The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

This was from his press conference yesterday. I have to imagine he will be heavily involved in working with whomever he hires as OC, maybe someone he worked with before in San Fran.

I don't think he said anything about the defensive coaches but if he wants to fire them, now is the time so they can latch onto other teams. The longer it goes on, the more I think he is keeping them and that's probably a good thing. They were excellent in the 2nd half. I don't think they are a problem and you don't want to bring in someone who runs a different defense and causes us to switch out a lot of personnel again.

He said this today in his press conference. He comes across as genuine, as well as very nervous, but I have to worry if he will be structured enough to be a head coach. It's easy to be a players coach when you can blame things on the head coach. "I need to you to do this because so and so said that's what he wants". It's completely different when you have to hold players and other coaches accountable. I realise I'm old school but I also have been around enough sports to know that the cool bro hippy type coaches have a really hard time with structure and the teams suffer.

^^^

This is what I was thinking too. I don't know if he is a leader of men and that doesn't mean be a hard ass. Flores was a hard ass and the team quit on him many times, no showing every crucial game we had. Winning gets people to follow you so that's probably his best route. Put the work in, show people you know what you're talking about and they will listen.

In terms of personality type -- being a hard ass vs. being a player's coach -- I think that it can work in many different ways and it can fail in many different ways, too.

I don't love the idea of the head coach calling plays, necessarily.  It's fine, but I think there sometimes just isn't enough time on the field to call plays, but also be there to respond to your players, challenges, adjustments, etc.

I struggle to think of a sizable percentage of the greatest head coaches in NFL and college football history who weren't serious and stern.

Of course that doesn't mean being serious and stern is a guarantee that a head coach will become one of the greatest in history, but what it does mean is that a coach lacking those traits probably stands far less of a chance than normal of becoming one.

When your level of talent is such that there isn't a single player on the team that receives a single vote for the NFL all-pro team, going up against the best teams in the league will very likely take on the appearance of no-showing.

On the flip side of that talent coin, McD gets the only squad that placed 3 players on the NFL all-rookie team this past season (Waddle, Holland, Phillips) and also has extra early draft capital this year.

Eager to see how he builds the roster from here...

The Bengals were one game better than us and are in the Superbowl. Our talent level is not as dire as you think but our coaching certainly was.

He did make it a point of saying that he wouldn't be calling plays from the corner and that it was a collective effort. I can't rememebr exactly how he said it but he said it was something about not sitting in a corner and doing his own thing. I don't know if it was a shot at Adam Gase but it sure seemed like it ... hahahahaa.

I'd look at their record vs playoff teams and ours. Heck ... the only one we beat got blown out just like we did against playoff teams. The Bills emabarrassed them badly. 

Seems a bit premature. 

I would have waited to hire an OC first before making any announcement regarding who would be play calling. 

I said the same thing. I wasn't happy with us retaining our special teams coordinator based on this past year's performance but am hoping we will see some good hires in the near future.

True, but maybe he already knows who he wants and they discussed it already. We'll see how it works out.

It's just another mistake repeating itself if McDaniel plans on calling the plays.  I could understand him making calls in certain situations, but to be the lead play caller is just a mistake.  The HC has so many things to keep track of that adding on that chore when you have no experience in the position you were just hired for is crazy.  If he was a veteran HC then okay, go ahead and call your own plays, but not as a rookie.  And whether he knows who is going to be his OC or not, it just completely undercuts that coach and it becomes the blame game when the losses start stacking up.

The innovative offensive mind at HC, calling offensive plays, has been a big part of the most successful formula for winning in the NFL in recent history.  Andy Reid, Bruce Arians, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Kliff Kingsbury, Zac Taylor.  You have a laundry list there of virtually all of the current best teams in the NFL.  To hire McDaniel, an innovative offensive mind, and have him not call plays isn't intelligent.  Ross and Grier are following a big part of the most successful formula for winning in the present-day NFL here.

Somehow you're using team records as a measure of talent but not of coaching.  A team record of 9-8 could just as easily indicate a team bereft of talent that was coached up as it could a team that could've played better because of its talent but was undermined by its coaching.  How are you using the team's record to make the determination of which of those possibilities was occurring?

According to ESPNs Marcel Louis-Jacques Mike McDaniel called plays last year for the 49ers

https://www.reddit.com/r/miamidolphins/comments/spovo8/according_to_espns_marcel_louisjacques_mike/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/miamidolphins/comments/spovo8/according_to_espns_marcel_louisjacques_mike/)

Shanahan would relay the calls to the QB and have final veto.

Because I saw how Flores coached. All of his mistakes with challenges, on 4th downs, on not standing up for his QB while the rumors were swirling, on starting 1-7. I don't think there are any Dolphins fans who think Flores did anything but a terrible job coaching this team. Thus, I put on my Detective's Hat and deduce that our 9-8 record was in spite of him, not because we were really a 6 win team and he got the best out of us.

Oh, and he played guys on the line out of position for the first few weeks, maybe all year since Hunt is a better RT than Jesse Davis. Almost everything he did was wrong.

So if the team was undermined by its coaching and its "true" record was better than 9-8 (let's say 11-6 or thereabouts), how do you explain how the players were so different from the teams that played at that level (11-6) in terms of their recognition for the NFL all-pro team -- i.e., not a single player's receiving a single vote?

I mean if your talent is similar to that of teams that finish 11-6 or thereabouts, and your team performance is saddled by poor coaching, surely the all-pro voters would recognize the talent involved to the tune of giving just a single player a single vote?  Or did the coaching suppress the individual performance of every single player on the roster?

I don't know why it's hard to think that terrible coaching would suppress the talent of people on the roster. Our OCs and O-Line coaches were terrible, so it is reasonable to say they suppressed the talent. Solomon was a starter last year and this year he didn't see the field. Jackson was maybe the worst O-Line guy in the league and Liam was shit too. That doesn't make a lot of sense that all 3 guys lost the ability to play football.

Also, I really don't care about the All Pro team. Waddle was great for us this year and didn't make it. Howard came around in the 2nd half. Holland had a great rookie year as did Phillips. Whole team was shit the first half which hurt their numbers.

If fortune shines upon us in 2022 with a 12 win season without many on field personnel changes, I think we can credit new coaching. If we suck again, then we just suck.

But how do you get a team with such suppression of talent to finish 9-8 and have not a single player be recognized as worthy of a single all-pro team vote?  I mean if the talent is overcoming its suppression by the coaching to the tune of a 9-8 record, why aren't any players being recognized for their talent?

And it's not whether any players made the all-pro team -- it's that there wasn't a single player who received a single vote for the all-pro team!  The only other teams in the league that fit that bill were the Lions, which finished 3-13-1, and the Giants, which finished 4-13.

https://www.mlive.com/lions/2022/01/lions-among-3-teams-shut-out-of-all-pro-voting-6-former-players-jettisoned-by-quinntricia-earned-votes.html

NFL all-pro team isn't really relevant. You're over stating it's importance and if that's your only argument I disagree. It's a team sport. There have been plenty of instances where an offense or defense has succeeded with upper mid level talent and no names. You don't need all-pro talent, but you do need competent coaching. I'll take  upper mid level talent with great coaching over a few all-pros and garbage coaching.

It's not the all-pro team, per se -- it's whether any players received any votes for the all-pro team, thus being recognized as having at least some degree of distinctive talent.  Again the only other teams in the league to get zero all-pro team votes for any player were the Lions (3-13-1) and the Giants (4-13).  It's not something associated with having sufficient talent for winning.

Yeah well last I remember, Flores didn't pull no all-pro awards with his talent level either. I'm saying the players talents were higher than the coaches.