Very Good article on Sparano..He's got qualities that I like.

So his passion got them to win 3 of 11 games. Color me unimpressed.

 

He is a good guy but awful coach. I don't want him coaching this team next season. Unless your content with staying below average.

 

I may just be making excuses for Sparano because I like him, but I honestly cannot find him at fault for how we started the season. It seems like the lockout and related injuries might have hurt this team more than it has hurt any other team.

 

WHAT!!!???? He's a 7-9 coach! Period!

Why do Dolphin fans continue to justify reasons for retaining Sparano?!

The guy don't even know when to call time outs! If Ross is stupid enough to bring him back next season, i'm going to vomint!
Who cares if the players like him? That does not make him a good coach! He sucks at his so called specialty as OL coach!

 

I thought you were past this. It seems you're still desperate to hang onto the notion that Tony Sparano might really be a good head coach. There's more to it than being a cheerleader. If getting players to play hard was the entire job then yes he would be a good head coach. Unfortunately for Tony there's much more to it. We're supposed to want to retain him now because he inspired his players to rally to a 3 to 4 win season?

 

Chances are, Tony will be fired. However, what's happening in Philadelphia with a coach that many want to get to replace Tony is not happening here. Miami's locker room hasn't been torn apart by a disgruntled player. You don't see Miami's offensive coordinator and defensive line coach having to be separated on the side lines during a game. You don't see a situation, at least this year, where the team's best wide receiver is completely ignoring his quarterback. That has happened twice in Philly, though McNabb was the one doing the ignoring of Owens during the first instance.

In my opinion, the guy is a hell of a motivator and leader, and if he takes some time to become an assistant again, I think there are a lot of things that he can look back on during his tenure here and learn from. If he gets another chance, he will be a better coach for it. Everyone likes to say that Sparano is a 7-9 coach. That may be the case, because I happen to think the Dolphins are going to rally and go 7-9 again. A great turnaround, but a case of too little too late. Bill Belichick was once a 7-9 coach as well though (36-44 as head coach in Cleveland).

Tony has learned to lighten up a bit in practices and it has helped. If he would learn to lighten up a bit on game day and quit coaching the game to not lose it, things could get a lot better for him.

 

I call your Bill Bellichick and raise you a Dave Wannstedt and a Dick Jauron. Sometimes coaches can't abandon their philosophies or improve significantly. I'm not saying that's Tony but for every Bellichick we can find a Wanny. Lightening up in practices is one thing but I think Tony is too set in his ways to change how he views a football game as being won. The thing is you can always sit down after the game and rationalize your decisions. 'Well if we did a better job grinding it out late in the game and chewing up yards we could have won.' 'If we make a couple of plays on defense there towards the end we win the game.' Every time the team starts to having some success and every time they put themselves in a position to have a chance at say the playoffs, he goes back into his conservative coaching shell and becomes afraid to take chances. If he hasn't been able to stop doing that by now he's not going to just wake up one day and see the football world differently. A practice never shows up in the W/L column. That's why he can change there but not on game day. Ironically it's cost him several Ws and his job in Miami.

 

John Beck is an all-around good guy too. Maybe we should have kept him.

 

But can he win games? Statistics dont lie and hes a sub .500 coach in his tenure here! Time to move on..

 

Gimme a philandering, wife-beating, gluttonous, foot-lovin', nonfair-competitive-advantage-seeking all-around scumbag who will win playoff games.

 

IMO the primary reason this team started so poorly was that the defense was out of shape after the lockout. This was out of Sparano's control. Then it took Daboll a few weeks to get Moore up to speed on the new offense. I see the team that we've had the last four weeks or so as pretty indicative of Sparano's work. That doesn't make him a great coach, but he is a good coach with some strengths. I think he has great leadership and that is the #1 thing I want from my HC. The Xs and Os can (and should) be primarily handled by the coordinators. I think we have hired coordinators the last two seasons that can handle that task. I expect that he'll most likely be gone, but I'm not nearly as certain that we'll be better off b/c of it.

 

i can say that i like what Daboll is doing ... it would have been interesting to see him here last year.

Nolan does a good job as well on defense ...

but outside of the fact that Tony seems to be an honorable man -- i am not endeared to see him return; with one exception ... if a new coach is hired - we likely will change both coordinators ... and that i'm not sold on.

 

There are a lot of Sparano is a high character guy threads lately. That's great, but nobody ever questioned his character. In this league you gotta win games. And not just a few at the end after the season is already lost. I do agree with you that he should keep his job if he finds a way to win out. Absent that, he's given us some good times and some bad times but the party is over.

