Quinn facing toughest of challenges
When the Atlanta Falcons reconvene later this month to begin their offseason conditioning program, Dan Quinn knows the elephant is coming to the room, too.
Quinn, still a ball of optimistic energy, insists that there’s no reason to try erasing history – the Falcons blew the biggest lead in Super Bowl history – when he assembles with his team again.
Sure, a new season beckons. There’s the usual turnover of players and a few new coaches on staff. They will focus on what’s ahead rather than behind them. Yet a part of moving on includes processing what happened. So Quinn will address it with players at least once more on their first day back.
“You have to acknowledge it,” the Falcons coach said this week, during his media breakfast session at the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix. “You have to own the moments that went bad. But you also have to own the ones that went well, too. That’s what I intend to do.”
Some teams will gear up this season with rookie coaches, others will be pressed to stop the bleeding with perennial losers. Organizational dysfunction will test others.
Yet Quinn will have the toughest challenge of any NFL coach this season. It will be hard enough for the Falcons to deal with the hangover that typically afflicts Super Bowl losers. You’d have to go back to the Buffalo Bills and their four consecutive losses in Roman Numeral games during the early 1990s to find a team that made it back to the Super Bowl after losing it the previous year.
Last year, that task confronted Ron Rivera and the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers went on to miss the playoffs.
Yet the Falcons might have an even higher hurdle, given the way they collapsed and squandered a 25-point lead against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI.
“You’re not over it, but you’re past it,” Quinn maintains. “And it’s OK to let it fuel you.”
We’ll see whether it propels the Falcons to create a different type of fresh history.
Someone asked Quinn whether he had to prop up Matt Ryan, who won NFL MVP honors for his overall season but coughed up the football rather than throw it away in crunch time.
“Yeah. Everybody,” Quinn said. “It hurts. A little bit after the game, it’s way more counselor than coach. We had tears, but no finger-pointing because of how tight our team is. And then, man, you go back and you battle for it again. You go through that process, then you’ve got to turn it. It’s like, ‘This is 2017,’ and that’s really what’s coming down the pike for us in two weeks.”
Quinn, who was the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive coordinator when they suffered the crushing loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX that was cemented with Malcolm Butler’s goalline pick, did a remarkable job in producing a Super Bowl berth in just his second season at the helm. He has emphasized a progressive, prideful, teamoriented culture. And the results – complete with messaging displayed on T-shirts – show that it can work.
Now comes the psychological challenge that is accompanied by a shorter offseason.
“We try to make the big things small,” Quinn said.
At least Quinn has a talented team, with emerging young players at every position group. Instead of focusing on the goal of trying to avenge the Super Bowl loss, Quinn said it will be important for the team to merely consider the nine weeks of the offseason program. Like one step at a time.
Still, he knows the narrative surrounding his team’s coming season begins with the stench of last season’s finish. I sat at Quinn’s table for roughly 10 minutes during the interview session, and every single question was somehow related to the Super Bowl experience.
It’s up to Quinn to provide the cues for how the Falcons will “reset,” as he likes to put it. At some point. Quinn has discussed his scenario with the leaders of two other teams who could not protect significant leads with a championship at stake.
While at the meetings, Quinn visited the Cleveland Indians spring training home and connected with manager Terry Francona. Not long after the Super Bowl loss, he talked with Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr. What a club that Quinn, Kerr and Francona can formulate.
The Indians blew a 3-games-to-1 lead to the Chicago Cubs in the World Series last fall; Kerr’ squad couldn’t close out last summer after building a similar advantage against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.
Yes, there are some who can relate. They all realize that self-pity won’t cut it.
“It was more like, ‘Hey man it’s tough, but this is what we signed up for,’ ” Quinn said. “As a real competitor, that’s really the attitude you can take to say this is the world we live in.”