What do you think Quinn does all week, then? My understanding was that he still sits in on these meetings and has his input on the defensive gameplan—and also as much as he can with Kliff and the offensive game plan. I agree that he’s not running these meetings, his pitch to AP was that he would succeed as a CEO HC who has his hands on every part of the operation in a managerial role. To me that would include offering his knowledge and expertise on both sides of the ball as often as possible, without having to actually grind tape into the early hours of the morning and mastermind either side of the ball himself, or call the plays himself on gameday. But having input on the macro direction of the game plan and observing what the assistant coaches are showing the players in practice and preaching in positional meeting rooms?? That’s gotta be the majority of his job, right?
The idea that he’s not involved in the X’s and O’s at all until he demoted Whitt and took over this week? That seems crazy, what the hell does Quinn do when everyone spends all week in meetings then? I’m seriously asking
Quinn talked about this a lot when he started this job. According to him, he doesn't do X's and O's, he think it would make him a bad head coach. there is so much on his plate running the whole team that he doesn't have time to delve into game planning.
What am i guessing he's been doing on the defensive front? Watching practice, talking to Whitt, Whitt explaining what he's doing and why, hearing the calls when they come in. There was a time where I thought isn't that most of everyhing? But lol after reading Arians book, i see that as like 20% of the drill if that.
According to him, the battle between offensive coodinator and defensive coordinator are spending late nights dissecting each others unit and especially dissecting each others QB. I make X move, they make Y. When I go to this formation, this is how they react. It's about the actual game planning.
So Quinn hearing from Whitt about what he plans to do and why would demand he take it on a leap of faith. Because taking Quinn at his word, he was unikely shrugging off many of his HC duties during the season, and saying to Whitt, you know what i am going to stay up to midnight and study film with you and game plan this sucker together.
I was listening to Keim's podcast last night and he was going over having a convo with a defensive guy (assuming from another team) who described some of the process and related it to Whitt. They said watching the Lions game and if I heard him right referring to other games too -- this defense overreacts to formation, the QB audibles out of it, the defense in turn doesn't react to the offenses audible and are stuck in a bad defense for the given play again and again and again. They cited among examples Goff being in a passing formation, the defense goes cover 2, Goff's audibles to a run, and Gibbs is off to the races.
So its the opponent shows a chess move. The defense reacts hard to it. the opponent reacts to the defenses overreaction. And the defense is in the worst possible set up to stop the play.
Also they talked about this team struggiling with run fits and the passing formations playing off of it. And they go thats something driven by preperation that you run in practice to death. On that one could Quinn be part of the problem? Maybe. But at least in the one practice I watched Quinn wasn't just with the defense. Whitt ran his own unit.
If there is some blame pie directed at Quinn for this is perhaps he's too hands off the unit. He made should a big deal of noting wanting to be part of X's and O's especially taking this job that it felt a bit over the top where dude running defense is you thing, you should be more involved.
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