The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I agree with almost everything in this article and it suggests that Tua should have been the one going instead of Flores. Can't say that I totally disagree although I hadn't thought of this previously.

https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nfl/2022/1/10/22876955/brian-flores-fired-miami-dolphins-stephen-ross

The article states that Flores coached well and only people who didn't follow the team could say something like that. Horrible clock management, clueless with challenges, team consistently getting blown out by better competition into Year 3 of the rebuild.

I can understand people who didn't think he deserved to be fired but that article is only faulting him for not playing politics and that's crazy.

^ This is so much of what I feel, as well.

I watch these games every week.  Most of us do -- and we're on here bitching about Flores fucking shit up damn near every week.  I think the majority of people who are taunting Flores don't live in this market and actually have access to watch all the games.

His gameday management has been outright bad.

Everyone but Dolphin fans:. He is pretty good. He is the best coach the Dolphins have had since Shula.

Dolphin fans: He stinks, he is no where close to Shula, and that is the standard by which we judge coaching.

That can work both ways, as putting the team under a microscope can cause either 1) a more accurate appraisal of it, or 2) loads of confirmation bias, as people believe something about the team and then start to "see" it repeatedly, while failing to see evidence to the contrary, thus "confirming" and strengthening their belief although possibly inaccurately.

If possibility #2 is occurring, then it's possible a fan of another team could have a more objective and accurate viewpoint.

Well I can't say that my opinion is the same as the authors of Flores as a coach, but I agreed with a lot of what was said. I do think he wasn't necessarily a bad coach, just inexperienced and it showed a lot of times.

To be fair I think Dolphins fans have a little better idea of what Flores was actually like than most fans who don't watch the games and just see the record and nothing else. Also I think Dolphins fans expect more of the Dolphins than the average NFL fan. To most in the NFL the Dolphins have become a laughing stock and a 9-8 season is something to be applauded, whereas most of the people here remember when the Dolphins actually were relevant and the playoffs were the standard by which the team was judged and they still believe that is the standard to which the Dolphins should be held. In my opinion if you aren't judging success by that standard, then you have set the bar too low. I won't do that and I think most of us here won't do that.

Also one of the things that keeps coming up is the lack of talent on the team the first year with Flores as head coach, what they fail to remember is that Flores traded Tunsil and Minkah Fitzpatrick, 2 of it's best players for draft picks. That WAS the plan. Flores WAS responsible for that lack of talent or at the very least for some of the lack of talent. He DOESN'T get a pass for this. Sure, I get why he did it, but you can't just say well the team was bad and so it doesn't count against him, no it counts against him alright because he orchestrated how bad the team was. Most people are forgetting that. He did it so that after a few years with all those draft picks the team would be good and he has replaced a lot of the talent, but the team really hasn't gotten any better. It's about on par record wise the last 3 years as the 3 years prior to him coming to the Dolphins so ultimately he failed to do what he set out to do which was rebuild the team. We could have kept Gase and gotten about the same record, thats not exactly an endorsement.

I think that we're getting gaslit as fans.  The Dolphins were over/under 9.5 wins prior to the start of the season....supposed to be the 10th-12th best team in the league.  We were expected to make the playoffs.

We're not that.  We underachieved from what those masses expected us to be.  Now the masses are calling Flores an overachiever.

Browse the expectations of us in these threads:
http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=26759.0
http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=26768.msg377099#msg377099

More analysis of the Flores firing. I will caveat this by saying this is all based on the presumption that Flores did not want Tua, he wanted Herbert. I'm not quite sure where that's coming from as I haven't really heard that although it's been suggested a couple of times and it did SEEM like Flores was not enamored with Tua, but we don't really know how he felt about Justin Herbert. If he felt that strongly then based on everything else I've heard, I feel confident they would have drafted Herbert and they didn't so I have a hard time believing that's the case, but regardless it was pretty clear that once Flores had a chance to work with Tua, he wasn't all that fond of him as his QB.

