Can We Fire Flores Now?

[Dolfanalyst]

This is the team that just beat the Dolphins 34-3:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-analysis/2022/titans-vs-worst-no-1-seeds-ever?utm_source=CCM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eNews_Tues

[EDGECRUSHER]

This is the team that just beat the Dolphins 34-3:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-analysis/2022/titans-vs-worst-no-1-seeds-ever?utm_source=CCM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eNews_Tues

So, in a crazy off year for the NFL where no team is above "pretty solid" and 80% of the league is mediocre, we still can't make the playoffs. The drop off this year from 2020 is even more dramatic than we thought. So, to reiterate, Fire Flores.

[pondwater]

This is the team that just beat the Dolphins 34-3:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-analysis/2022/titans-vs-worst-no-1-seeds-ever?utm_source=CCM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eNews_Tues

None of that mumbo jumbo really means anything. All it proves is that "any given sunday" is all that matters. What do those numbers mean if the Titans happen to win the Super Bowl?

[Spider-Dan]

Setting aside those with an obvious vested interest in downplaying any success from TEN, I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that a Titans team without three of their best players doesn't rate very high on analytics.  Nevertheless, if they wind up with a #1 seed while missing Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, and Derrick Henry for significant portions of the season, that's a borderline miracle.

[DenverFinFan]

Setting aside those with an obvious vested interest in downplaying any success from TEN, I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that a Titans team without three of their best players doesn't rate very high on analytics.  Nevertheless, if they wind up with a #1 seed while missing Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, and Derrick Henry for significant portions of the season, that's a borderline miracle.

Tannehill made the playoffs every year he was this Tennessee. I think his record is 29-13.

Maybe he doesn’t have it to get them a SB but man I think if Miami did a better job with him he would have been good enough to build a team around.

He hasn’t had a great year and he isn’t the primary reason for Tennessee’s success but the team has the ability to beat anyone, especially if Henry comes back.  Would love to see him hoist the trophy and silence some critics.

At least Tennessee has games to look forward to in the playoffs and have a real shot. I’d take that over the irrelevant joke we have always been.

[Dolfanalyst]

Setting aside those with an obvious vested interest in downplaying any success from TEN, I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that a Titans team without three of their best players doesn't rate very high on analytics.  Nevertheless, if they wind up with a #1 seed while missing Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, and Derrick Henry for significant portions of the season, that's a borderline miracle.

What’s interesting is the discrepancy between their record and their predicted record, and how that related to a win by a highly unexpected margin. Do you figure Football Outsiders has an interest in “downplaying Tennessee’s success”? They wrote an article about the discrepancy between their record and their predicted record.

Of course one would first have to understand things like predicted records and predicted game outcomes to perceive the intent accurately.

[DenverFinFan]

If it were up to me I’d fire Flores. I don’t have faith that he can mold a championship team or even a contender.

I’d like to see someone come in and try to give Tua a better a shot next year.. Or maybe it’d be better to trade Tua and start fresh at QB again if we see someone worth it. Wanna take a risk on a Pittsburgh QB? I don’t know, but I dont think Tua can develop with Flores at the helm.

That said, I don’t think he gets fired, maybe if we just get annihilated next week but I don’t think so after the win streak.

[Spider-Dan]

Do you figure Football Outsiders has an interest in “downplaying Tennessee’s success”? They wrote an article about the discrepancy between their record and their predicted record.

The other reason for optimism, as Titans so enthusiastically pointed out to me, is that the Titans have suffered a lot of injuries this year. They lost Derrick Henry for half the season. They played some games without either of their top two receivers, veterans A.J. Brown and Julio Jones. They've had a number of offensive line and defensive injuries as well. The Titans will be a lot healthier in the playoffs than they were in most of their losses this season. This is true! With a healthy roster, the Titans aren't really the worst team to ever win a No. 1 seed despite having the lowest DVOA. They're certainly better than the 2000 New York Giants, for example. The question is: how much do we want to mentally adjust the Titans' DVOA rating for the injuries they had to deal with?

Football Outsiders acknowledges that TEN has had several injuries to key players, and that - while that version of the Titans is certainly unimpressive - the healthier version that we expect for the playoffs is a much stronger team.  The injured version of TEN doesn't beat BUF, doesn't beat LAR, doesn't sweep IND, and doesn't stomp KC - wins which play a big part in their current position as the #1 seed right now.

However, that injured version of TEN does indeed stomp MIA.  So instead of derailing yet another thread into more of your attempts to retroactively justify your continual attacks on Tannehill when he was in a Dolphins uniform, let's try to stay on topic.

[Downunder Dolphan]

I'm just about ready to move on from Flores (and also Grier).

This was a crucial year in terms of their rebuild design, and we if we didn't go backwards it was close enough to it for me to call it a massive fail.

