wanted to bring into it.” Getting those things to mesh for a more effective unit will be crucial to the Cowboys’ chances this season.