Commanders head coach Dan Quinn knew when he traded for wide receiver Deebo Samuel that he was adding some speed to the offense. But it wasn’t until seeing Samuel up close on the field during offseason practices that Quinn realized just how fast Samuel is.
“Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten until [he was] out here how fast he is,” Quinn said, via Commanders.com.
Quinn has coached against Samuel and said he has spent many hours preparing for the way Samuel can threaten a defense.
“And so, sometimes when you’re playing against the receiver you say, ‘Man, you better either get him at the line or you better be on top of him.’” Quinn said. “With him, so many times there were so many runs after catch plays that we had a tackling plan and how would you go about it?”
But when he became Samuel’s coach, Quinn remembered just how big a big-play threat he can be.
“I can remember one time he just ran by somebody down the field on a deep ball and I was like, ‘Yeah, I forgot about that,’” Quinn said. “So. . . it didn’t surprise me, but it was maybe [that] I missed talking about it to that space because I was easily reminded, he’s one of the fastest players on the team.”
The Commanders think that speed will translate to a lot of big-play connections between Samuel and Jayden Daniels this season.
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