Changes Planned By New Dallas Cowboys Coordinator Dan Quinn

“I didn’t want to do just another rinse-and-repeat,” Quinn said.

FRISCO - It is an understandable but frustrating aspect of many NFL coaches: They are generally a “dance-with-what-brung-‘em” breed, guys who ascended to the top of their profession, so why, even when faced with temporary failure, change?

And then, maybe, there is Dan Quinn.

“I didn’t want to do just another rinse-and-repeat,” Quinn said about his next job after his 2020 firing as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

Allow us a bit of room for skepticism here: Every coach we’ve ever known talks of “self-improvement.” But recent Dallas bosses like Jason Garrett, Scott Linehan and Rod Marinelli often, in reality, dug their heels in even deeper when it came to challenges of their foundational philosophies.

And more recently, over the course of a failed 2020 season, then-new Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy did the same. For all the hype about “self-study in the barn in Wisconsin” and for all the preaching about “player over system,” McCarthy was in fact very much the coach in Dallas that he’d been in Green Bay.

For better or worse.

And at 6-10, mostly worse.

Like McCarthy before him, Quinn took the second half of last season to look at himself - his coaching style, his approach, his philosophies.

“That included defensive cutups from 2013 to 2020, and that brought me into some of the system changes that I wanted to implement on the next lap around,” Quinn said. “I didn’t want to do just another rinse-and-repeat.”

Quinn’s film study went back to his days as the Seattle defensive coordinator and as the boss in Atlanta - where Super Bowls resulted in both stops.

READ MORE: Dan Quinn Q&A: 'I Have To Prove It,' Says New Dallas Coordinator

There remain debates to be had about 4-3 vs 3-4, about Cover-3, how about hybrid linebackers and personnel groups and roster changes. We will argue that we should … well, wait to argue about change, simply because Cowboys Nation has fielded so many promises and so few rewards.

But Quinn insists he did “a 360 on the whole process.” That doesn’t mean a complete reversal of all the things that have worked in the past for Dallas and for him.

But if it means the Cowboys will not “rinse-and-repeat” a 2020 campaign that featured a franchise-low performance by the defense on the way to a 6-10 debacle? Maybe there is hope, because maybe Quinn is - unlike most of his coaching brothers - an agent of change.

READ MORE: Does Cowboys Defense Have A Leadership And Culture Problem?