 

This thread again? Who cares about Sparano's qualities. The only quality that should matter is Sparano's complete inability to coach.

 

If that's the case, it's because our coaches suck worse than the rest of the coaches in the league, and should be fired.

 

Wow,7-9,7-9,and 2011 probally worse.Yea hes the coach for me love sitting home watching everybody else in the playoffs.
Can i have what your smoking must be some good ****.

 

we showed up flat at home to many times to believe that sparano is that great of a motivator

 

Only so much a coach can do. Considering there was a lockout in the off season and the team was installing a new offense and had 5 players starting at new positions on the offense I think Sparano has done a great job this year regardless of his 3-8 record. Even with that I don't think the offense was the main problem for the team's woes. Of course, there were problems getting into the end zone, but that changed when BM was stopped being continually targeted and play-action to the TE, roll-outs, etc... started being called. I think Henne did a pretty good job getting the offense ready in the off season given the circumstances.

However, the real problem early on was the defense. It obviously was the strength of the team. Karlos Dansby came in 24 lbs overweight (WTF Karlos?) and our dominant defensive line from last year was non-existent early on. Opposing QBs had enough time drink a beer and smoke a cigarette sitting in the pocket waiting for a receiver to get open. Tells me the defense did not put in the required work during the lock out the offensive players did.

Preparing the team this past off season was beyond Sparano's power. I don't think he is the best "game" coach out there, but the respect he receives from players on a losing team, his willingness to look at what he can do differently tells me he is a pretty damn good coach in a precarious situation. What I recall early in the year is players were calling each other out, but none of them were calling out Sparano.

The nature of the beast will result in Sparano probably getting fired at the end of the year, but he probably deserves to be retained more than most of the players that will be for next year.

 

Not only that but in key games late in the season. Remember 2009 when we came out at least a couple of times in December with playoffs on the line and allowed our opponents to jump out to big leads and didn't seem to wake up until the second half or so? Remember how terrible things were last December with playoffs on the line? At least this season we didn't get our hopes up, we knew we had no shot from the beginning. Being a likeable guy doesn't mean you 'deserve' any particular job.

 

Meh, Mike McCarthy is probably a douchebag, but you think Packers fans care?

 

Its about not being able to make halftime adjustments,its about not knowing when to go for 2pts,its about not being able to motivate your team in your own house.Lol, come on stop reaching this guy is toast and no stupid article about his qualties is going to make him a winner and save his job.

 

Well if choosing a platoon leader for war I'd seriously have to consider Tony Sparano. Four years in the NFL is a pretty fair shake if you ask me.

 

Give the guy a quarterback and he'll win. It's as easy as that, especially in today's NFL. I love how fans talk about game management or halftime adjustments (and make no mistake, in the heat of the battle, I'm no exception) when they really have no inkling about how any of that stuff actually works and when referring to people who have forgotten more about the game of football than any of us will ever know.

No, that doesn't mean that one isn't allowed to criticize. But it means one should get some perspective. Bill Belichik went from a moron who couldn't motivate his team and had no clue whatsoever about game management (oh, and he sucked at half time adjustments too) to a first ballot Hall of Famer by virtue of Tom Brady. Tony Sparano is probably no George Seiffert, but if Chad Pennington was 25 when he came here instead of 32, we'd still be doing the Happy Tony Dance.

 

Bill belichik had 2 superbowl rings with the giants as def cord.What were those giant teams known for? Defence. The pats(despite missing the playoffs)were 11-5 without tom brady in 2008.I think he knows how to coach.
I remember when we were playing the saints and we had a 24-3 lead.There was about 4 seconds left on the clock the ball was at around the 2 yard line and the saints were setup to kick the feild goal and our stupid coach calls a timeout.
Brees talks his coach into going for it and they score a td.Whole momentum of game changed on this stupid timeout and we lost.
Anyone armchair qb knows there was no reason to call a timeout there.Thats just 1 example why i will be glad to see him gone.In over is head..

 

The reason we don't have a Quarterback is because of Sparano and the clowns in the front office.

