Miami Dolphins rounded out the “heads of the staff” with the hiring of Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen. With Gase, Rizzi, Joseph, and now Christensen, all the major players are on the staff and the mold is set for 2016. But, if you are not in the know like me and say, “who did we hire”, the question at hand is who is Clyde Christensen?
First, Clyde was hired to play the role, don’t cringe please, of Philbin in Green Bay. He will be a personnel coach who installs the weekly game plan and Gase will call the plays. This is a very nice fit since both have worked with Manning and likely have offensive concepts that jive. This shared vision will go a long way in giving Tannehill the stability needed to be put him in the best position to succeed.
Christensen started off as a QB for Fresno state and then transferred the Tar heels, leading them to Peach and Liberty Bowl bids. This is a good complementary skill set to Gase’s who has very limited hands on football experience and may help him better relate to Tannehill by understand certain aspects of quarterbacking from a more personal perspective.
More importantly, he has six seasons of experience as a TE coach in Tampa, six season as WR coach in Indianapolis as well as eight season as OC in Indianapolis. He is well traveled and adding his college experience as an RB coach, he has experience with all units on the offense except the O-Line. Considering Miami’s situation on the line, it wouldn’t take the best sportsbooks in the world to guess it would have been nice to see the OC with personal experience with linemen, but a very good line coach can offset that easily.
The only concern I see at this point is that Gase will be a first time coach calling plays. McCarthy did it in Green Bay and managed to win a championship, but he recently gave over those control because he became susceptible to tunnel vision. A HC’s job is to over see the team as a whole…maybe Gase will be the exception. It will be very interesting to see how he’ll handle the situation. Go Fins!!!