More Brian Flores firing Analysis (https://www.reddit.com/r/miamidolphins/comments/s2b2s0/lets_keep_analyzing_the_brian_flores_firing/)

Flores has unquestionably undermined Tua from the start.  This has been pretty obvious and already well-documented by the national media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7z5GnfaG7E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivbPCl0ooAI

And this is without getting into any Watson or Herbert stuff.

Whether Flores did want Tua or didn't want him, his coaching decisions regarding Tua were almost the worst possible choices at every junction.  Whether you are pro- or anti-Tua, is there anyone who can seriously say that they agree with how Tua has been handled?

If the issue was Grier wanted Tau and Flores wanted Hebert, the Dolphins shouldn’t have fired Flores for Tau’s failure, but fired Grier and put Flores in charge of personal decisions.  This is like firing the one scout in KC who thought the chiefs should take Marino over Blackridge.  Or the Jets scout that wanted Brady over Pennington. Okay maybe not quite that extreme.  Hebert is better than Tau, but this isn’t Manning vs Leaf.  But still Hebert was the choice.  If  Flores saw that he should be making the personal decisions rather than get fired for it.

I can't take you seriously when you call them Tau and Hebert.

Let's compare to Gase and Tannehill.

Tannehill found success after leaving Miami.

Gase found none.

Or maybe Flores was put in a situation that was destine to fail…….

Flores to Grier:  I have absolutely no confidence in Tua’s ability to play at the NFL level, he was great at the college level, but I don’t think he has what it takes to play at the NFL level.  Herbert on the other hand has all the tools needed to be a superbowl winning QB.

Grier: To effing bad, I make the personal decisions, figure out how to win with Tua.

Flores didn't get along with GM, QB, his assistant coaches, the people in the building, and he constantly disrespected to people like Ross and Tom Garfinkel. Even if you think he was good at coaching it really doesn't matter if he was a good coach or not. He didn't fit in with the organization.

We all saw he wasn't very good as a game day coach and it didn't appear he was getting any better.

BTW .. why has no one mentoned that we were worse in year three than year two? In fact the only reason we were better than 8-8 was because we had an extra game.

Wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility:

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-joe-philbin-wanted-to-dump-tannehill-draft-derek-carr-in-2014/

And that's not a comment on anyone involved in that process (Philbin, Ireland, Carr, Tannehill, etc.) or how any of it turned out in the end.  It's merely a comment about how HC's can be overruled by GMs regarding the most important position on the field.

No, but it WOULD seem to explain a LOT of stuff. If Flores didn't want Tua as the QB then it explains why Fitz was named the starter in 2020 despite Tua seemingly being healthy enough to play. It would also seem to explain why Flores continually said that Fitz was his starter in 2020 until suddenly Tua was declared the starter after the bye week coming off 2 straight wins by Fitzpatrick (seems pretty clear that Flores was either INSTRUCTED to start Tua or at the very least was getting pressure to start Tua and not that Flores just suddenly changed his mind and wanted Tua to start). It also would explain why Flores was willing to pull Tua in games where he struggled to put Fitz in. Perhaps that is when all this tension between Ross, Grier and Flores started and could be the reason that Flores is now gone and Tua and Grier remain...because Ross and Grier have chosen Tua over Flores. If that's the case that makes the hiring of the next NFL coach extremely challenging because despite what Ross said, the next head coach is going to have to agree with the decision that Tua is his QB and that's a hard sell to a lot of people in the NFL these days in my opinion regardless whether you think that's fair or not.

Trust me, if Flores actually did like Herbert more than Tua, I know EXACTLY how he feels and every one of Flores' decisions make sense now EXCEPT the decision to draft Tua. That makes no sense if your HC didn't want him.

This is rapidly approaching the Nick Saban "I wanted Brees over Culpepper but I was overruled" level of delusional hindsight revisionism.  It is the equivalent of Todd Bowles saying, "I wanted to take Lamar Jackson but they overruled me and picked Sam Darnold."

I believe there was literally one professional pundit who thought Herbert should go before Tua.  Everyone else was screaming Tua.

