The HC Dan Quinn Discussion Thread

[skinzplay]

Cowher knew it was time and simply opted for the studio. Neither Harbaugh nor Tomlin will find organizations as stable and reputable as the ones they're leaving. Aside from their old clubs, all the current HC openings are for owners/FO leadership I wouldn't wanna make my legacy dependent upon.

 

[RWJ]

The Rooney family has done an amazing job at keeping HCs employed in Pittsburgh. My hats off to them for keeping it consistent.

 

[NoCalSkins]

Imagine Tomlin ending up in Baltimore.

 

[RWJ]

Imagine Tomlin ending up in Baltimore.

then Harbaugh in Pittsburgh.

 

[Conn]

Welp looks like Tomlin should be available next season when we ultimately fire Quinn. Hopefully he stays on the sideline long enough for us to hire him. Tomlin would crush here. He just needs a change of scenery.

I have followed the Steelers trials and tribulations the last decade fairly closely, mostly just because I follow Jon Ledyard on Twitter (a guy who has covered both the Steeelers and Bucs professionally over the years) and he’s always talking about Tomlin. Always. Level-headed, but willing to be critical. He does the same for Bowles (and Arians before him), and for the coordinators under them. Ledyard was a very entertaining read during the Leftwich years in TB, and it’s why I wanted no part in that guy. And he’s out of the league now because despite being a young OC, he was a dinosaur. Just ancient football ideas that have no place in this modern league, hidden by Brady in their SB year. Tomlin is the same.

Simply put, Tomlin is also a dinosaur. What he does and how he does it and the process by which he makes decisions…it doesn’t work anymore in this league. You do not want Mike Tomlin running this franchise, trust me. He’s a respected guy. At a base level he’s even a good, effective coach and motivator. And he kept teams with mediocre-to-bad offenses (that he brought in the QB’s for and hired poor OC’s for btw) competitive and around .500 for a long time, comfortable in the organizational structure the Steelers provided. He’s over-appreciated by some, and under-appreciated by some, but I can tell from reading your comment here that you absolutely have not followed him and his decision-making, his staff hiring, etc. closely at all. Understandable. Trust me though, you do not want him here. You don’t. And the cherry on top, he has an enormous ego after being the king of the Steelers stable infrastructure for decades, holding him accountable or wanting him to consider new ideas is impossible. He would be horrific to watch here, and you’d be hoping Daniels could drag us past the wildcard round every year by sheer will.

 

[Neophyte]

Yeah, I'm trying to think of which coaches really recaptured their magic a second time. Maybe Parcels?

Tomlin finally stepped away because I think he wanted to walk before he got fired. Harbaugh seemed to have also plateaued over the past few years. Maybe they'll be great again, but I think it'll be more likely they never get back to the heights where they once stood.

Dick Vermeil
Dan Reeves
Andy Reid (I know he was mentioned but the list was off without him)
Jon Gruden
Tony Dungy
Bruce Arians

 

[DieselPwr44]

Dick Vermeil
Dan Reeves
Andy Reid (I know he was mentioned but the list was off without him)
Jon Gruden
Tony Dungy
Bruce Arians

I'd put Joe Gibbs in there just for the simple reason he got to the playoffs twice with Dan Snyder and Vinny at the helm of the front office.

 

[Neophyte]

I'd put Joe Gibbs in there just for the simple reason he got to the playoffs twice with Dan Snyder and Vinny at the helm of the front office.

I understand where you are coming from here. I considered it but in the end left him off because he didn't change teams and he didn't equal or surpass best seasonal end result from first team with the second team.

 

[McD5]

The Steelers are a cautionary tale about the worst thing you can ever be in football - never good enough to win anything, and never bad enough to get a top draft pick and great QB.

They never properly tanked, and in the process, shot themselves in the foot.

 

[heisenberg]

Dick Vermeil
Dan Reeves
Andy Reid (I know he was mentioned but the list was off without him)
Jon Gruden
Tony Dungy
Bruce Arians

Sean payton.

