Cowboys 'Thanksgiving' Signing: Inside the Dante Fowler Jr. Relationship with Coach Dan Quinn
FRISCO - The holes on the resume of Dante Fowler since being selected third overall in the 2015 NFL Draft are, when we talk to league scouting minds, evident. Going into 2022, they said he lacked consistency, with just one season with a notable sack total (11.5 in 2019) and with spotty availability.
The Atlanta Falcons released him before last season (largely in a money move), meaning his next team will be his fourth in five years.
And that next team was the Dallas Cowboys, with CowboysSI.com first to reporting last spring that he got a one-year deal.
And Dan Quinn is a central reason why.
Fowler, now 28, was signed to a three-year, $48 million deal in Atlanta in 2020. That deal came under the umbrella of Quinn, then the Falcons coach - yes, the same Quinn who is now Dallas defensive coordinator who used his recruiting skills to help bring Fowler to The Star.
Does the 6-3, 255-pound pass-rusher Fowler - who earned his keep in 2022 with six sacks in support of DeMarcus Lawrence and Micah Parsons - have a bond with Quinn? Indeed, as not only did Quinn help bring him to Atlanta after having started with the Jaguars and then the Rams, he also was his position coach at the University of Florida.
“He definitely played a huge factor in it,” Fowler said in 2020 of his decision to sign with Atlanta. “We just built a relationship at that time. He used to always come and see me, talk to me. Everything was genuine. He talked to me about a lot of things as a man. Just over that one-year span of me being there with with him at UF, I went to his house. I met his wife. I had Thanksgiving with them.''
Yup. Sounds like Quinn.
And now the Cowboys sort of get him on a second straight "prove-it'' deals as if he's still a "reclamation project''? That's about the Quinn and Fowler relationship.
That's about "Thanksgiving'' in March.