I was trying to avoid pointing this out because it's like a broken record at this point, but it seems like you're going to make it necessary:

You said that you didn't like Tua OR Herbert at #5 (specifically, that you would have liked to take Herbert at #18 but he was  "a bit of a reach at #5" (http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=26090.msg365376#msg365376)) and that Miami should not take a QB at all with that pick.  If Flores agreed with that take, that's still a fireable offense.

No its not.  Every single piece of evidence you can present that Tua was mistreated/mismanaged is tangible evidence that Flores didn’t have confidence in Tua.  It doesn’t prove he wanted Herbert, but it is very obvious that he never wanted Tua.

Yeah, I said that on January 29th....and here's the whole quote...

"For me, taking Tua at #5 seems to be reaching for a QB just for the sake of taking a QB. Originally I wanted to actually take Herbert with our 2nd pick at #18 which I thought was a good spot to take him, but seeing him rise up the boards now, that's no longer a possibility. So if you like him you're going to have to take him at #5 even though that might be a bit of a reach for him as well. If we are going to take a QB at #5, give me Herbert over Tua, but I'd be happy with passing on a QB at #5 completely as well and maybe get one of the others later."

The draft was in April if you will recall. By that time I had changed my mind and thought that we should take Herbert at #5 as it was obvious by then that he was going to go that high. I just didn't put that here on these forums or if I did I don't really recall and I'm not going to back and look at every single one of my posts here to prove it because I don't have to. I know what I was thinking before the draft better than you regardless of what you think and I couldn't care less what you think.

Doesn't say much about those pundits does it? Perhaps some lowly fan might even know better than they did. I can tell you this much I certainly wasn't the only fan saying we should draft Herbert at #5 instead of Tua, Reddit had plenty of those posts and there was quite the battle between Herbert fans and Tua fans on Reddit before the draft. But you know better, no one in their right mind thought Herbert was better than Tua, well some of us that apparently weren't in our right minds were right.

Anyone still holding out hope for Herbert over Tua at #5? (http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=26187.msg367192#msg367192)

I'm sure Nick Saban also thought that the Dolphins should have rolled the dice on Drew Brees's shoulder, but just didn't mention it at the time.

We can all claim that we meant something different than what we said, when it later becomes convenient to do so.  It doesn't mean anything for you to repeatedly point out that you thought Herbert was a better prospect than Tua AFTER you said the Dolphins shouldn't take either QB with that pick.  Saying "MIA should pick Herbert instead of Tua" does not correct or change your take that MIA should really take a non-QB with that pick (because Herbert and Tua were "reaches").   If the Dolphins had listened to you, they'd probably have drafted Jordan Love at 18.

You may yet be able to claim that you were right about Tua being a bad prospect, but you were just as wrong on Herbert as everyone else.

Whatever it takes for you to get through the day Spider. I have to live with the fact that Miami chose Tua over Herbert. You have to live with the fact you agreed with that decision.

Which team did we beat that was added as the 17th game that the Dolphins normally wouldn't have played based on prior NFL scheduling?

NYG

The extra game that was added because of the 17 game schedule was the Giants.

Thanks Spider & Hoodie, I couldn't remember.

This is for Spider. Apparently there was more "buzz" around Herbert prior to the draft than you're leading on. This doesn't mean anything, I just stumbled upon it today and I thought that since someone went through all the effort to find all this information that would seem to counter your opinion that Tua was the clear consensus pick for the Dolphins before the draft that I should share it with you. Not everyone was as enamored with Tua as you were. Not that they were screaming Herbert, but they weren't screaming Tua either. It was interesting that one of the links was to Dan Orlovsky making the case for Tua before the draft, so it's really no surprise that he was critical of Miami's handling of Tua, he was clearly a fan of drafting Tua prior to the draft, others not so much.

