Former Cowboys head coach says Dan Quinn may have been ‘too buddy-buddy’ with players

One opinion suggests Dan Quinn was too friendly with Dallas Cowboys defenders.

The dust has finally settled following Dan Quinn’s departure from the Dallas Cowboys. While he is the new head coach of the Washington Commanders his post has been filled by Mike Zimmer.

Quinn leaves behind big shoes as the Cowboys defense thrived under his leadership for three years. Generating turnovers was once a rarity for this franchise, but they became commonplace over the last thousand days or so. In spite of this, there were many Cowboys fans who were happy to see him depart, and particularly to land with a division rival, based on how the second half of this past season went. Dan Quinn’s group became rather unrecognizable relative to who they had been for the majority of his tenure.

With Quinn completely out of the fold, discussion about what maybe could have been better with him has begun and one former head coach of the Cowboys has one specific idea.

Dave Campo says Dan Quinn may have been ‘too buddy-buddy’ with players

Generally speaking, information about eras or situations tends to pop up when they are over. With Dan Quinn now coaching on a different team, there are different kinds of discussions emerging relative to what he did with the Cowboys. One recent discussion came by way of former Cowboys head coach Dave Campo. Appearing on San Antonio’s Sports Star on Thursday, Campo noted that it was his opinion that – based on some hearsay – that Dan may have been ‘too buddy-buddy’ with his players.

“From a culture standpoint… I’ll just say one thing this way. I know Dan Quinn very well. I was not in the office, in the building, I’m here in Jacksonville so I saw a bunch of the games. I saw that game. I’m going a little bit on some hearsay. But I think the one thing about Dan is he’s a fine gentlemen and he’s smart and his scheme was okay, but he was a little bit too buddy-buddy I think with the players and that’s part of it. You can’t have a lot of accountability if you don’t stand a little bit above it of the people that you’re trying to get to be accountable.”

“But more so than that, when they lost number 55, they lost only the real linebacker that they had on that ball club. And their two inside tackles, they were pass rushers. And so they were small defense and the teams that could run the ball on them were successful and that’s what happened in that ballgame. They need to get bigger and more physical inside.”

There is no doubt that Dan Quinn was famously close with his players on the Cowboys, something regarded to be among his greatest strengths. There are pros and cons to any kind of quality like this and it is fair to say that perhaps Quinn flew too close to the sun and potentially lacked a level of accountability with the team.

That feels like a big stretch to make which is why it is interesting that Campo felt comfortable saying it out loud. Mike Zimmer is known for being a bit of a disciplinarian which suggests that he would be the polar opposite of ‘buddy-buddy’ and given that he was the team’s choice it can be assumed that they wanted to flip to the other side of that spectrum.

Do you buy what Campo is saying? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.