 

[NoCalSkins]

The Steelers are a cautionary tale about the worst thing you can ever be in football - never good enough to win anything, and never bad enough to get a top draft pick and great QB.

They never properly tanked, and in the process, shot themselves in the foot.

The Tomlin era of the Steelers was about like the Braves of the 90's.....always good enough to be in the conversation, but only great enough to win a single argument, and it's arguable the Super Bowl he did win had a large amount of the core team handed over from the final years of the Bill Cowher era. I am not here to shade Tomlin or anything, just put in perspective that when you look at what the franchise accomplished during his tenure, the one thing that jumps out is the lack of championships mixed in with all the winning seasons.

 

[method man]

I have followed the Steelers trials and tribulations the last decade fairly closely, mostly just because I follow Jon Ledyard on Twitter (a guy who has covered both the Steeelers and Bucs professionally over the years) and he’s always talking about Tomlin. Always. Level-headed, but willing to be critical. He does the same for Bowles (and Arians before him), and for the coordinators under them. Ledyard was a very entertaining read during the Leftwich years in TB, and it’s why I wanted no part in that guy. And he’s out of the league now because despite being a young OC, he was a dinosaur. Just ancient football ideas that have no place in this modern league, hidden by Brady in their SB year. Tomlin is the same.

Simply put, Tomlin is also a dinosaur. What he does and how he does it and the process by which he makes decisions…it doesn’t work anymore in this league. You do not want Mike Tomlin running this franchise, trust me. He’s a respected guy. At a base level he’s even a good, effective coach and motivator. And he kept teams with mediocre-to-bad offenses (that he brought in the QB’s for and hired poor OC’s for btw) competitive and around .500 for a long time, comfortable in the organizational structure the Steelers provided. He’s over-appreciated by some, and under-appreciated by some, but I can tell from reading your comment here that you absolutely have not followed him and his decision-making, his staff hiring, etc. closely at all. Understandable. Trust me though, you do not want him here. You don’t. And the cherry on top, he has an enormous ego after being the king of the Steelers stable infrastructure for decades, holding him accountable or wanting him to consider new ideas is impossible. He would be horrific to watch here, and you’d be hoping Daniels could drag us past the wildcard round every year by sheer will.

To your point, whether it is stated or not, he had personnel control in Pittsburgh. The QB decisions the past few years and his poor choices of OCs are entirely on him. If he were to come here, he'd want the same thing, which I want no part of.

Maybe, with the year off to reflect, he can work alongside a GM or prez of football ops with a powerful voice who can cover his blind spots, kind of what George Paton is doing for Sean Payton in Denver despite it starting off as a shotgun marriage.

 

[mcdonaldrw]

You know it's sad that after just 2 seasons we are heading into year 3 of the DQ experience with him on the hot seat before this season is even over. Do I think this is all on DQ, no I don't think it all should be on his shoulders.

Looking back on this past season there are some key issues that are a direct HC problem. Pre-Season needs to be used to build chemistry, determine what you have and what you need to work on. DQ treated the pre-season as just practice games. I know injuries happen, but with the number of injuries we had across the team this year I have to wonder if there wasn't more than could be done to prevent some of them, I know we use to have someone that laid all the woes of the team on strength and conditioning, maybe after this season that poster would have been right.

Having said that though I find the biggest fault for this season to be the front office. If we were just going to sign Terry why put it off so long? Why did we go into this season thinking that after winning 8 of the games in 2024 by 1 score, which a majority of those were won on the last drive by JD5 playing with cheat codes on, why did we think we could just sail into 2025 without upgrading or adding key elements to the team. The team had approximately 64 million heading into 2025, why did we not sign some folks? And that's an honest question because I'm not as savvy when it comes to this aspect of the game, was it just that there was no one out there that would have been a better option than Ertz, or Eckler? Were there no other receivers that we could have gotten? I feel like the OL did a good enough job that had we added another weapon we would have really seen a difference, but again that would only be with the addition of taking pre-season seriously.