Looking beyond the numbers, the standard of coaching is so bewildering, inconsistent and appalling. The bad calls, bad challenges, the flip flop between preferences of players and game styles that on the surface just makes no sense at all. Unfortunately this is nothing new - you would think that by year three there's the experience that this bizarre stuff should have stopped, but no...

Two OC promoted from within which of course doesn't work (as literally everyone outside of the Fins hierarchy had predicted) and is not corrected during the season, while the rest of the coaching staff recruited is either K-Mart or Reject Shop standard. Perhaps not surprisingly, the form of several key young players have gone significantly backward.

Then there's the treatment of Tua. He's our guy... except we've been talking about Watson behind the scenes... Brissett is only the starter while Tua is injured... until Brissett is hurt against the Ravens for Tua to come on in relief. We're going to stretch the field with our speedy trio of wide receivers to open up the running game... except there's no time to throw the ball, and only Waddle and Gesicki who can seem to get open deep downfield. Needless to say, there's no running game either.

Despite his flaws I always thought Flores at least had players motivated... up until the midst of our losing streak this year when it seemed like more than a few had clocked off. Some of the magic seemed to return for the Ravens game (our best of the season) when the defense went back to the blitzing schemes that worked last year, Tua's return during the game, and Hunt's little goal line stunt - it's probably the first time to me this year the players visibly seemed to really enjoy being out there. That carried through up until a game that really mattered against Tennessee, and then you guessed it, flat as a tack again. Another bad loss this week and I will have the feeling that Flores had me completely fooled on this, and it's his only real selling point to date.

Between this and our recruiting, I have serious doubts we are headed in the right direction, and this golden opportunity has been blown. Could it still be salvaged by getting a competent, experienced coaching staff? Maybe, but with our Owner you just know that isn't going to happen...

What's the chance that Ross gets caught sounding out Harbaugh again while Flores is still under contract? Then he follows it up with "the Dolphin Way" under his particular Custodianship: he awards Flores a 2-3 year extension, only to fire him part way through the next season when the players have completely checked out, we bottom out during one of our worst ever seasons, and the fans revolt. I wish I could say I'm only joking about this, but we've seen it all before...

[Dolfanalyst]

The other reason for optimism, as Titans so enthusiastically pointed out to me, is that the Titans have suffered a lot of injuries this year. They lost Derrick Henry for half the season. They played some games without either of their top two receivers, veterans A.J. Brown and Julio Jones. They've had a number of offensive line and defensive injuries as well. The Titans will be a lot healthier in the playoffs than they were in most of their losses this season. This is true! With a healthy roster, the Titans aren't really the worst team to ever win a No. 1 seed despite having the lowest DVOA. They're certainly better than the 2000 New York Giants, for example. The question is: how much do we want to mentally adjust the Titans' DVOA rating for the injuries they had to deal with?

Football Outsiders acknowledges that TEN has had several injuries to key players, and that - while that version of the Titans is certainly unimpressive - the healthier version that we expect for the playoffs is a much stronger team.  The injured version of TEN doesn't beat BUF, doesn't beat LAR, doesn't sweep IND, and doesn't stomp KC - wins which play a big part in their current position as the #1 seed right now.

However, that injured version of TEN does indeed stomp MIA.  So instead of derailing yet another thread into more of your attempts to retroactively justify your continual attacks on Tannehill when he was in a Dolphins uniform, let's try to stay on topic.

I couldn’t care less about Tennessee or Tannehill at this point. Virtually all of my (few) posts are strongly Dolphins- and general football-related. You do far more talking about Tennessee and Tannehill than anyone else here — i.e., this thread (take a look above, where you derailed the topic and then did more talking about Tennessee and Tannehill than anyone has here in four years and likely ever will again) — so perhaps you should practice what you preach about staying on-topic.

If you believe I’m derailing a thread you can certainly delete my post(s) and reprimand me behind the scenes, as a moderator appropriately should.

I’m not stuck in the world of four years ago — I would suggest you leave it as well and fast-forward to today, where we can all hopefully get along no problem.

Notice I didn’t say a thing substantive about Tennessee or Tannehill there. Let’s see whether you can follow suit or you continue to derail the thread in that direction, while telling other people to “stay on-topic.”

[CF DolFan]

Brian Baldinger asked the best question in regards to the current regime. After three years what is your record against winning teams? We are still being blown out by them. It's possible the Patriots embarrass us to end the season since they clearly are a much better team than last time.

[Dolfanalyst]

I'm just about ready to move on from Flores (and also Grier).

This was a crucial year in terms of their rebuild design, and we if we didn't go backwards it was close enough to it for me to call it a massive fail.

Looking beyond the numbers, the standard of coaching is so bewildering, inconsistent and appalling. The bad calls, bad challenges, the flip flop between preferences of players and game styles that on the surface just makes no sense at all. Unfortunately this is nothing new - you would think that by year three there's the experience that this bizarre stuff should have stopped, but no...

