Phins Fans look to Flores to make the present more like the past
With the passing of the legendary Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins lost its iconic patriarch. Does a franchise need an iconic patriarch? Not if they are having success or at least recent success. Unfortunately, the ‘charm’ of the Dolphins is all last century. Shula being around eased the suffering of the present for many Phins fans. Now though, the distance from the ‘golden years’ is even farther away and the hope for Brian Flores to ‘make good’ even more desperate.
Can Brian Flores go ‘back to the future’ and reignite the greatness of yesterday for today’s Phins fans?
Miami has plenty of all-time great players still with us, but none are coaches or are quality talent evaluators who can man the rudder or offer keen wisdom on the direction of the franchise. Dan Marino is part of the current regime and that’s good news! Still, he’s the cherry on top and not the cake.
So again, all of the Miami Dolphins hopes rest with Brian Flores.
What about Chris Grier?
Grier is obviously critical, but by his own account, he builds through consensus. You can bet with the Free Bookie Software sites that this trait is key to turning this franchise around, but Grier’s success depends on bright people creating a quality consensus. On the other hand, Brian Flores is the ‘well’ from which his program flows. And given what we saw last season with his ability to ‘coach up’ a group of castoffs, Flores flashed great potential.
That sums up all the hope for Phins fans. Because if Flores is another pipedream, close to another decade will be wasted.
Ouch!
Flores doesn’t need to be the next Shula… nor can he be
Now, this isn’t about Flores being the ‘next Shula’ because there will only ever be one Don Shula. But, getting near ‘Shula’s ballpark’ is a must to create any ‘meaningful success’. By ‘meaningful success’ I mean at least a single Superbowl championship. And when you look at the great coaches of NFL history, even a single Championship wasn’t an easy goal to reach.
Super Bowl Wins by some Top NFL coaches
- Don Shula (2)
- Bill Parcells (2)
- Hank Stram (1)
- Pete Carroll (1)
- Mike Tomlin (1)
- Tom Landry (2)
- Sean Payton (1)
- Joe Gibbs (2)
- Mike Shanahan (2)
- Bill Cower (1)
- Andy Reid (1)
- Mike Holmgren (1)
This means that if Brian Flores can win a single Super Bowl he’ll liberate a long-beleaguered franchise but also elevate himself into 2nd place in Miami Dolphins coaching lore. By de facto due to the loss of Shula, he will then be the Phins patriarch. Now, being an iconic patriarch will take way more than a single Super Bowl. Honestly, that’s not even on my hope list. I can see Flores ending up like a Bill Cowher with a long list of quality teams and one big run among them, though.
I’d take that all day and three times on Sunday!
Still, we are a long way from that.
When you listen to Flores talk about getting the best out of his players who have a team-first mentality to generate wins, it’s almost right out of the mouth of Don Shula!
Now, I might have snookered some of you with this line from Don Shula’s Hall of Fame induction speech. But, it sure does sound like a Flores quote!
While no two quality football coaches are exactly the same, they all have some core aspects in common. And one of the biggies is putting players in a position to focus on their strengths and not their weaknesses.
A pretty simple concept to understand, for sure. But maybe not so simple in practice because not since Don Shula has someone coached the Miami Dolphins like that… that is until Brian Flores showed up! It’s still a long way till we can call it done, but there is legitimate hope that the future will have a glimmer of the past under Flores. Go Phins!!!