Would an ‘awful team’ go 8-8 in 2019?
I’m a big fan of Sun Sentinel’s David Hyde. I enjoy reading his articles and he’s one of the beat writers I’d like to meet in person. He has little pretense and there’s the hint of a fan’s suffering in his coverage. Maybe it’s a bit more than a job for him. After 30 years of covering a team, it seems the Phins have strings to his heart.
I’d classify him as a lunch-pail writer with little pretense (if there is such a thing). That kinda’ genuine persona gets him rated as a ‘fav’ in my book.
In his July 21st column, David Hyde wrote about being perplexed, near despondent, over how to cover the ‘awful’ 2019 Dolphins. The long and the short of it was the Phins were too good to flop to get a top quarterback in the 2020 Draft and not good enough to make hay in the Post Season—much less even get there. By his estimations, 7-9 through 9-7 was the win/loss range for this season. His 2019 prediction for Miami’s record was a ‘mediocre’ 8-8. The ‘awful’ team he wrote about seemed to extend past this year and include the perpetual ‘blah’ that is the Dolphins consistency in mediocrity.
Exceptional coaching and talent evaluation will rise from mediocrity
First, I’m not bashing David Hyde at all. I understand his frustration completely, especially over these last 4 years.
I’ve been a fan of the Dolphins since 1978, but have only been writing ‘sports articles’ about them since midway through the ‘Queasy Era’. Let me tell you this: If you think watching the Phins lose is painful, try having to write about it. Now with that said, the flip side is that writing about a win is a sweet, sweet cherry on top.
Unfortunately, the good times have been lean. There have been few ‘sweet cherries’ for Hyde over the last 25 years, who is doing his thing on the grand stage. So, I have a ton of empathy.
David Hyde is like so many fans whose comments I read on the Phinsnews boards: in a painful love affair with the Miami Dolphins…
… not sure if the good days will ever return.
David Hyde and Dolphins fans must resist their passion and focus on a few maxims to put this season in focus:
- One player or one personnel move will not make a winner
- In the NFL you don’t ‘fake it till you make it’
- Desperate moves come from desperate men who end up making a disaster of things
The great Don Shula made one of the best personnel moves to acquire one of the greatest players in NFL history in Dan Marino… and it netted him zero championships. The reason was that as a personnel evaluator, Shula missed too much. He was always a top-notch coach, but Shula proved undoubtedly that it takes a lot more than a great quarterback on the roster to have a championship team.
An incomplete brain trust will get exposed
Adam Gase came in with airs of being a Head Coach. In 2016 he made some bold moves that made it appear he was the genuine article. But the reality was something else. Gase’s favoritism of ‘his guys’, lack of focus beyond the offense, trading verbal jabs with players in practice, and inability to critique himself revealed he was nothing more than a glorified Offensive Coordinator.
And then there was Mike Tannenbaum. To paraphrase a Denny Greenism, ‘He was who we thought he was.”
Quality regimes like the Saints, Chiefs, Patriots, Seahawks, Steelers, and Ravens draft AND coach better than the rest of the league. Notice the ‘and’ and put an exclamation on it!
The 2019 Season is ALL about the talent level of Brian Flores AND Chris Grier
Maybe Hyde is right that this 2019 roster is ‘awful’. But let’s add context and focus on this statement. Flores is taking over a 7 win team that was maxed out in Cap space and was more like a 4-5 win team if not for a few last-minute miracles. With this team, Grier freed at least $90 million in 2020, has 12 picks for the draft, and acquired a former Top 10 pick at QB for a song and dance. Also, the best bookie software sites and Vegas are giving Miami 5 wins for the season.
If this team can beat the money men, outdo Gase’s team against a tougher schedule with 8 wins, then Miami might have an ‘awful’ roster and miss the QB sweepstakes, but they will have shown to have an excellent staff and talent evaluators.
Quality teams are built on the accumulation of good decisions, not big hits surrounded by a ton of misses.
Overview of a winning NFL process for team building
- Finding production from cheap FAs, UDFAs, and back-end picks
- Discipline, smart schemes, play calls, and half time adjustments
- Cap responsibility
- The number #1 attribute: consistency in the above
Let’s put it another way to wrap this article up
Picture the Twilight Zone intro and pretend instead of Grier and Flores that Miami hired one of the brain trusts from the elite teams mentioned above with the exact roster. Don’t you think they’d elevate the squad to more than expected wins and miss out on the Top QBs in 2020? And wouldn’t they, despite this ‘setback’, with their high-level talent evaluation and coaching, along with 12 picks next year, have Miami contending soon?
Patriots nabbed Brady in the 6th Round. Raven picked up Flacco and Jackson with a mid and late 1st Rounder. Seahawks found Wilson in the 3rd Round. Brees was a 2nd Rounder signed as an FA that the Dolphins passed on. Ben Roethlisberger took only the 11th overall pick. And the Chiefs spent the highest blue chip of the bunch to get their QB in Mahomes with the 10th Pick!
All of these star quarterbacks were in the range of the Dolphins… if they wanted them. Every one of these QBs took more capital to get than Ryan Tannehill who was pick 9th Overall.
Miami doesn’t need the 1st Overall pick to escape this mediocrity hell! What they need in top-shelf coaching and talent evaluation… in combination. The surest sign of these qualities is patience and consistency in making good decisions. In time, these qualities will pile up and that’s when the magic happens.
The crux of the situation and the real focus for 2019
Gase went 9-7 on a weak schedule with a team geared up to win. If Flores gets to 8 wins with a stripped-down team on a tough schedule, then he has coached up back-end picks and players off the scrap heap. Think what will be after a few years of this?
My early-bird signpost for hope is a minimum of 6 wins this season.
If Miami nabs the top overall pick with the worst record in the NFL, they may find the right QB… but they’ll likely need to go fish for another regime down the road.
I don’t know if Flores and Grier are the right men for the job. We’ll start digging into the meat of that investigation tomorrow. I look forward to reading Hyde’s thoughts on it in the days and weeks ahead. BUT, what I’m 100% sure is that Grier and Flores’ quality—or lack thereof—is far more important of a factor to turning this franchise around than whatever pick they have in the 2020 Draft. And the more wins they get this season, the better the indication is that Phins fans and Steven Ross have found what they’ve been looking for. Go Phins!