The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Was Tony Sparano:

A. Better than Don Shula?
B. Better than Jimmy Johnson?
C. Better than Dave Wanny?
D. Better than Nick Saban?
E. Better than Cam Cameron?
F. Better than George Wilson?
G. Better than Jim Bates?
H. The worst coach in team history?
I. Other (Please Explain).

Note: the above list is not sorted in any specific order.

C, D, E

D and E. Wanny would have gotten us a ring if Fiedler hadnt gotten hurt.

vs the current list I'd rank him somewhere between D and B.  He's definately better than Nick Saban, and I have to think if I were a player at any level still I'd want Sparano before I'd want Jimmy Johnson.  Nobody's gonna top Don Shula anytime soon.  I wish he were younger we could bring him back.

Shula needs no explanation.
Wanny was clearly better in any measurable way.
JJ made the playoffs and won playoff games.
I'd put Sparano right above Saban.

My opinion, Sparano was better than  saTan , JJ, Camoron And Wannadouche.

Camoron ----  Ted Ginn, 1-15 , lost locker room,

JJ-  had constant battles with Marino, build a good defense , suck on offense oh, Yatil Green & Jerris Mcphail ::)

Wanny -- OMG Jay Feeley nuff said ::)

SaTan --- left to go to BAMA.  drafted Jason Allen 1st round  WHY ???



To me Sparano fault was that he was inconsistent and my excuse for him was that his is his 1st HC position.  Bill Bellicheat was not great in the beginning nor is he still but according to stats Bellicheat is among the footbal GODS so oh well.  I feel  Sparano will do good at the College level or hell maybe another shot in the Pros.

I agree with Spider Dan.

There's no way Sparano's tenure was any better than Jimmy Johnson's tenure. JJ not only built a defense (that lasted well after he left the team), he drafted extremely well. He also won playoff games - on the road - Sparano did nothing in 2008 at home in his lone playoff appearance.

Jay Feely wasn't with the Dolphins during Wanny's tenure.

I rank Sparano between Saban and Wanny. That position puts him ahead of Saban, Cameron, Bates (not sure he should be included), and Wilson. I expect Wilson is getting left off many people's lists either because they are too young or he is getting cut slack for coaching an expansion team.

I like Saban better than the rest of you.  He would've done good things, had he had the heart to stay around, I think.

Dave, I get your point. But is essence, you are giving him credit for something he didn't do. You can't judge him on waht could have been. You can only judge them on what is.

I think Saban would have done good things if he stuck around, but he was a Quitter, so he ranks below Waanny and Cam.

I grant you that point.

However, you can't blame him for what he didn't do either.  I don't think Saban really hurt us, wasted picks terribly, destroyed the franchise, etc. -- moreso than some of these other guys.

In short, even though Saban did less than Wanny, he hurt us a lot less, too.  I rank Wanny very low (below Saban), because of the long, slow damage that he caused.

He traded a second rounder for Culpepper, drafted Jason Allen with a first, and Derek Hagan with a third. That 2006 draft was about as bad as any I can remember while being a Dolphins fan. The highlight of 2005 was Channing Crowder. He wasn't very impressive at all with the draft nor what we traded picks to get.

^ Yes.

But....

I try to be fair when assessing a draft.  I don't think it's just to simply look at guys that worked and guys that didn't and make a judgment based on that and attribute it to the decision of the coach.  The draft (in terms of who's going to be good) is such a crapshoot.  Sure, there's an aspect of talent evaluation, but it's also a lot of luck.

In short:

I have no problem with us picking Jason Allen.  Too bad that it didn't work, but it wasn't like he was a huge reach.  The general consensus is that the guy was a good fit, was drafted in about the right spot, wasn't a huge risk, and had the physical tools to do the job, not to mention that it was a position where we really needed help.  It just didn't work out.  Saban is somewhat reposible for not recognizing that the guy wasn't going to make it, but he's also doesn't have a crystal ball -- nobody does.  Just like I don't blame the Saints for picking Reggie Bush, I don't blame Saban for Allen...or Hagan for that matter.

When I do assess blame, it's for guys like Jamaal Fletcher or Ted Ginn.  In both of those cases, the picks just didn't make sense.  In Fletcher's case, even if he worked out, we're talking about a 5th corner, when we had huge, pressing areas of need.  For Ginn, we reached for a guy that didn't have the physical tools for the position we were asking him to play.  Those were lapses in judgment, not in luck.

In my opinion, at least...

Burn in Hell $aban........that is all!!!!!  >:(

Jimmy drafted well on defense.  Marino never had receivers even approaching what he had after the Marks Brothers left and aside from Karim Abdul-Jabbar, our running backs that he kept drafting weren't worth the paper I wipe my ass with.  Jimmy never won a division title and at the end he totally fucked Marino.   That's my thinking putting Sparano above those guys.

Dave,

Do you hold Saban responsible for passing on both Brees and Rodgers?

