Mele Talks About His Former Line Coach, Jeff Quinn

Former IrishSportsDaily.com legend, Sean Mele, knows a lot about newly named offensive line coach, Jeff Quinn.  Mele was coached by Quinn for his entire five years at Grand Valley State, so we thought we’d check in with an ISD fan favorite to get the scoop on Quinn.  

Mele sure had a lot to say about his former coach.  

Q: What years did you play for Quinn?  

Mele:  He was my position coach all five years at Grand Valley.  I was there from 89 to 93.  I redshirted my first year and then played for him the final four. 

Q:  You started as center for Quinn, and I remember you saying to me when you were hired by us that you hoped that Quinn would come and coach some day at ND with Kelly.  Why did you feel that way?  

Mele:  I think his wheelhouse is coaching offensive line.  I’m sure he was a good head coach, but I think some guys who are line coaches, that’s really what they’re good at and what they should be doing.  He and Kelly worked really well together and we always seemed to be able to move the ball on anyone.  I just felt he and Kelly fit really well together, so it didn’t surprise me at all that he was named O-line coach.  I think Kelly is really comfortable with what he knows Quinn will do for the unit.  

Q:  What was it about Quinn that made him such a successful line coach?  

Mele:  He plays really close attention to technique and the way he taught technique.  The way he was able to break things down, and the way paid really close attention to what everyone was doing.  He was really dialed in to how everyone was pulling, or drive blocking, or pass blocking.  He’d say, “you missed that reach block by two inches this way.”  He was so dialed into attention to detail and knew exactly what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses were.  He also did a great job of motivating.  He was trying to motivate you with positive reinforcement.  That doesn’t mean he’s not going to get on you.  He will get on you if you keep doing things wrong, but he tries to motivate you with positive reinforcement.  He was really good about staying on you and keeping you focused on what you had to do.  He did a great job of circling the wagons amongst the O-linemen.  If you were an offensive linemen, we all really paid attention to you because you were such an important part of the offense.  It was always an us against them kind of thought process.  When things weren’t going well he’d get us to hunker down and think we were doing this for ourselves.  We wanted to win for ourselves.  We knew that we wouldn’t get a lot of credit for it, but we also know we were the most important part because nothing went right if we didn’t play well.  

Q:  A lot of linemen talk about how close the offensive line group is.  Does Quinn try to be a part of that, or does he stay on the outside of that and just try to foster that?  

Mele:  He was always a guy who was interested in what we were doing outside of school.  He really cared about you as a person.  He would always ask you how your Mom and Dad were.  How your family was.  He wasn’t just a come to practice, watch film, we’ll see you later kind of guy.  There was a football side be he cared about you as a person.  He didn’t just care about the football side of you.  He wanted you to become a good person.  I wouldn’t say he wanted to be part of group and hang out with us or anything, but he definitely felt part of the group because you knew he always cared about you outside of football.  

When I heard he got the job today, there were three guys I played on the line with that I called today and we talked about him and some great times and playing for him.  Obviously we were all very excited for him.  It felt like something he deserved because he had worked so hard for all of us to be successful.  I think that says a lot about him.  We care enough to stay in touch and celebrate when something good happens for him.  Without trying to hard, he always made you want to play hard for him because he was part of that success and he made you a better player and gave you the tools to have success, so you wanted to play hard for him.  

Q:  Is he more of a teacher, build you up type of coach, or is he more of a guy who gets on you hard to focus type of coach?  

Mele:  He’s more of a teacher than anything else.  He’s going to get on you and motivate when you need it, but I think he expects you to motivate yourself and be ready for anything that comes your way in the game.  He’s going to let you to motivate yourself until you don’t, and then he’s going to step in and do the motivating for you.  He’s definitely a teacher first, but he’s definitely someone who is going to right the ship if something isn’t right.  He really motivates through his teaching and the passion he has for the position.  

Q:  What was the one thing he always yelled at you about?  

Mele:  I’m sure he’ll laugh at this.  I know exactly what it was.  He’d yell at me for not getting my head across on a reach block when I was playing center.  My head would always kind of trail the front shoulder, and he’d always yell at me about not getting my head across the shoulder so I could control the block better.  I can still hear him yelling today.  

Q:  How do you think he’ll be as a recruiter?  

Mele:  I think offensive linemen are attracted to offensive line coaches who are genuine about what they’re doing and have a passion about what they’re doing.  I think you get the same kind of recruiter that Hiestand was in that he has a passion to coach offensive line and only offense line.  He has no aspirations at this point to coach anything other than offensive line, and that’s really comforting to an offensive lineman.  He’s not going to move on.  It’s always kind of a “we’re all in this together” kind of mentality with offensive line, and I think linemen know if a guy isn’t sincere about it.  They’ll know he’s all in with coaching offensive line, and they’ll know he cares about him.  He’s just an O-line coach, and that is very obvious when you meet and talk with him.  

Mele:  I also wanted to mention, you can talk to anyone who played for him at Grand Valley, Central Michigan or Cincinnati and you’d be hard-pressed to fine anyone who, to this day, wouldn’t run through a wall for him.