Tannenbaum promised an extensive search for Miami’s next head coach, and on the surface, it appears that Miami rushed and just wanted to hire a coach before any of the other coach-needy teams beat them to the punch. The Dolphins have hired Adam Gase the Chicago Bears offensive coordinator, and clearly with the full press they gave him, they felt he was their man. But, according to Tannenbaum they had done their due diligence and this wasn’t simply a week venture as they started their head coaching search 3 months ago with the Firing of Philbin.
I will say I definitely did not do an immediate dance of joy for this hire. The Bears scored 1.7 points more than Miami;s garbage offense did this season. Most football gambling fans will see this hire as Gase being a decent QB coach that was able to get Cutler to put up a career high 92.3 passer rating, and the hope is that he can work some magic with Ryan Tannehill. In addition, I see this hire as Miami’s brass selecting a coach that was willing to give Tannehill one more season to prove whether or not he could be a franchise QB. Miami is financially committed to Tannehill for at least one more season, so it would seem with this “QB Guru” hire, 2017 season is the “Year Of T-Hill” – not meaning it will BE his year, but that he will be the key piece.
In addition, by hiring Gase Miami has decided to keep to their trend of hiring coordinators and not opting to go after a coach that has head coaching experience. It can be argued that it should not matter whether the new coach has NFL head coaching experience or not, but for me I would have liked Miami to find a coach that had experience considering they have failed on their last three tries with Sparano, Cameron and Philbin – maybe it’s just the desperate, superstitious, contrarian in me.
What bothers me the most about this hire is not even the fact that Gase does not have head coaching experience, but that his last stop was with a losing organization with a losing season. The Bears have been a middle of the road team, and had practically the same inept offense as the Dolphins did. At least if you are going to hire a coordinator go after a guy who has been coaching a top 5 offense or defense. But then again the counter to that argument is football is a team game and he had control over only one aspect of the team.
Again, this was my initial reaction and I am still trying to sort through emotion to get to a sober judgement. I truly hope that I have to eat my words and they taste like fine dining and Gase turns out to be the Dolphins next franchise coach. Either way we will know quickly what he is worth – if he can turn around the offense and improve T-Hill then he will be a hit…if not it could go south at warp speed, Unfortunately for Gase, the pressure is still going to be extremely high for him to make the playoffs next season. In order to evaluate T-Hill properly, this must be a re-tool and not a re-build and a re-tool has much different expectations than a re-build does. If he does not at least come close to making the playoffs then he along with T-Hill could be on the hot seat. Hopefully, he can turn this team into another last to first success story.
Gase has already begun to hire coaches for his staff, with Vance Joseph the Bengals defensive backs coach becoming the defensive coordinator (at least the Bengals defense has been very good the past few years, however that is the same team that Coyle came from), Clint Hunt the new defensive line coach, Matt Burke the new linebackers coach, and Jerome Henderson the new defensive backs coach.
What are the rest of the Miami Dolphins News fans thoughts about the Dolphins hiring Adam Gase as the new head coach?