Disclosure. In the interest of full disclosure, I was against the Cam hiring since he was being mentioned last January as a candidate. I disagreed with the collective "wisdom" that the Dolphins needed an offensive minded head coach. I thought they needed a new offensive coordinator, but since most offensive coordinators turned head coach fail more often than their defensive counterparts, I was pushing for a defensive minded head coach. My personal choice was Mike Tomlin. It was a gut feeling, but I know it was also a lucky guess. We did have Capers, but Tomlin also retained Dick Lebeau in Pittsburgh. It could have worked. Oh well. Cam had built his reputation on a very talented San Diego offense, and he left Indiana with a losing record. But once Cam was hired, and since I bleed aqua and orange, I put my faith in him, and decided to look at the glass as half full. I loved RanCam's draft, but vehemently disagreed with how the Culpepper/Green swap was handled. But, I had decided early on to give him the full season to show me what he's got, since you can't judge rookie head coaches solely on their first 8 games, their offseason, or their stint at a perennially losing college. But I didn't expect to be sitting at 0-13 without having seen even the spark of development in a 26 year old rookie QB. The Jets are the second worst team in the NFL and beat the Dolphins handily twice. If Cam can't muster up a desperate win in the final 3 weeks to avoid imperfect immortality, why keep him around? Bad Team Cam isn't the reason that this team is a bad team. Wannstedt as GM made this a bad team. Cam inherited a rebuilding project and he knew it, which is why so many rookies made his team. But even bad teams manage to win a few games. If Cam can pull off just 1 win, then maybe we can call him mediocre. If the Dolphins truly have 0-16 talent, then we still need a coach who can squeeze 2 or 3 wins out of them. What happens if this teams suddenly develops some 6 to 10 win talent, is Cam the guy to get a few extra wins that qualify the Dolphins for the playoffs? Or do we continue to never expect more from his team than the raw talent he puts on the field every Sunday? Bad Luck 1 No Zach Thomas, Ronnie Brown, Chris Chambers, Trent Green, Yeramiah Bell, Renaldo Hill, and Vonnie Holliday for a stretch have made it harder to pull off that elusive first NFL win for Cam, but losing 6 of 13 games by 3 points shows that it is not impossible. Do any Dolphin fans truly believe that without Cameron we wouldn't have even come close to winning? Bad Luck 2 It was also bad luck that Dick Saban walked out on the Dolphins in a year in which there were no obvious great candidates available. Wasn't it down to the recently fired Chan Gailey and Cam Cameron? The Raiders had to hire a college offensive coordinator. It was a bad year to need a new coach. But this year offers the Dolphins more choices, Parcells, Marty, and Cowher are coaches who weren't available to the Dolphins last year, and may not be available after the '08 season. If you can get one of those proven commodities why wouldn't you? What is best for the Dolphins. Firing Cam comes down to what is best for this franchise. Does retaining a coach who so far appears in over his head send the message to all these young players that there is no accountability in the Dolphins franchise at this time? Good luck signing any veteran to anything but an inflated contract. Does firing a coach after 1 rebuilding season plagued by injuries, hurt the franchises chances of wooing the next hot young coach to emerge in future years? Right now I think the best thing for Beck, Brown and Ginn is to get another year in Cam's system. But what about the rest of the team? Just end our suffering Once Cam got hired, I held my tongue. Dolphin fans are all holding their breath waiting for that first win that prevents 0-16. Do we have to go into 08 holding our noses too?
You can't wait for us to go 0-16 just to support your dislike for the head coach? You actually welcome a blemish that will never go away just to say "I told you so"? Couldn't you claim the same thing with a 1-15 outcome? I am definitely leaning the same way you are towards Cameron. I feel through decisions he's made, poor game management, play calling, personell decisions in season, etc. that he seems to be over his head. Having said that, why anyone would wish this embarrassment onto the team they support just to seem more right is beyond me.
