The watchword of Dan Quinn’s first practice of his first training camp as Falcons coach was “energy,” which differentiated it from no practice in the history of football. No coach has ever said, “Men, this year we’re going to win with torpor.”
Jerry Glanville? His teams had energy. Dan Reeves? Jim Mora? Bobby Petrino? Mike Smith? Energy all around. (Yes, even Petrino’s men. They actually played hard for him until he lit out for the Ozarks.)
That the Falcons’ latest man in charge had his players moving fast and looking sharp on Day 1 should tell us nothing. All players look a bit sharper when being observed by fresh eyes. But darned if Quinn’s brand of energy didn’t seem to bear an edge that maybe Smith’s didn’t.
Quinn arrived from the Seahawks, having served as defensive coordinator for a team unlucky not to have won consecutive Super Bowls. The Falcons hated playing Seattle, and not just because the Seahawks were good. They were also mean. They played to the whistle and beyond. They didn’t care about penalties — they led the NFL each of the past two seasons — because they were more interested in sounding a bellicose tone.
Of edgy energy, Quinn said Friday: “I want it to be our style. It’s not that we play three-deep and man-to-man. Well, guess what? Everybody plays three-deep and man-to-man. Can we make those calls come to life with the style and the attitude that we want to play with? When we start doing that, that’s when you’ll see us be at our best. I hope when you see us play, you’ll say, ‘These guys are tough. These guys try to outhit people.’”
A defensive coach by trade, Quinn hasn’t said whether he’ll continue to call sets as a head man. (Nearly everybody expects he will.) In Practice No. 1 of Training Camp No. 1, he strapped pads on his hands to show his defensive linemen some of the finer points. “Doing those hand drills, it’s for hand speed and how violent you can play,” he said, and a listener felt like underscoring the word “violent.”
The two greatest mysteries of Western civilization: Stonehenge and how a respected defensive man like Smith could have allowed his defenses to be so small and slow and, at the end, downright lousy. For all Smith’s talk about the need for energy, his offense was always the more forceful unit.
Here was linebacker Paul Worrilow, an undrafted free agent who became a starter under Smith, speaking of the new mood: “It’s not just at practice. It’s in the meeting rooms. It’s at lunch. It’s everywhere you go. The energy in the building, it’s so positive. Everyone’s moving in the right direction.”
Was that not the case last season? “Last year was last year,” Worrilow said. “Every team is different. I can’t really compare them.”
Which sounded like a nice way of not quite saying: Yeah, last year lacked a little something.
The Falcons were 10-22 the past two seasons, but Quinn said, “This is not a rebuild in any way.” He could well be right. The offense should again be stellar. If the defense can be a bit better — and it’d be hard not to be better than 32nd-best in a 32-team league — this should be a playoff team.
Quinn: “If we can take the ball away and take care of it, that’s how we’ll get better the fastest. That’s been a huge emphasis — our philosophy is going after the ball and taking care of it. Defensively, if we can get that much better at taking the ball away, I think we’ll have a shot.”
To say that Quinn’s predecessor failed is to ignore history. For five years, Smith was the best coach this franchise has had. He calmed the waters roiled by Michael Vick’s incarceration and Petrino’s desertion, and he nearly got this team to a Super Bowl. But, just as Smith was the right guy at the time of his hiring, Quinn would appear the man for this moment.
He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. (The latter is a figure of speech; the former isn’t. He really does have bright eyes.) Quinn apologized to a visitor Friday, saying, “I hope I’m not speaking in cliches.” But when this dynamic man speaks the words every coach does, they don’t sound like cliches. They sound like truth.
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