Steve Hummer: Dan Quinn builds an attitude for Falcons

Thus far, the words seem to come as water from a fire hose, a powerful stream of earnestness that just might knock you backward should you stand too close.

And, often, Dan Quinn seems just a little out of breath while he’s delivering them, as if the NFL’s third-youngest coach (he turned 45 on Friday) just ran a mile to chase down his point.

So, among the torrent of verbiage that likely will accompany Quinn’s first Falcons season, tell us, coach, which few words will we hear most often? Everyone in your position has his favorites. The ones he’ll hammer on time and again. The ones that ultimately define his vision for the franchise.

Here are two of them, Quinn offered.

“Fast.”

“Physical.”

“I hope that would come through when you watch us play. I hope people say, ‘Man, do these guys play hard, and look how fast they play. These guys are tough.”

Wait, there’s another word Quinn leans upon.

“And I say ‘finish’ a lot.

“Finish halves. Finish games. Finish a quarter. Finish the season. Finish in the playoffs. It’s a mindset: I’m not backing off at any point, any time.”

All we know about the Falcons and their new coach at this stage is the message. There are no clear signs about the manpower just yet, although certain early preseason returns indicate that Matt Ryan may want to upgrade his health coverages, both medical and dental.

At the end of a 6-10 season last year, the Falcons fired Mike Smith, their most successful coach ever. He was 66-46 over seven seasons, but his last two were dismal, and Arthur Blank was compelled to part with “Smitty.”

Implied in the pain of any coaching change is the notion that the franchise itself is in need of major changing. Such a move is not supposed to be just cosmetic.

So, then, what needed to change most around the Falcons, to get them back on the road to watchability? You know, the way they were the last time a new guy with no previous head coaching experience came along (Smith).

“I just think we needed a fresh start,” lineman Jonathan Babineaux, the Falcons most veteran defender, said. “The last two seasons weren’t good, things weren’t going our way, the injuries, whatever the case may be. We got a fresh start, got a new system, got a new environment around here.

“Guys are buying into what Coach Quinn has been doing since Day One. We’re going to continue to ride on that train until it falls off (the tracks).”

You may have big questions about the new regime, until it proves itself one way or another.

Will Quinn’s natural tilt toward defense pay off for a unit that last season allowed more yardage than anyone, and was a feckless 27th in points allowed? And, goodness, just 22 sacks. The natural assumption: Well, it hardly could be worse.

How much can Quinn’s enthusiasm inflate the balloon, and will it matter if solutions don’t present themselves along the offensive line and in the backfield even in a division that is more a Highlights magazine puzzle than New York Times Sunday crossword?

We can’t even be sure of the new coach’s sideline acumen, seeing how at all the outposts of his fast-track career from Hempstead, N.Y. to Gainesville, Fla., to the great Northwest and five other stops in between he has been assisting rather than heading. As you may recall, time management was something of an issue with the previous administration.

Thus, Quinn’s preseason was a learning time, too. “That was the No. 1 thing that I wanted to develop the game-management side,” he said. “Timeouts to the two-minute (offense), to four-minute, to situations going through (officiating) challenges.

“I’m a work in progress, but I am pleased. ... I do feel good going into the games.”

There is no question that the son of a suburban New York insurance salesman is exactly where his passions have led him. This once was a kid who considered the perfect day to be one spent hanging around the Giants practice fields in preseason watching grown men drill.

In his career travels, Quinn has been exposed to all manner of coaching personalities, from the New Agers (Pete Carroll and Steve Mariucci) to the brusquer types (Nick Saban). The impression from his first Falcons training camp: He seems to skew toward the outer part of the coaching box, going with positivity and inventiveness rather than good old-fashioned fear.

Now that he is the man in charge, he is allowed to fully exert his own self.

“In Seattle I thought he was more reserved than now,” said linebacker O’Brien Schofield, who was with Quinn and the Seahawks last season. “He has a great personality. He’s cracking jokes. He’s one of those coaches that players who want to work hard and build up a relationship with a coach will love to play for as long as they can.”

Such a personality is not one to watch from an imperial distance while his defenders work. “The defense is all together, doing a circuit (of drills) and he’s in there doing the circuit with us,” Schofield said.

Practices have been shorter, yet crisper. And accompanied always by a wide variety of music blaring from overhead.

There is a basketball goal in the team meeting room, where members of the offense challenge those on defense to free-throw contests. There even was a home-run derby on the practice field before the drudgery of camp began.

He has dropped a funny Will Ferrell clip into a practice video, to both make a point and break up the monotony. He has held an impromptu game show in which players were quizzed on their knowledge of workers at the Falcons complex.

Yeah, there’s football amid all this, too, but obvious is the thought that a happy team can be a winning one.

“He tries to make it like a brotherhood,” Babineaux said. “When it’s time to be serious, it’s time to be serious. When we have fun, we have fun together. It’s like a family. We’ll take care of one another.”

“Most teams, when you’re really good it starts in the locker room,” Quinn said. “That connection, that toughness, that, ‘Man, I will not let you down.’ I’ve seen firsthand when that connection is really strong how good a team can play. And I’ve also seen when the connection is not as strong, it’s hard to be really good out on the field.”

There is one certain way to displease Quinn (yes, he said, it is possible to bring out his inner Lombardi). Asked what is sure to make him angry, he immediately responded, “When you’re not going for it. Holding back. Being uptight. I want a team that lets it rip, that’s aggressive.”

All that matters now is how all this new energy will translate to the field.

Will it supply enough power to turn around this super tanker of a franchise? And how exactly would the man in charge, now without all those playmakers he had as Seattle’s defensive coordinator, define a turnaround here in Year 1?

He’s going to do it by applying the principles of his two favorite words: Fast. Physical.

“It’s going to start with effort in terms of the way we come off that ball,” Quinn said.

“I’m not going to do any predictions in terms of record. But I’m hoping that if we play as we’re capable, we’ll like the results.”

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