 

And yet, pretty much everyone in Cleveland wanted to see his moronic head coaching arse fired for very much the same reasons pretty much everyone in Miami wants to see Tony Sparano's moronic head coaching arse fired. Bill Belichik didn't miraculously become a better game manager, motivator or halftime adjuster when he went to New England. He simply lucked on a quarterback, and the rest, as they say, is history. The truth of the matter is that Sparano did quite fine when he had a very good quarterback. Then he did pretty mediocre to (now) bad when he didn't. No, I do not want to compare him to Bill Belichik and I happen to concur that Miami needs to clean house (albeit for different reasons), but let's not pretend that he's a clueless idiot who clearly doesn't understand the game. For all we know, he could be a pretty swell HC when given a productive quarterback. In fact, he was.

I do remember that game as well. And I agree, it was a bad decision. It wasn't up there with Marty Mornhinweg's overtime decision (a guy, by the way, I wouldn't call football ******ed, either), but it was pretty bad. However, we did not lose the game because New Orleans made it a 14 point deficit at half time. We lost the game because Chad Henne followed an okay first half with a 5 of 19 for two pick 6 stretch.

Yes, the first pick 6 was on Ginn and on a bogus call by the referees (it's not a Chad Henne debate, anyway), but anything even resembling decent QB numbers in the 2nd half would have easily won that game, bad HC decision or not. The funny thing is that I'm totally with you on the stupidity of that timeout. Alas, I've seen good and even great coaches do boneheaded things like that. It happens. It shouldn't, but it does. What usually doesn't happen is pulling out a win against a decent team when your QB goes 5 of 19 and two pick 6 in the non-garbage time part of the second half.

 

I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong) that this leads to the old "Chad Henne would have become a good quarterback with proper coaching" argument. If it does, then I'm not going to go there, sorry. It's pure speculation based on absolutely nothing whatsoever other than personal opinion. I'm not even saying that it's not true; it might be. For all we know, Ryan Leaf could have become a tremendous QB if the San Diego staff hadn't totally ruined him. But it doesn't make for a sensible discussion either way.

If, on the other hand, it's about drafting/acquiring a different quarterback than Chad Henne, I'm not sure how you can put that on Sparano at all. We don't know that he had any say in that 2008 draft, and even if he did, that's what you have a football czar and a GM for.

 

And yes i agree chad henne was terrible in the 2nd half but if you believe in momentum that call sure fired up the saints on both sides of the ball.
Let me ask you one question do you want tony back or try are luck with new blood?

 

I believe that momentum is like Murphy's Law: You remember the five times you pushed on that door you had to pull, but you tend to forget about the five hundred times you managed to open it without making a fool out of yourself. Besides, momentum, as that tiny little term "believe" indicates, isn't really something you can quantify or objectify. It's a matter of faith, really, so it tends to make for pretty fruitless discussions.

Oh, I think we absolutely need to clean house. But I don't think that we need to do it because Tony is a doofus with no understanding of football - I think we need to do it because Tony lacks a "lobby", so to speak. You can't be successful when every loss is bound to put your head coach on the hot seat. My point isn't that we should keep Tony. My point is that we shouldn't pretend that we got stuck with a complete moron and suck because of it. We suck for a lot of reasons, Tony being partially responsible for some, but far from being the main culprit.

 

Well, since you believe in momentum, I guess your answer to this question would have to depend on the "momentum" Sparano builds (or doesn't) during the final 5 games.

If Tony wins 4 of the last 5 and finishes the season on a 7-2 run with a backup QB, then I think you have to look hard at possibly keeping him, provided one of the big boys isn't available. Should he finish the season strong, you also have to consider if his potential firing might affect the players on the team who are loyal to him.

 

Everybody talks about the big boys meaning cower,gruden,fisher,reid,to tell you the truth I don't want any of these guys.
I want to try our luck with somebody that is young and hungry and not some burnout retread.To tell you the truth i don't know who that would be but hopefully are new or current gm will have a clue.
Man if only ross could have snagged harbaugh.

 

Don't you mean "take a chance"?


I considered Harbaugh in the big boy category, so I'm not just limiting it to past or current NFL head coaches.

 

I am with you on that. A lot of people mostly consider the retread past nfl coaches i am not among them.
Any thoughts of any hot cords or college coaches.

 

Nothing like a Harbaugh type impact coach comes to mind right now. That's also one reason to consider staying with Sparano "if" he finishes well (to hold out for someone truly special rather than making a move out of desperation which might cost you that future "someone special").


IMO picking out Sparano's replacement should follow the advice given when buying a nice suit----> if you're not in love with the way it looks and fits in the store, then leave it on the rack and keep searching. Don't just buy it b/c it seems nicer than what you currently have.

 

So exactly "WHO" are the QBs that got away b/c of Sparano and the clowns?

The reality is there has been slim pickings since they got here.