SORRY MY BAD I MEANT TO SAY  A.J.  FEELEY

I agree with Dave here.  Saban left us all with a sour taste but was doing OK while here.  I rank it somewhere like this, with Shula #1 by far and JJ a distant #2:

3-Saban
4-Sparano
5-Wannstedt
6-Bates
832-Cameron

(I left Wilson out on purpose cause I don't know much about him)

^^^

I'd put Cameron at a solid 825. ;)

I have to guess mine would look like this.

1.Shula
2.Wannstedt
3.Sparano
4.Jimmy Johnson
5.Nick Saban
6.George Wilson
7.Cam Cameron.

Fair question.

And it's kind of a gray area answer.

Since he's the ultimate decision maker and we ultimately missed out on two of the best QBs in the league, sure...he has to take some responsibility for that.  However, what I think is this:

For Brees:
I don't blame Saban for passing on Brees.  I, myself, thought at the time, that Brees was a better long-term fit for the kind of team we were, than a guy like Culpepper.  However, it was a doctor's decision.  Brees didn't get the nod from whatever medical advisers Saban was listening to.  I can't really see any coach going with a guy that had shoulder problems when the doc said otherwise.

For Rodgers:
Again, I don't really blame him.  We picked at #2 and Rodgers slid to the mid 20s to a team that already had a superstar QB.  It seemed like the conventional wisdom at the time was that he was someone who needed to be groomed and we weren't the team with the time or resources to deal with it.  Brown was a perfectly adequate pick there, knowing what we knew.

But, sure, in both cases we'd have been better off having gone the other way.  I just don't really pin blame on a guy when something doesn't work, so long as there was intelligent decision-making for the process.  I'm not trying to paint Saban as some kind of draft guru or anything like that, but I don't think that he was reckless with the choices.

Similar question for you -

Do you hold Wannstedt responsible for drafting Jamar Fletcher instead of Brees in 2001?

Gotta go with E.

Nothing more embarrassing than being a Dolphins fan than that year. Sparano sucked, but Cameron is on a level all his own.

Yes.  On both counts.  This was a double whammy and my most angry at any draft pick we've ever made.

This was for 2 reasons.  1) We desperately needed a franchise QB.  Brees was the smart pick there.  2) We already had TWO Pro Bowl corners.  The Fletcher pick made no sense.  You wasted a first round pick on a guy who was going to be your 3rd stringer, at best.

The fact that Brees panned out and Fletcher didn't doesn't help, but my thoughts were cemented when we made the pick, regardles of how either played fared.

Why would you think that Brees would have lasted any longer in Miami than he did in San Diego?

Brees was a bust as a draft pick, pure and simple.  SD drafted a QB #1 to replace him and got nothing for him.  So no, I'm not happy with the Fletcher pick, but I also wouldn't have been happy with drafting Brees and watching him fail.  If I could redo that draft pick (and only that pick), I would have Miami take Reggie Wayne; Brees would have been ran out of Miami just as he was in SD.

Anyway, I can't believe that some of you guys are rating Saban over Wanny.  Saban did nothing.  He didn't infuse the team with talent and he didn't even make the playoffs.  In Saban's best year, the team was eliminated from the Wild Card in week 14 and eliminated from the division in week 15.  He was horrible.

JJ built the core of the team for a decade.  Wanny took that talent to a division title and a playoff win, as well as making a blockbuster trade that would have made Miami a SB contender if not for one Ray Lucas.  Saban had a failed trade for Culpepper, multiple draft busts, and the crown jewel of his drafts (Brown) didn't do anything of note until two regimes later.

as an nfl coach, saban was god awful...

wanny was a better coach, but he just wasn't a very good talent evaluator. had no business picking players.

I think that Wanny was a terrible adjuster and Xs and Os coach.  He lost games for us with stubbornness and an unwillingness to adapt.

As for the Dolphins being on a bus to the Super Bowl in the Jay Fielder year -- not so fast -- we don't exactly have a reputation for finishing the season strong.  How many good starts did we have, only to crap it up in December?  The Dolphins have a history of getting figured out late in the year.

I'm not sure that I'd put Sparano above Saban as far as head coaching ability goes. He's definately ahead of him from the standpoint of not being a douche, but head coaching ability I think Saban has him.  I honestly believe Saban would have been a decent head coach for the Dolphins if he actually WANTED to be a coach in the NFL.  It was clear midway through his career with the Dolphins that was not the case.

At the end of the day, following Lucas' 2-4 reign, Miami finished in a tie for first place at 9-7 and missed out on the playoffs because of tiebreakers.  Had Miami been able to go 4-2 instead of 2-4, they would have had a first-round bye and potentially homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.

I don't doubt that they probably would've made the playoffs.  I just don't have a lot of faith in the Dolphins playing well in the playoffs, especially when they back in.  The playoffs are a different animal.  But whatever, we didn't even make it there, so...

I guess if you consider clinching homefield in week 15 "backing in," that's fine.

My point is that the Lucas-free 2002 Dolphins were significantly better than any Miami team any non-Shula coach has fielded, and a large part of that was due to Wannstedt's decision to pull the trigger on the Ricky trade.