Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn continues to work on developing players, all players

The Dallas Cowboys have the best defensive play-caller in the NFL in Dan Quinn. That Quinn has elected to return to the Cowboys two years in a row after successful seasons has been a pleasant surprise given how he has performed. Simply put, Dan Quinn is one of the most important people associated with the team.

Quinn joined San Antonio Sports Star on Tuesday morning in an appearance with R&R In The Morning. You can watch his entire appearance below.

I’ve been in Oxnard this week with the SA crew and so far this was my favorite interview that anybody at the station has done. These were my favorite things that Quinn touched on.

Quinn on the benefits to getting away to California:

There is a real advantage to coming away ...there’s a connection that takes place. There’s some things just being away together as a group, you may not be able to, to quantify it and put a number on it, you know, the importance of that, can’t measure that. But I would say this connection that they have, they’re in between meetings or at night or being together, it integrates your team as good as you can. And so when it gets to, you know, late January where they’re, you know, in a playoff game and loud as hell and you know, there’s about two minutes left and you know, it’s 13-13, when you’re connected to that way, not just like, yeah, you know, this guy as a teammate, but like you got for this guy because like you’ve put it in together... some of that happens here.

Quinn on all players always being subject to improvement:

I think the NBA has done a good job of developing players and I’m certainly interested into that to see how they take somebody and sometimes they may only have one year of college or none and work ‘em up and how do they go and utilize those players to keep improving? Because to me, development sometimes gets a bad word where it’s, it’s not just the younger player. Like we’re developing all the guys. Micah’s developing, you know, he’s getting better. Jayron Kearse has developed, like, there’s always things that they work on to get better at. And so you don’t want to think if you think, ‘hey, I made it, I don’t have to work anymore’ ...say goodbye.

Quinn on working Stephon Gilmore in and overall training camp goals:

I’ll tell you a story that happened probably about three weeks ago. I was out walking with my wife and about, it must have been about 10 minutes had gone by and she says, where are they? And I said, where, where’s who? And she said, where are the players in your head? You haven’t said anything for like 10 minutes. I’m just sitting there watching you. And we were just walking. I said, oh my bad. So I said, well, we’re doing good.

I was like, all right, what would we, what would that look like if he was over to this side and how would that go? And so I do enjoy that because part of me in this camp is learning some of the new players and what they could do. That’s, some of the rookies that we have, we have nine, you know, rookies that are here, including Steph, who’s new, but there’s a good nucleus. But adding these new guys, that’s been a real priority for me coming into camp. You know, what some of your goals coming in to say can I really integrate the new guys? Can I really, you know, understand what makes them that, who needs work and what area? And that’s why sometimes in practice we’re now just calling plays to see some guys, you know, like I wanna see a lot of man to man against the tight end. That’s the nice part of training camp. Like I can do that.

My favorite thing Quinn said had to do with development. It is very cool how he operates as if it is possible for everyone, even the biggest stars on the team.

Additionally it was very cool to see how Quinn sets up goals for himself entering camp in terms of what he wants to do and accomplish. This felt like a great peek inside the mind of Quinn which is certainly a fascinating place.