They literally had two options ... drag the rebuild out over several years or take the hit and hopefully move on much faster.
"Drag the rebuild out over several years" = "continue to field a team that is plausibly competitive"
JES
chose the other option: field a completely uncompetitive team, on purpose. So if this is the intended outcome, they should own this outcome.
As I have mentioned before: DEN cut Russell Wilson, took an
enormous cap hit, and still fielded a team that made the playoffs. Now, is "a playoff appearance" a reasonable expectation for the 2026 Dolphins (if they don't gut the team)? Likely not. But you can be
an unexceptionally bad team - say, the 2025 Saints - without falling all the way down to "in the running for one of the worst NFL teams of all-time," which is the team's current trajectory.
It is also worth pointing out that - as we have seen from the 0-16 Lions and Browns - fielding an atrociously bad team does not meaningfully increase your chances of future success. None of the SB winners of the past decade got there by completely bottoming out.