Two OC promoted from within which of course doesn't work (as literally everyone outside of the Fins hierarchy had predicted) and is not corrected during the season, while the rest of the coaching staff recruited is either K-Mart or Reject Shop standard. Perhaps not surprisingly, the form of several key young players have gone significantly backward.

Then there's the treatment of Tua. He's our guy... except we've been talking about Watson behind the scenes... Brissett is only the starter while Tua is injured... until Brissett is hurt against the Ravens for Tua to come on in relief. We're going to stretch the field with our speedy trio of wide receivers to open up the running game... except there's no time to throw the ball, and only Waddle and Gesicki who can seem to get open deep downfield. Needless to say, there's no running game either.

Despite his flaws I always thought Flores at least had players motivated... up until the midst of our losing streak this year when it seemed like more than a few had clocked off. Some of the magic seemed to return for the Ravens game (our best of the season) when the defense went back to the blitzing schemes that worked last year, Tua's return during the game, and Hunt's little goal line stunt - it's probably the first time to me this year the players visibly seemed to really enjoy being out there. That carried through up until a game that really mattered against Tennessee, and then you guessed it, flat as a tack again. Another bad loss this week and I will have the feeling that Flores had me completely fooled on this, and it's his only real selling point to date.

Between this and our recruiting, I have serious doubts we are headed in the right direction, and this golden opportunity has been blown. Could it still be salvaged by getting a competent, experienced coaching staff? Maybe, but with our Owner you just know that isn't going to happen...

What's the chance that Ross gets caught sounding out Harbaugh again while Flores is still under contract? Then he follows it up with "the Dolphin Way" under his particular Custodianship: he awards Flores a 2-3 year extension, only to fire him part way through the next season when the players have completely checked out, we bottom out during one of our worst ever seasons, and the fans revolt. I wish I could say I'm only joking about this, but we've seen it all before...

The model that's most likely to win big in today's NFL is the top-notch QB and the top-notch offensive mind orchestrating the offense and calling the plays.  At this point the Dolphins have neither, and until they do, it'll take an unlikely number of personnel victories elsewhere to compete at that level.  The play-caller and the play director give you the largest margin of error with regard to the rest of the business of winning.  Until they have both of those in place I won't be optimistic about their success, and betting against them to make the playoffs will be the better bet.

[Pappy13]

Maybe he doesn’t have it to get them a SB but man I think if Miami did a better job with him he would have been good enough to build a team around.

There was at least 1 person in these forums that knew that when we got rid of him. As fans we spend entirely too much time focusing on the QB play and not nearly enough time on the rest of the team which includes both the defense and special teams. SB winning teams get contribution from all 3 phases of the game.

[Downunder Dolphan]

The model that's most likely to win big in today's NFL is the top-notch QB and the top-notch offensive mind orchestrating the offense and calling the plays.  At this point the Dolphins have neither, and until they do, it'll take an unlikely number of personnel victories elsewhere to compete at that level.  The play-caller and the play director give you the largest margin of error with regard to the rest of the business of winning.  Until they have both of those in place I won't be optimistic about their success, and betting against them to make the playoffs will be the better bet.

Funnily enough, out of the recent QBs the one that reminds me most of Tua the most would be Russell Wilson. The key difference is to me is the Hawks had decent coaching group who were fully behind him from the start of his rookie year, supported him with a great OL and rushing game to go with their suffocating defense... they went to back to back Superbowls, winning one.

Now that's not in the group of what I call the truly elite echelon of QBs (Rodgers, Brady, Peyton, and maybe Brees) who can seem to make the most ordinary of wideouts look like superstars when they join their squad. But it says to me Tua does possibly have the tools to win - provided he has the necessary support. To date we haven't given him anything remotely resembling that.

[Spider-Dan]

I couldn’t care less about Tennessee or Tannehill at this point.

Then perhaps you should have refrained from injecting them into this thread, as you did when you cited an article that:

1) does not mention the words "Miami" or "Dolphins" at all
2) has nothing to do with any team the Dolphins may face again this year

The flimsy excuse of "look at the team Miami lost to" has no more to do with this thread than any of the other 13 teams has MIA played.  You're not fooling anyone by injecting an article that's critical of the Titans as "strongly Dolphins related" solely because MIA lost to them.  TEN's strength compared to other #1 seeds in history has literally nothing to do with the 2021 Miami Dolphins.

Because most of us were present for your last run here, when you start talking about how "offensive line performance doesn't correlate to success" or "win-loss record is not a reliable indicator of team quality" or even "the Titans are a severely overrated team," we know what you're trying to say.  Your dog whistle is not slick.

If you believe I’m derailing a thread you can certainly delete my post(s) and reprimand me behind the scenes, as a moderator appropriately should.

Is that how the moderators work on your forum... silently make posts disappear, then send nastygrams in PMs?
Thanks for the advice.