Every successful head coach in the NFL nowadays got their start with an all-time great leader that they were assistants under. Andy Reid was a disciple to Mike Holmgren, Sean McVay was an assistant behind Mike Shanahan, and so on.
For the Washington Commanders, head coach Dan Quinn knows he got serious help being an assistant under college head coaching legend Nick Saban during his time at Alabama, and current Las vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll.
Both Saban and Carroll taught Quinn a valuable lesson about being yourself when leading an entire team.
"If you're going to walk into a locker room, man, you better be authentic to you and how you talk and how you express yourself," Quinn recently said in an interview on the Glue Guys Podcast.
"Their personalities were different, but if you walked into their program, it was a lot more similar than you'd think. Everybody in the organization knew this is how we do business here. Nick couldn't do it the way that Pete did and do it with joy, and Pete certainly couldn't do it in the way Nick did, but they were so authentic to themselves."
Quinn has already been a success story of sorts in the NFL. He led the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl in 2016 and reached the NFC Title game in his first year with the Commanders.
As his leadership style has grown, so too has the respect he's earned around the league.
And if Washington is going to reach new heights next season, they'll continue to need Quinn to learn from what he was taught under Carroll and Saban both.