You're mistaken. An honest mistake. I don't wish for the Dolphins to go 0-16. I'm saying I just can't wait for 0-16 to say what is obvious at 0-13. I tried to give Cam 16 games before I gave up on him. But I just don't see much happening in 3 games that would reverse what he has shown in 13 straight losses.
I think the only thing that is clearly obvious is that this team is bad and has had even worse luck. While I have backed off my support for Cam to an extent, I don't think you can definitively say any of this is his fault. Early on in the season when we had the likes of Trent Green, Ronnie Brown, and Chris Chambers, I really saw some nice things being implemented by Cam. Obviously as those players went down or got traded, the offense has seriously declined. Cam has made mistakes. There is no denying that. But I'm willing to chalk some of that up to being a rookie HC in the NFL and hope that if he is retained he learns some lessons. I think there is something to continuity and bringing in another HC will really disrupt that. But if Cam is never going to be the guy, then I guess it's better to get that disruption out of the way now. I really don't know what the right decision is with Cam, but I still don't think you can make any kind of final judgments on the guy considering what he has had to work with. I agree with your point that it shouldn't matter whether the record is 0-16 or 2-14 though. Either way its a disastrous season.
The point isn't whether or not you blame Cam for this season. And firing him for 0-16 isn't about making him the scapegoat. The cards he was dealt were shuffled long ago. The point is in evaluating Cam as a head coach based on what he is able to get out of sub par talent. And I agree that the offense had looked better earlier on. But that is why you hire an offensive coordinator to be an offensive coordinator. And frankly, after Mularkey last year, the offense could only look better. There is no team more desperate for a win right now than the Dolphins. They are all looking to Cam to lead them to 1 stinking win, and so far he can't do it. NFL head coaches are expected to manufacture wins during a season. Cam can't do that. He isn't an NFL head coach. If all you are asking from a head coach is to reflect the talent on his roster, why ever sweat who you hire?
Honestly I do not like Cam Camereon. The team just seemed so ill prepared. Plus it has been so sinking ship like. Once one hole got plugged up two would spring open and that was before huge injury bugs. The season feels so sad without Ronnie Brown.
I totally agree with you His'n... I also didn't like the Cam deal. I wanted in no particular order: Riviera Tomlin or Shott (elder) if possible since at the time we didnt know if he was going to stay in SD or not for sure. Going forward, we need a change. Again...
By that logic then it would matter if they win a couple of games. With one of the least talented teams the NFL has ever seen, getting a couple of wins would then be a positive. My point was that you can't make a fair evaluation on him because of the hand he was dealt. Yes, its the job of a coach to get wins, but he has to have some form of talent on the field. To his credit they hung in most of their games against teams much better than them. And yes, I believe that ultimately 90% or more of a team's success is based on the talent on the field. You sweat who you hire because you'd like to have the best you can for that remaining percentage no matter how small. But at the end of the day you aren't going to win games with a bad team. Part of me would like to see Cam get a shot with a year under his belt and better talent on the team.
I wasn't thrilled about Cam, either. I don't see the wisdom in firing him, though. I think of the people currently employed by the Dolphins, Mueller is more responsible for this mess and is the person who must be fired ASAP (but that likely means post-draft). Cam has been a failure of a coach in his first year. He needs coaching strategy 101 based on some of the idiotic things he has done with time out strategy and the like. He should also be forced to hire a creative OC who will run this offense. The team also needs to take a long, hard look at firing Capers. I'm not certain that is appropriate at this point, but it seems likely it is. I don't think you move this team forward by firing Cameron even despite his massive failure. You have to give him a second year with a few more restrictions to see if he can right the ship. Brad Childress looked pretty bad his first year, but he has shown in his second year why I wanted him to be coach when Saban was hired. It sometimes takes a while to get it, and having this pathetic Wannstedt-Saban-Mueller (but not, IMHO, Spielman) disaster of a roster doesn't exactly help. If it becomes clear Cam isn't right for the team based on his 2008 performance, fire him in December and prepare to bring in the most talented and creative coordinator working in the NFL today.
