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Q & A with Tom Quinn
Special Teams Coordinator Tom Quinn talks with Giants.com.
By Michael Eisen, Giants.com

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June 20, 2007

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Tom Quinn is beginning his first season as the Giants' special teams coordinator. Quinn joined the Giants prior to the 2006 season as an assistant to then-coordinator Mike Sweatman, who announced his retirement in January. Quinn last week answered questions from the media about several special teams-related topics.

Q: What are your impressions of the special teams thus far?

Quinn: "They all did a good job. We are happy with their effort and grasping the concepts that we are teaching and taking in all the information that we give them and translating that onto the field."

Q: Will the kicking competition (between veteran Lawrence Tynes and rookie Josh Huston) go strictly by the numbers?

Quinn: "It's going to be a head-to-head competition up in Albany. We will look at their field goal accuracy, distance and kickoffs."

Q: Will you attempt to put more pressure on them before they kick?

Quinn: "Each kick, every day, every kick there will be pressure. You kind of like that as a coach, because that is what they are going to face in the stadium on game day. We are going to put them in as many pressure situations as we can, so we can see how the handle it. They start completely even."

Q: Do you need to see the punt and kickoff return candidates in a game before you can make a decision?

Quinn: "You need the preseason games. In practice we try to simulate that, but it's probably one of the hardest things to simulate."

Q: What is the current pecking order of the returners?

Quinn: "We've got a deep pool, a deeper pool than we did last year."

Q: Do you think any of the rookies will help you in the return game?

Quinn: "Aaron Ross was a good punt returner in college (at Texas) and Ahmad Bradshaw was both a kickoff and a punt returner (at Marshall)."

Q: What do you look for in a returner?

Quinn: "Ball possession. Number one, you have to be able to catch the ball and secure it and number two, what we get off of that is a bonus. We will have a guy who can catch it and secure it and get up field."

Q: Does David Tyree have a target on his back because he is such a good special teams player?

Quinn: "That goes along with being a good player in this league. If you're a defensive end, they are going to do the same thing, slide the protection over to you and chip you. So he has to be able to handle two guys blocking him on a punt or doubling him on a kickoff. We just have to be able to coach him how to handle those situations."

Q: You have some candidates at long snapper. Is the job still Ryan Kuehl's?

Quinn: "Ryan is the snapper. Zak (DeOssie, the fourth-round draft choice) is a good snapper, but it's obviously a step up from college to the NFL in snapping. Zak is a good special teams player. What I like is that we have a lot of guys on the team that can snap."

Q: Would you keep two kickers, one for field goals and another for kickoffs?

Quinn: "I don't think so. I don't think they are that far apart."

Q: Did Tynes change his approach last year in Kansas City to lengthen his kickoffs?

Quinn: "We saw him do it a couple of times. He has deepened his approach a little bit, so that has allowed more momentum into the kick. It's really early for those guys, but he had good distance."