Dan Quinn gives colorful answer on facing Falcons for first time since firing
Dan Quinn has turned the Dallas Cowboys defense around this season. But before he was coaching Trevon Diggs and Micah Parsons, he was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
Sunday afternoon, Quinn will face the Falcons for the first time since they fired him in October 2020. How’s he feeling about it?
His answer wasn’t exactly family-friendly.
“I have great memories from there, and I always will,” Quinn said, according to Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News. “But you guys saw the performance yesterday, so there’s no time to take a stroll down memory lane. We got some s— to fix.”
Quinn’s tenure in Atlanta was quite a rollercoaster ride. The Falcons went 43-42 with Quinn at the helm, but they made Super Bowl LI in his second season in 2016-17. Atlanta was up 28-3 on the New England Patriots before Tom Brady led the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history to win 34-28.
The next year, the Falcons went 10-6 before back-to-back sub-.500 seasons. Atlanta fired Quinn after an 0-5 start to the 2020 sason.
Dallas swooped in and hired him as defensive coordinator under head coach Mike McCarthy this season, and he’s done a great job turning things around. The Cowboys went from allowing 29.6 points per game last year to 28 points per game through eight games this year. That number was 18.9 points per contest before Dallas gave up 30 points to Denver last week, to put it in perspective.
We’ll see if Quinn’s defense and the Cowboys offense can rebound this week against his former team.
Jerry Jones wasn’t happy with the Cowboys’ performance vs. Denver
Sunday wasn’t the Cowboys’ best day at the office. Despite getting quarterback Dak Prescott back, the Cowboys were completely shut down by the Denver Broncos. The Broncos won the game 30-16 and, following the loss, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gave a strong statement on his disappointment with the team’s performance.
“That’s as flat as any team I’ve seen,” Jones said via Pro Football Talk’s Josh Alper. “We basically played what seemed to be lackadaisical.”
Jones also said that the Cowboys were “internally overconfident” which led the team to not be ready. The loss was Dallas’ second of the season, dropping the Cowboys to 6-2 on the season. Denver improved to 5-4 with the victory.
Prescott looked rusty in his return to the field, and the Cowboys were shut out in the first three quarters. Prescott completed 19 of his 39 pass attempts for 232 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception. Running back Ezekiel Elliott rushed for 51 yards on 10 carries, and the Cowboys had to commit to throwing the ball with the early deficit. The Broncos led 16-0 at halftime and 19-0 after the third quarter.