I still have yet to hear how a GM taking over in his first year with the task of completely building a team, having a good draft and being limited in FA $$ and FA choices available to him could be responsible for a mess created by bad drafting and FA decisions over 10 years prior to his arrival. Makes no sense whatsoever to me. **Edit** I now see the motivation for this post. From another thread I see that you are in the camp that thinks the Ginn pick was a colossal screw up. That explains your viewpoint but I don't see how that can be a logical assessment either as season one of this draft class isn't even in the books.
The motivation behind the Ginn pick is not excusable, but that's not it. I also seriously question Randy's judgment for the Porter and Green moves.
I really don't have a problem with any of those three moves. No one saw the collapse of this defense coming. With zero help from the offense, they were still one of the best units in the league last season and Mueller felt (as did many people) that adding Porter would make them elite. He along with Cam also thought that, because they assumed the D would be strong, improving the offense could make this team a playoff contender. Adding an experienced QB with knowledge of this offense would, in theory, help the entire offense adjust to the new system. Unfortunately the defense fell apart, which derailed the entire plan. I fault Mueller for letting some key reserves like David Bowens go, but I don't think the Porter or Green moves were bad ones at the time. And the Ginn pick has been debated over and over again, but they felt the there wasn't a $30 million difference between Beck and Quinn, and felt they could get a gamebreaker in Ginn. They weren't the only team that felt this way about the two QB's and while many thought they reached on Ginn, there were other teams right behind them ready to snatch him up.
Well, they certainly made fools of a lot of people. The difference between them and Mueller is that Mueller is supposedly a professional. It's not the question of whether the D would be good or not, though -- it's Porter being staggeringly overrated, as are most hyped free agent linebackers (and especially Steelers). If Porter is good and this defense is having a down year, he should be some dominant bright spot given the hype surrounding him before the year began. Strange how it hasn't turned out that way. It's not that uncommon a system nor that difficult a system to learn. If this were some of the more complex west coast variants, I could buy this. I don't buy that with this system. Even if he did want somebody with experience, that didn't require a trade for an out of gas Trent Green. It was as short sighted a move as firing Cam would be. You don't bring in a QB for one year, and you don't fire a coach after one year.
The Green move made me ill, and I was screaming no when it was first rumored, but I don't know how you can lay it at the feet of Mueller. That move screamed Cam from day one. Sure Mueller had must have signed off on it, but he didn't exactly have veto power over Cam from what I know. The Porter move probably would have worked out great if we had the surrounding cast on defense that we had last year. He was playing with his hand on the ground as a DE for the first time in either his pro or collegiate careers. I have trouble believing Mueller knew that's how we would use him. IMO Mueller expected Porter to be used to compliment JT (how JT was used last year). Believing we would have personnel that was as effective as last year's, so that Porter could be used in such a role, is where Mueller deserves his lashes. Maybe he overpaid for Porter, but the move looks worse because of how poorly the rest of the defense has played (specifically the front seven).
The Green and Porter moves both date back to Cam Cameron. This guy said we'd be a playoff team...Him and Randy Mueller acted accordingly. Show both these fools the door please Wayne.
celtkin set a poFo back up, I just have been swamped here at atlas, there was a chaos on the biography show, and so I've been hovering between three shows, which means plenty of those 15 hour days, which take away all will i have to discuss politics with anyone.
Gotta hate a 15 hour day that stretches back into daylight. I am so lucky to be working days at least through March.
you are a lucky man... i love post but if there where one thing I had to point out to someone that I hate about it, is the work hours....
Porter has been playing out of postion, but the last few games he has really played well. But we did pay him to much money. What I don't get is why capers did not play Taylor like last year and keep Porter where he plays best.