I hope we see AP do a better job of giving DQ the tools to turn the defense around, fix what ever allowed there to be so many injuries, and get JD the weapons he needs both for the passing game and a good running game to pull some focus and keep the other team honest.

 

[Conn]

The Terry situation is not reasonable to hang on the FO. Everything else, yes, enthusiastically with you—our offseason coming off an NFCCG was overall pretty pathetic.

But Terry ended up accepting essentially what we offered months earlier. It was him trying to leverage a ridiculous top-5 WR deal for himself when he had the ultimately accepted deal on the counter all along. We didn’t really budge and that contract was still generous given his actual value imo. The Terry situation is on him and his agent being assholes.

The only way to sign him sooner would have been to cave to his dumbass demands. I promise you people would be even more upset at that stupid contract it it existed. We’d be a laughing stock and probably still would have only won like 6 games. And would have an albatross of a contract on the books for a WR2 who will be 31 when next season starts.

 

[Riggo44]

You know it's sad that after just 2 seasons we are heading into year 3 of the DQ experience with him on the hot seat before this season is even over.

The only place I've seen Quinn being on the hot seat before the season even starts is here an X. Not saying he will or wont be as the season progresses, but Keim specifically went out of his way to say he hasn't heard this is the case.

 

[mcdonaldrw]

You are probably right, but I can't imagine any HC not being on the hot seat after going from 12 wins to 5 wins in the course of 1 season. I think if the 26 season starts off like last season there is for sure a match under his chair ready to be lit.

 

[Riggo44]

You are probably right, but I can't imagine any HC not being on the hot seat after going from 12 wins to 5 wins in the course of 1 season. I think if the 26 season starts off like last season there is for sure a match under his chair ready to be lit.

If we win 5-6-7 games next year, that's a different story. But Shanhan has had 4 losing seasons in 9 years with the 9ers, including 3 of his first 4--including getting worse in his 2nd year:

 

[skinzplay]

There are so many oddities about DQ. He did all of that soul-searching and reflection, then hired Whitt as DC and left the unit to Whitt's ultimate control. He parted with Kliff because of a philosophical difference over the offense and how players were being (under)utilized. Kliff is Cliff. Everyone knows what he does and essentially when he chooses to do it (competent DCs, particularly). It begs the question why in the hell he hired Kliff in the first place.

We keep hearing and reading this line that DQ doesn't want to repeat the mistake of letting talented coaches leave. Reporters need to ask him a tough question: what if those assistants had no intention of staying? I think that he will never have an offensive coach from the Shanahan tree coach under him again. They share pleasantries and express respect publicly, but I just don't think they want any part of it. McDaniel will hopefully get another HC gig, if not he's probably the hottest OC available this cycle and can be selective. He was never coming here as OC under DQ, and none of the offensive staff from ATL ever will. Hell, even Durde followed Macdonald to Seattle as a non-play-calling DC instead of following Quinn, under whom he coached in Atlanta and Dallas.

 

[Conn]

The only place I've seen Quinn being on the hot seat before the season even starts is here an X. Not saying he will or wont be as the season progresses, but Keim specifically went out of his way to say he hasn't heard this is the case.

Keim also said that if we start slow, things could change. Doesn’t sound like a rock solid position for Quinn. Keim wouldn’t have said that going into this past season because we were successful. He’s allowing for the possibility now. And he didn’t say a disastrous season or anything, he said a slow start.

That’s kind of the definition of being on the hot seat. Whether Keim considers it that or not, if a slow start can change minds and put your job in jeopardy, your seat is starting to get warm already. That means Quinn has lost some benefit of the doubt and needs to not have a slow start. That’s not nothing.

 

[skinzplay]

Yep, we had lost 8 games in a row, most of them in pretty pathetic fashion (think Rich Kotite/Marty Mornhinweg pathetic) and Keim kept alluding to it being critical for DQ to win and show improved team performance. Harris is all smiles, handshakes and cool with the fans, but he's understandably demanding (not intrusive) as an owner. He seeks answers and if you don't have them, then consider the hourglass turned over.