Multiple Teams preferred Justin Herbert over Tua (https://www.reddit.com/r/miamidolphins/comments/sg9mkx/multiple_teams_preferred_justin_herbert_over_tua/)

Yes, it's about being a professional. There were several people above me at my prior job that I didn't get along with. However, I didn't specifically cause trouble with them. I didn't like them and they didn't like me, but I did my job better than 85% of the people there. At the end of the day it's a job not a social gathering. But it's also not supposed to be a drama filled reality show. Flores didn't understand that unless you're very successful, you can't just act however you want to the people that determine your future.

The way I see it, we gave Tannehill 6-7 years. Flores got 3 years. Tua deserves at least 3 years. We need to get him the best team we can to surround him. Then at the end of next year, if there isn't noticeable improvement we move forward and sabotage the next group of rookies.

You know it's funny. On social media the battle lines have been drawn. The Tua haters always complaining about Tua and saying that Flores was fired for being "mean" to people. I'll say he was fired for being unprofessional. Then on the other side you have the Tua lovers that think he's the next big thing.

I'm somewhere in the middle, I think this is a results based league, but I also recognize that sometimes it takes more than 2 years for a player to develop and reach their ceiling. Tua has been sabotaged since he entered the league and it isn't fair. But time marches on and results are all that matter. Maybe since Ross and Co. fucked up this situation with Tua, we can send him to that Jets and he can sweep us every year and take them to the playoffs for the next 10 years. That's exactly what Ross and Co. deserve, but the fans and players deserve better....

In order:

1) (https://twitter.com/brgridiron/status/1244739875309486080) Injury risk.  Direct quote: "In a normal year, you could argue that Tua should be the #2 overall pick, and maybe even the #1 overall pick.  But because you're taking a third party's word for it when it comes to his medicals at this point in time, teams are going to be a little bit hesitant. And because of that, don't be surprised if Justin Herbert is the second QB picked because there are no questions about injuries when it comes to his evaluation."
2) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc239zevGU0) Tannenbaum didn't think Tua had good enough scrambling ability and thought it would lead to more injury, specifically citing Wentz and Garoppalo as other examples
3) (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2885805-matt-millers-scouting-notebook-dolphins-dictate-2020-nfl-draft-ripple-effects) Injury risks.  Direct quote: "Why Herbert over the more proven Tagovailoa? That doesn't make sense based on my latest draft board, which you can see below, but there is a growing sentiment that it's wise to draft the quarterback who hasn't had three major injuries in the last two years even if he isn't as talented."
4) (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2885469-mel-kiper-jr-justin-herbert-to-dolphins-over-tua-tagovailoa-has-some-buzz) Injury risks.  But interestingly: "If teams are confident in Tagovailoa being healthy, it's also possible he could be off the board before the Dolphins' first pick comes up."  Of course, no such prediction for Herbert.
5) (https://twitter.com/the_real_reason/status/1419733544646156292) More than a year after the draft; meaningless hindsight criticism
6) (https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/tua-tagovailoas-stint-on-injured-reserve-comes-at-inopportune-time-for-dolphins-2020-first-round-pick/) More than a year after the draft; meaningless hindsight criticism
7) (https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/barry-jackson/article241504986.html) Injury risks; Herbert's talent not mentioned
8) (https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article240357851.html) Injury risks; Herbert's talent not mentioned
9) (https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article241873141.html) Injury risks; Herbert's talent not mentioned
10) (https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article251365413.html) Justin Herbert's coach at Oregon thought he was the better pick, just like Tua's coach at Alabama thought he was the better pick.  What does that tell us?

Virtually no one in the media thought that Herbert was more talented than Tua, only that he was more durable.  Now, if you want to make the argument that Tua's durability is holding the Dolphins back, go right ahead!  He has missed time in both seasons so far, and given how terrible the Dolphins' OL has been, anyone behind center is going to face a higher risk of injury than normal, so durability might be a high priority.

But of course, if MIA knew that OL would be a major, team-crippling problem in the near future, they probably would have been less likely to trade away their best value-for-the-pick OL draftee in decades.

