Tom Quinn is in his sixth season with the Giants and his fifth as the team’s special teams coordinator. His first year with the team was spent as an assistant to Mike Sweatman, who retired following the 2006 season. Head coach Tom Coughlin quickly named Quinn to replace Sweatman.
Quinn’s special teams underwent significant change in 2010, when Jeff Feagles, the most prolific punter in NFL history, retired and was replaced by rookie Matt Dodge and Domenik Hixon, the Giants’ leading kickoff and punt returner, missed the entire season with a knee injury suffered in a minicamp practice.
Tom Quinn is in his sixth season with the Giants and his fifth as the team’s special teams coordinator. His first year with the team was spent as an assistant to Mike Sweatman, who retired following the 2006 season. Head coach Tom Coughlin quickly named Quinn to replace Sweatman.
Quinn’s special teams underwent significant change in 2010, when Jeff Feagles, the most prolific punter in NFL history, retired and was replaced by rookie Matt Dodge and Domenik Hixon, the Giants’ leading kickoff and punt returner, missed the entire season with a knee injury suffered in a minicamp practice.
Dodge finished ninth in the NFL with a 44.8-yard gross average on 72 punts. Zak DeOssie, the snapper on both punts and placekicks, was selected to his second Pro Bowl in three seasons. The Giants’ kickoff coverage unit was ranked fourth in the NFL, allowing an average return of only 19.7 yards. A stalwart again on the coverage teams was Chase Blackburn, who missed three games because of injuries, but still led the Giants in special teams tackles for the sixth season in a row with 17 (13 solo). Dave Tollefson and Deon Grant tied for second with 13 (each had nine solo tackles).
Kicker Lawrence Tynes again gave the Giants consistent production. He led the Giants with 100 points, his second 100-point season in a row and third in his four years with the Giants. Tynes succeeded on 19 of 23 field goal attempts and all 43 of his extra point tries.
Tynes’ 43 extra points without a miss were the third-highest single-season total in Giants history. Pat Summerall made all 46 of his PATs in 1961 and Tynes hit 45 in 2009. Tynes has made 115 consecutive extra points since missing one vs. San Francisco on Oct. 21, 2007. The team record of 133 in a row was set by Pete Gogolak from 1967-72.
The 100 points increased Tynes’ Giants total to 341, which places him seventh on the franchise’s career list, one ahead of Raul Allegre and just seven points behind Amani Toomer.
Tynes’ 53-yard field goal at Dallas on Oct. 25 tied his career long, set on Oct. 22, 2006, when he played for Kansas City against San Diego.
The Giants benefitted from outstanding play by Quinn’s special teams in 2009. Tynes led the Giants and was fifth in the NFL in scoring with a career-high 126 points, the fourth-highest total by a kicker in team history. With Hixon doing the bulk of the work, the Giants were seventh in the NFL with a 10.9-yard punt return average. Hixon also set Giants single-season records with 57 kickoff returns for 1,291 yards. On Oct. 18 at New Orleans, Hixon had 303 total yards, shattering Joe Scott’s 61-year-old franchise record by 24 yards. The total included 230 kickoff return and 51 punt return yards. Opposing teams averaged only 21.0 yards per kickoff return, the NFL’s eighth-best figure.
In 2008, three of the Giants’ special teams players – kicker John Carney, Feagles and DeOssie – played for the NFC Pro Bowl team. Blackburn was named a Pro Bowl alternate as a cover specialist.
Carney was signed just prior to the season because Tynes was sidelined with an injury. Quinn quickly integrated Carney into the kicking unit and the veteran had the best season a Giants kicker has ever had, succeeding on 35 of 38 field goals attempts for a franchise-record .921 percentage. Carney’s 35 field goals tied the team single-season record, which he shares with Ali Haji-Sheikh (1983) and Jay Feely (2005).
That season, Feagles had a gross average of 44.0 yards and a career-high net average of 40.2 yards on 64 punts. His previous best net average was 38.2 yards in 1995, his first Pro Bowl season. Feagles’ gross average tied for the second-highest of his career and was just three-tenths of a yard less than the career best of 44.3 yards he set with Arizona in 1997. Feagles holds the NFL records for punts (1,713), punting yards (71,211) and punts downed inside the 20-yard line (554).
In addition to the Pro Bowlers’ exploits, Quinn’s coverage teams played extremely well that season. The Giants’ special teams were ranked fourth in the NFL according to a comprehensive survey by the Dallas Morning News. The Giants allowed only 140 punt return yards all season and were ranked third in the NFL in punt coverage, giving up an average of only 5.85 yards a return. The team’s field goal percentage of 92.3 was ranked third. The Giants blocked three field goals and opposing teams converted 73 percent of their attempts, the fourth-lowest figure in the NFL. The 40.2-yard net punting average was a Giants record and placed them fourth in the league. Their opponents averaged 5.8 yards a return, the NFL’s third-best figure. Hixon averaged a team-record 60.0 yards on three kickoff returns at Arizona.
The special teams overcame adversity and performed well in the Giants’ 2007 championship season. Long-snapper Ryan Kuehl suffered a season-ending injury in training camp, and the Giants used rookie snappers Jay Alford (on placekicks) and DeOssie (for punts) the entire year. Tynes made 23 of 27 field goal attempts (85.2 percent), the same numbers posted the previous season by Feely. Tynes also made the biggest kick of the postseason, a game-winning 47-yarder in overtime in the NFC Championship Game in Green Bay.
Quinn employed three kickoff returners – Ahmad Bradshaw, Reuben Droughns and Hixon – and the Giants finished seventh in the NFL with a 23.9-yard average. The coverage teams were also strong; Giants opponents averaged only 6.2 yards on 28 punt returns.
Quinn, 43, coached in the collegiate ranks for 15 years. Before joining the Giants, he spent four years on the coaching staff at Stanford University. Quinn coached the special teams in each of those seasons, plus the tight ends in 2002 and 2003, and the outside linebackers in 2004 and 2005.
Quinn began his career coaching linebackers at Davidson in 1991. From 1992-94, he was the special teams coach and recruiting coordinator at James Madison. In 1995, he was the defensive coordinator at Boston University and from 1996-98 Quinn was the defensive coordinator at Holy Cross.
Quinn moved back to the West Coast in 1999 at San Jose State, where in three years he worked with the linebackers, tight ends and with the special teams. He joined the staff at Stanford in 2002.
Quinn grew up in Southern California, where he played at Foothill High School. From 1986-90, Quinn was a linebacker at the University of Arizona, where he played on three bowl teams. He earned a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies in 1990 and a master’s in education the following year.
Quinn and his wife, Alison, have a son, Shane, and two daughters, Logan and Riley.
