The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I'm happy for football to start.

But I'm not at all excited for the promise of this team, in any aspect.

I don't really understand what we're going for, I don't see the vision for the future.  I don't really understand the strategy and I don't love the contracted players that we have hitched our wagon to.  It all seems very backwards to me.

I will go along to get along and hope for the best, but I am starting my expectations for this year and the future at ground zero.

My expectations are set at "Joe Philbin 2.0" but without the hope for the future that a first-round rookie QB provides.

Or alternatively, the 2019 team but without a generational QB to tank for.

The 2011 team as well.

This is the quietest I have seen this board at this time of year.  Even in other years when the Dolphins fans had little reason to be optimistic, this board was much more active and hopeful. 

In fairness: I also was not looking forward to Mike McDaniel, and he provided the most excitement for the Dolphins I've had since the Ricky trade.

I'm think I'm still kind of struggling with why we cut Tua only to still pay him and then pay for another QB at a pretty decent rate, who is probably a bum that we don't plan on keeping for the future.

It just seems to be wishy washy.  If you're gonna tank, tank.  This feels a bit like a half-measure to keep fans on the hook for another season and I'm not really buying it.

The one area where Stephen Ross has been the most egregiously incompetent is in his handling of head coaches.

There was the debacle with Sparano when Ross was trying to chase Jim Harbaugh, and then the Sean Payton fiasco that resulted in a lost draft pick.  This last time, it seemed like Ross was willing to run it back with McDaniel for another year until John Harbaugh became available, at which point Ross throws everything in the trash to chase Harbaugh... who naturally signs elsewhere.

IMHO, Ross's biggest problem has been the selecting of bad coaches as much as selecting bad GMs.

Lots of owners hire bad personnel.  Statistically, that happens more often than not.

Ross' issue has not been "Who did you hire?" as much as it has been "How did you go about trying to replace your head coach?"  It's a process problem.

Like I said in another thread.   Ross is a complete disaster.   He could fuck up a cup of black coffee.

By all accounts, overall Malik Willis has been pretty good in camp. Tua was good in camp too but that never actually panned out in the season. Last season he was horrible and couldn't run for a first down even when it was there. Willis is definitely more athletic and built much more towards handle being tackled. His arm is stronger than any QB we've had since Marino and his accuracy seems pretty decent.

We've also had some good reports of several of the rookies, as well as Malik Washington as a receiver.

If wins is your only thing to get excited about, then this will be a long season. If you focus on young players getting better then it would be more fun. It's ok to feel whatever you want but they did have the highest attendance at practice last weekend. This means some people are excited.

This rings true to me.  The overall direction organizationally seems aimless.

It's literally the opposite.

I think we have poured our money into a backup QB who we don't expect to be a long-term solution at the position and a RB, who admittedly is an exciting player, but RB lifespans have historically been questionable.

I don't feel like we are creating an environment that is doing more than trying to put a band-aid on a terrible situation.

I'm officially in wait and see mode. I don't have high expectations so pretty much anything above 3 or 4 wins will be a nice surprise. I honestly don't think the starting 22 are that bad, but injuries typically cause the Dolphins a ton of missed games from starters and backups have historically been below average, so we'll see how that works out. Maybe the current staff does a better job of getting the players ready for the season and the starters play the majority of snaps or maybe even better we lose a bunch of starters to injury as usual and their backups are actually decent and we're better than I expect. Either of those scenario's would make me feel a lot better about the current staff. I sort of feel like conditioning/stretching etc has been an area that's been ignored too much which is the reason for a lot of the injuries or perhaps it's just because so many of the players are smaller and faster and can't take the pounding and they are officially headed in a different direction now but either way if we can find a way to get less bit with the injury bug the team shouldn't underperform as bad as they have in the last 2 decades but even if they overperform I can't see more than about 6 wins on the schedule with this roster.

On the other hand, this is the time of year to be optimistic, once the season starts I may get a big dose of reality and we really are as bad as all the pundits think we will be and it will be time to start watching the pre-draft conversations.

All teams have injuries.  What separates the good teams from the bad teams, typically isn't who has the best 22 starters or which teams stays the healthiest, but which team has better depth, and the Dolphins have a history of ignoring the bottom half of the roster, and almost exclusively concerned with having a flashy starting lineup. 

You don't win the SB by avoiding injuries you win it in spite of injuries.

All teams have injuries, but that doesn't mean you throw caution to the wind. Proper stretching and conditioning go hand in hand with avoiding minor injuries. There's nothing you can do about broken bones etc, but even ACL tears can be mitigated with proper stretching and conditioning. No you're not going to go through a season without those things but if you can miss 1 game instead of 3 or 4, that's a BIG difference. I feel like with the Dolphins either it's the way they prepare or maybe it's just the way the roster is built with these guys that are all small and fast and break easy. There are things you can do to mitigate it, we need to be better.

And to be honest, I think your attitude toward it is part of the problem. You first have to believe in proper preperation to actually begin to see the benefits of it. A lot of players don't in my humble opinion.

No one has seen this guy play more than our head coach and GM. He ran the scout team against his defenses. So far, he has been impressing people. Not in a Dan Marino way, as  no one does, but certainly showing he has skills others do not. I would not have paid him, but  will support these guys until the prove unworthy. So far, they have looked like they know what they are doing.

I don't expect much from the Dolphins this year in terms of wins, I'm more concerned about other things.

How will the new Head Coach and GM fair?  I think the HC is a step up over McDaniel, McDaniel was just too lackadaisical for my tastes.

How will the QB position play out?  I don't like the Willis signing, and this goes to my point above - are the coach and GM going to be tied to him for multiple years like Grier and McDaniel were tied to Tua?  Are they going to miss out on drafting a QB next year because they want to give Willis another shot?  Will maybe Ewers come in later in the season and show that he can be a franchise QB?

I'm not too excited either.  Maybe I'll go down to the Jets game this year since it's in October.

My biggest concern with this team is a sense of cronyism.

They hired the GM from the Packers, which is fine.  No problem.  But then it turns out that the best choice for head coach is... the assistant coach he worked with on the Packers.  And the best choice for QB is... the backup QB they worked with, from the Packers.

"I'm just going to hire people I already know" is not a promising start to a regime.  It implies you are unable (or unwilling) to evaluate unfamiliar personnel.

That's how it usually is.  Jimmy Johnson took over the Hurricanes in June 1984 after Howard Schnellenberger bailed to go coach a USFL team.  Because he was hired so late in the offseason, one of the caveats was that he had to keep every Schnellenberger assistant who wanted to stay (that caveat almost killed the deal).   The 1984 season was disappointing as the team went 8-4, gave up all kinds of points on defense, then lost to UCLA in the Fiesta Bowl.   That offseason, Jimmy cleaned house, brought in "his guys" and the rest is history as he would only lose four more times over the next four seasons.

Sometimes, not always.  Evident by the fact you picked an example from four decades ago. 

There can be valid reasons to bring in guys you have worked with in the past particularly if you have first hand knowledge that they are outstanding.  However, it can by a sign of laziness, a desire for "yes men" or an inability to evaluate.