What new head coach Dan Quinn brings to the Commanders defense

Taking a closer look at the evolution of new Commanders head coach Dan Quinn's defensive system

The Washington Commanders have hired Dan Quinn to be their new head coach. Quinn was the Cowboys defensive coordinator and had previously been the head coach of the Falcons from 2015-2020, so he’s not exactly the popular choice among Washington fans who had been hoping for the exciting young offensive coordinator profile to pair with a potential rookie quarterback with the second overall pick. With Quinn being defensive minded and previously having had a head coaching job, many fans are comparing him to Ron Rivera. While I get the comparison on paper, having studied Quinn’s scheme, he’s a vastly different coach to Rivera. 

Rivera was a CEO type coach that hired his coordinators and let them coach instead of interfering. When Washington hired him, he had been fired, as had his staff in Carolina. Quinn was fired by the Falcons back in 2020 and has been building a strong Cowboys defense since 2021. His staff are on the up with many on that Cowboys defensive staff highly thought of. Most importantly, Quinn himself has improved and shown the willingness to learn and innovate based on the players available to him. 

Quinn has quite the background of impressive mentors. He served as Nick Saban’s defensive line coach in Miami back in 2005 but he’s most well known for his work under Pete Carroll in Seattle, where he served as defensive coordinator in 2013 and 2014, leading the famous “Legion of Boom” unit that powered the Seahawks to a Super Bowl win in 2014. Coming from that Seattle tree, Quinn is known for the Cover-3 system that spread around the NFL during the mid-2010’s. By the time he was fired in Atlanta, teams had adapted, so when Quinn went to Dallas, he had to adapt too. 

Now, Cover-3 is a base zone coverage that every team in the NFL will use to varying degrees, so of course Quinn still uses it in Dallas and we will likely see plenty of Cover-3 and all its variations here in Washington in the near future. 

Here’s an example of Quinn’s Cowboys running Cover-3 from this past season. The basics of Cover-3 is that it’s a three-deep, four-under zone coverage. That means the deep section is split into thirds, typically with a single deep safety in the middle of the field and the two outside corners sinking back to cover the outside thirds. Then the remaining four coverage defenders will split the underneath part of the field into quarters.

On this play, we see the Cowboys drop into Cover-3 with the strong safety responsible for the flat to the left side of the offensive formation. Lions quarterback Jared Goff looks to hit a quick out to his tight end in the flat, but because the safety is in zone coverage instead of man coverage, he’s able to play with vision on the quarterback rather than focusing purely on his man. With that vision, he can see the quarterback setting up to throw quickly and thus can break on the route immediately. The safety does a great job undercutting the route and intercepting the pass.

While Quinn certainly does still use Cover-3, his defense has evolved from the Seattle days where they lived almost exclusively in Cover-3. With the Cowboys, he’s used a lot more man coverage. Man coverage is even more basic than Cover-3 because it simply asks the defenders to cover the man across from them. When run well, it’s hard to beat and requires the opposing offense to either have an elite receiver to win his man coverage matchup or to run route combinations that beat man coverage. An extremely common way to attack man coverage is to run crossing routes, as it’s very tough for defenders in man coverage to run across the field out-leveraged, as the Commanders found out on numerous occasions this past season. Quinn, however, has ways of combating that. 

Here we see a nice rep of what’s known as Cover-1 Plug or Cover-1 Hole. Essentially, the defense is in man coverage with a single safety back deep, but they also add an extra coverage defender. This defender is known as a plugger or hole defender and his job is to sit in the shallow middle of the field and look for crossing routes. On this play, the Eagles have star receiver A.J. Brown running a shallow crossing route against Cowboys cornerback DaRon Bland. Bland is in off-coverage, so already has a cushion between himself and Brown, but is also playing with outside leverage. This puts him in an incredibly tough spot to try and run with Brown on a shallow cross. 

Fortunately, the Cowboys have a plugger. Safety Markquese Bell, who the Cowboys use more as a linebacker, is sat in the middle of the field and spots Brown running towards him. Bell has much better leverage in order to deal with the crosser, so he takes control of the route, cutting it off and taking it away from the quarterback, while Bland then replaces Bell as the plugger. You can see Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was looking for Brown on that shallow cross against man coverage, but because Bell was there to cut the route, Hurts was forced to hold onto the ball, which allowed the pass rush an extra second to get home and sack him. 

Cover-1 Plug/Hole is a very useful coverage to have in the bag and it’s one that Quinn used a lot with Dallas this season. But he also has other variations to call on too. 

This variation is known as Cover-1 Robber. The idea is essentially the same as Cover-1 Plug, man coverage across the board with a single deep safety in the deep middle of the field and another defender in a more shallow middle hole looking for crossers. The difference here is just which defender is the player in the hole. In Cover-1 Plug, you typically see a linebacker or safety up near the line of scrimmage sink back into the hole, whereas in Cover-1 Robber, a safety rotates down from deep into a “Robber”, with essentially the same responsibilities. This is a nice variation because it allows the defense to show two-deep safeties pre-snap and disguise their intentions post-snap as the safeties rotate. 

This rep was also particularly good because the Lions motioned into a bunch formation to the left. Bunch formations are tough to defend, especially in man coverage as all three receivers can take different releases, making it hard to decipher where each receiver is going. It also creates a lot of traffic, which can make it hard for defenders to stick close to their receiver. However, the Cowboys do a great job passing this off without any issues, which shows the defenders are well coached and communicating well, a key to success for any secondary. 

The Lions anticipate man coverage from the Cowboys and like we saw from the Eagles, they send a receiver on a shallow cross. The defender actually stays pretty close, but the Cowboys have the safety in a robber position ready to cut the route and take it away. With the shallow cross taken away, Jared Goff falls to the same fate as we saw from Jalen Hurts, being forced to hold onto the ball longer and eventually being sacked. 

These Cover-1 variations aren’t anything particularly special, every team has them installed. We saw the Commanders use these this year, but many of their personnel struggled to stay with receivers in man coverage. Rookie cornerback Emmanuel Forbes was one that was particularly exposed in man coverage, with the Commanders often leaving him completely on an island against some of the best receivers in the league. He predictably struggled and the Commanders benched him instead of trying to help him. Quinn, however, showed a willingness to adapt his coverages and help his corners against the better receivers, instead of leaving them exposed.