Move aside, people. Royalty has arrived.
“Dan! No other team was able to find a way to beat the Carolina Panthers! You beat the Carolina Panthers! How did you beat the Carolina Panthers?!?”
This is how it went Thursday for Dan Quinn. He hopped from one radio station to the other, not known as the Falcons’ coach whose team lost six consecutive games in the gut of its season and missed the playoffs, but rather as the visionary who orchestrated the only blemish on Carolina’s 17-1 record.
The great mysteries of the world: Stonehenge. The Great Pyramids. The Falcons’ game plan against Carolina.
“It’s so funny to hear everybody ask, ‘What’s the one key?’” Quinn said.
Two weeks after getting run over by Carolina 38-0, the Falcons beat the Panthers 20-13 in the next to last week of the regular season, preventing their NFC South rival from going undefeated. The defense held Cam Newton to 188 yards combined passing and rushing, sacked him twice and forced a fumble (a late-game strip by rookie Vic Beasley).
Earlier this week, Denver defensive coordinator Wade Phillips was asked if he had culled any secret formula for success against Newton from watching the Falcons’ game on tape. Response: not really. Yes, they did a nice job on Newton and tight end Greg Olson. But there wasn’t anything revolutionary about what happened.
“When you play a team twice a year, you know each other really well,” Phillips said. “And then when you get beat 38-0 and you get to play them again, at home, you’re going to have some motivation. It was just a little extra. Plus, it’s hard to win every game. Nobody’s done it since 1972. So you’re going to have games where you’re not doing everything right.”
The Panthers view that game as a fluke. Quinn sees it as one of those times when his team merely played up to expectations and didn’t lose the turnover margin. (The Falcons were 7-1 when doing so.) Julio Jones’ 70-yard touchdown catch from Fantasyland also helped.
“Our scheme didn’t change,” Quinn said. “We might’ve actually (used a simpler game plan). Sometimes you can get wrapped up in all of the quarterback-designed runs (by Newton), and there ended up being not as many as you think, maybe five to seven.”
And then: “It’s a topic because they only had one loss. If they went 14-2, nobody would care. The one leaves a permanent scar. But Wade is right. There wasn’t a wholesale change on our part.”
This isn’t Quinn’s favorite week. Walking radio row at the Super Bowl is akin to walking the green mile for a coach. It’s confirmation he’s not one of the two coaches in the game, as he was in consecutive years with Seattle before coming to Atlanta.
“I’d much rather be at practice right now,” he said.
I didn’t take that personally.
Quinn has some found memories of the Bay Area. He got his NFL coaching start with San Francisco in 2001. “Driving up (Highway) 101 from the airport, I thought about Bill Walsh’s past and the guys who had such an influence on me, like (defensive coordinator) Bill McPherson, who was here,” he said.
But his overwhelming feeling Thursday was dread. The trip was a painful reminder of when the Falcons’ season derailed in November. They were coming off a 23-20 overtime loss to Tampa Bay, but were still 6-2 going into a road game against the 2-6 49ers. But they had one of their worst performances of the season, losing 17-16 to the Blaine Gabbert-led Niners in a game punctuated by Quinn’s decision to kick a field goal from the San Francisco 1-yard line with 2:56 left rather than go for the go-ahead touchdown on fourth down.
The conservative decision went against everything Quinn preaches, and it backfired. The 49ers ran out the clock. Quinn second-guesses himself on it and said that loss still stings more than any other.
“I’m not a sit-on-the-fence guy — I generally want to make a decision and go,” he said. “So when that one didn’t come through and we didn’t get the win that I had envisioned the whole time, that decision for sure left a scar for me and I’ve learned from.”
Was there residual from that game in the losses that followed?
“I think at times that can happen,” Quinn said. “That might’ve been the one to flip (the season).”
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