Former Falcons coach Dan Reeves has been impressed with how first-year coach Dan Quinn has navigated his team through some peaks and valleys over the course of the 2015 season.
“You can see how hard this team has played,” Reeves said while appearing on the Buck and Kincade radio show on 680 The Fan on Monday. “He’s been an impressive coach in my opinion.”
Reeves, who was being interviewed by Ben Ingram and Chris Mooneyham, was also impressed with how Quinn handled the six-game losing streak.
“Dan has done a great job of working through adversity and not batting an eye,” Reeves said.
Here are some more of Reeves comments from the show. Ingram and Mooneyham were subbing for Buck Belue and John Kincade:
ON THE FINISH TO THE SEASON: "With a couple of wins, hopefully three wins under your belt. Beating an undefeated team that had just embarrassed you two weeks ago, to me that speaks volumes about what kind of competitors you've got on the team. That's really what you're going to look at from a coaching standpoint over these next couple of weeks. How are these guys going to respond when there's nothing out there. We are just playing for our job. Who is going to really lay it on the line? Who can you count on? I think that's going to show a lot."
SPRINGBOARD TO NEXT SEASON: "You can see how hard this team has played. He's been an impressive coach in my opinion and you learn a lot through adversity about yourself as well as your football team and I don't think he's wavered through the whole time. He's been right up front talking about what we have to do, what we need to do and that we've got to quit beating ourselves and making those mistakes and finishing games. They were in an awful lot of games this year, but just didn't finish them. That was a great example yesterday of finishing against a real good football team.
“There’s just a lot of positives. I think another thing, just showing confidence in the players even though it hasn’t been the way you’d like for it to be, showing confidence in his players….like yesterday in his kicker. I thought that was a gutsy call at the end of kicking a 54-yard field goal. He showed a lot of confidence in him. He’d just missed one earlier. The first one he’d missed since he’d been a Falcon. That was a gutsy call because you’re going to give them great field position if you don’t make the field. When you made it that put a lot more pressure on Carolina.
“There are a lot of positives, but from a fan standpoint looking at what you have as far as a team is concerned and as far as a coaching staff is concerned, you can look at it and feel good about because I think Dan has done a great job of working through adversity and not batting an eye.
ON THE OFFENSE: "The redzone has been a highly crucial area for them and this was a highly rated defensive team. I think another thing that really impressed me was Matt Ryan. If you have any question about his toughness, yesterday to stick in there, and I don't know what was bothering him, but you could see that he was in pain. He took a heck of a shot earlier in the game. Yet, he never came out. Never showed anything other than just throwing the football the way that he's very capable of. I just think…that just showed us that he's got a great deal of toughness. Hopefully, we'll continue to improve in the offensive line."
ON THE RUN GAME: "Even though we didn't run the ball extremely well, we didn't leave the running game and that really helps Matt set up all of the play-action things. They really did a great job of just freezing those linebackers just a second and then hitting a lot slants routes right in behind them yesterday.
ON JULIO JONES' CATCH: "They can show the one-handed catch by the New York Giants as many times as you want, but that's probably as beautiful of a catch as I've ever seen with Julio going up right at the top. He caught it as high as you could possibly catch it and then getting it in the end zone. That was an unbelievable play.
UPGRADIING THE TALENT: "The way, to me, that Matt has been beat up the last couple of years, they definitely have to address the offensive line. Now, I'm not there looking and seeing how much progress they have made, because they have addressed it a little bit this offseason. We were better in the offensive line. Remember before the season started we were going, 'Oh my gosh all these changes. How in the world are they going to make it?' But (revamping the line) ended up being a good move, particularly from a running game standpoint. I would say offensive line, defensive line. You probably could flip a coin. But you have to win in the trenches and I think that's where the most improvement could be made.
MORE ON JULO: "If you watch the film, Julio is going to be open a heck a lot of the time. But (will) the quarterback have enough time to throw the football? Yesterday, Matt got hit a lot, but made some great throws in some tough situations."
ON WHAT HE'D SAY TO THE PLAYERS ON THEIR EXIT INTERVIEWS AFTER LOSING FOUR ONE-SCORE GAMES: "I think you point those things, in particular those four that …what happened in those four (one-score) games. I think that's right exactly what Dan has been saying. We have to learn how to finish football games. We've been in position, but finishing is the real key to getting the job done."
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