QB size and mobility are directly linked to a QB's durability in my opinion. For me, Herbert had qualities (size and mobility) that Tua didn't have that would tend to make him more durable. That combined with the injury history of both players, I thought Herbert was absolutely the better player to take from that standpoint and I think that's what you are seeing in all the above analysis. Durability is certainly one factor that should be taken into consideration when discussing any player's draft position in my opinion. Arm strength and durability I'm sure played a LOT into the analysis of both players and why there were some that had Herbert higher on their draft board. There would not have been as many questions about Tua's durability had he not been hurt in his senior year, but to say that durability was the only issue is not telling the whole story.

As far as what's holding Miami back, Tua missing time at QB has certainly hurt and I think concerns with Tua's durability combined with the offensive line problems when he is playing certainly played a role into deciding to run more RPO offense than perhaps they would have with another QB and I think that too has played a part. I've never been an advocate of the RPO offense.

Again, if you want to make the argument for Herbert on size or durability, feel free!  It's obvious that Herbert is bigger, and he's clearly had fewer injuries.

But virtually everyone evaluated Tua as the more talented QB.  So if you're saying that MIA should have picked Herbert based on talent, that is a purely hindsight-based evaluation.

Yeah, I don't remember many peope on here and on TV saying that Herbert was going to be better than Tua based off of talent. Physical attributes of course but not talent. There were some though on here, maybe 2-3 but even that seemed to be more fearful of Tua's injury history than Herbert being great.

Not even I expected Herbert to play as well as he has (same for Burrow as a matter of fact) but on the other hand I was not impressed with Tua like most people were. I NEVER suggested we should tank for Tua. I wouldn't have taken him #5 overall even if he was never injured. By the time of the draft, taking durability questions out of the equation, I would have ranked them Burrow, Herbert and then Tua and had both Burrow and Herbert close and Tua a little further back. So maybe the difference between you and I was not so much where I had Herbert ranked but what I thought of Tua. I was NOT high on him at all and in my opinion he's done nothing in the 2 years with Miami to change my mind on that. He's not a franchise QB. He was great in college because of where he played and who he played with, but I didn't think it would translate well to the NFL and in my opinion it hasn't. Herbert and Burrow both in my opinion would translate much better to the NFL game and they have.

I'm willing to concede that my opinion was in the minority, but there's no way that I was the ONLY one that thought this way. I've produced a video before the draft of one analyst who agreed with my opinion and I posted that here at the time. I've also shown a pre-draft poll that showed about 25% of the people wanted Herbert over Tua. I have no idea how many wanted him merely because of Tua's injury status, but it still shows that there were doubts about Tua before the draft and support for Herbert. Spider can deny this all he wants, he's simply wrong.

http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=26150.msg366557#msg366557

I do not deny that, on planet Earth, there was a non-zero number of people who wanted Herbert over Tua, so it was not literally "everyone."
I would imagine that there were a similar number of Bengals fans who wanted Tua (or Herbert) over Burrow.
There are always contrarians who want whatever they want.

I find the whole exercise of who would've taken who to be valueless.

Even if one person would've taken Herbert over Tua against conventional wisdom, it doesn't really say anything about that person.  It's just throwing darts in the dark.  Just because that person would've made that call, it could've just as easily blown up in their face and it's not indicative of future success.

We also don't know how Herbert would have played for us or how Tua would've played for some other team.  There are just so many variables.

I completely agree with you Dave that this does not indicate anything especially as far as future predictions go. It was merely a shot in the dark as you have put it. On the other hand I think it's wrong for someone to question my integrity. Spider is not simply saying he disagrees with me, he's saying that I'm lieing about what I believed. That's questioning my integrity and I'm going to defend myself in that case, so while you may not see any value in that, I certainly do. He doesn't have to believe me and I really don't care if he doesn't, but I won't simply sit back and let him call me a liar on these forums. He either stops doing that or I'm going to continue to defend myself.

To be perfectly honest, I don't particularly care what you truly believed in your heart of hearts or whatever.  I'm just tired of you continually trying to throw Justin Herbert in our faces when you said you were perfectly fine with passing on him on draft day.

Stop trying to claim credit for Being Right About Justin Herbert and I don't really have much else to say to you on the subject.