Shawn Quinn Mail Bag: Your Access To Savannah State Football

Introducing the Coach Shawn Quinn Mail Bag! Your direct line to Savannah State football! Each week we’ll ask Coach Quinn your submitted questions!

You can either listen to the podcast version or read the text version below!

Want your question to be featured in next week’s edition? Email it to christian@espncoastal.com!

Franklin R. – Blackshear:

You’ve mentioned switching over to a Georgia Southern style offense. What’s the reason for the switch?

CSQ: A couple of reasons. It fits our kids and the skillset of our offense and what we’ve got here personnel wise. As a head coach, one of my jobs is to do whatever it takes for us to win, and if we want to get into the playoffs we want to play a style that is opposite of what other folks do. It’s a spread dominated bracket in D-II in the Southern Region, with your West Georgias and the Valdostas. And the way to beat those folks is to be competitive. Having been in the offense before, in several playoff years, it was really successful. Its a known entity this year. The teams that we’re modeling off of were a combined 31-9, so they all averaged 10+ wins with 3 losses. It fits our guys, it allows us to recruit maximize our area. You don’t have to get quite the size, you can rely on athleticism and speed. It gives us more flexibility, going to D-II, to really maximize our roster spots and scholarship numbers. It also fits with our defense. We want to be like Ali and Forman, instead of like Mayweather. We want to run a physical brand of football and this helps us accomplish that.

Tyler W. – Savannah

Local recruits seemed to be a big focus at the start of your tenure. Was that the first thing you identified when you took over?

CSQ: The first thing, when we took over, was identifying the chemistry of our football team and fixing that. Internally, we needed to fix that before anything. Recruiting wise, we needed to start from the inside – out. And that started with our city and the 912. We knew there were a lot of good local players, and a lot of guys that leave Savannah and go elsewhere. We want to win our city, win our boosters, win our alumni, and win our city back. Part of that is having local players play for us. I’ve been recruiting here for a number of years for different schools. There’s a core group of players here that, if we hit it right, could be a good get for Savannah football and for us. We want to continue that. We feel like those guys will have a ton of pride playing for their home city and their home school.

Rob S. – Savannah

Have you identified any players you could see making a position switch? Especially with the quarterbacks in the new offense?

CSQ: Definitely. I’m a big Jimmy Johnson man, and one of the things Jimmy did at Miami and with the Cowboys that led to success was moving guys closer to the football and creating a more athletic team. We’ve done that defensively. We’ve moved a number of guys from the second level to the first level. DBs to linebacker, linebackers to defensive line, defensive line to offensive line, and we’re going to do that on offense. Frankly, the offense, one of the reasons we went to it, it fits our quarterbacks better. Our quarterbacks, last year, were asked to be spread quarterbacks, throwing the ball all over the place. That was not their strength. Their strength was to run the football and make simple-easy throws and put themselves in good positions. They’re great runners. They’re guys, that when they get the ball in their hands, and they can get north and south, they can do some great things. The number 1 reason for switching this offense is that it fits who these quarterbacks are, and it fits what the skillset of our football team was. It makes it easier for recruiting. We’ve already moved a number of guys, and spring will be a great time for us to evaluate to what guys we need to move and that’s on both sides of the ball. As we get all these new players coming in in the fall, we’ll do the same with them.

Monty E. – Atlanta by way of Savannah

What kind of effort is the program making to reach out to alumni and former players?

CSQ: We understand that we’re just caretakers as coaches of this program. The backbone and the base of this program is our former players and the alumni. It’s going to be their program for all ages. One of the things we’ve done is we’ve called, we’ve reached, we’ve tried to find ways to get our players and former alumni connected. We’re inviting them back to the spring game. We’ve had a number of those guys come back and talk to our football team. We want to get those guys back involved and understand that’s their program. We’re just the guys who are in charge of it right now. It is and will always be their football program. Come on back, email us, come see us, come to practice. They are always welcome. A lot of these folks, we don’t know where they’re at or who they are. We want to invite them to contact us and get hooked up with us. Anyone out there who’s listening, alumni, former player, a booster, reach out to us. Hit us with an email and we’ll hit you right back. We want to get our Savannah State Nation back involved in our program. That’s a big component of us moving forward.