throwing our first year first time coach under the bus to defend the inept GM that's been here for half a decade and stacked this team with mythical talent...that is low.
What about the players drafted a bit earlier, like Serpico mentioned? Gates, Thomas, among others aren't rookies, but they haven't amounted to anything. You have to judge a GM somehow.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda, doesn't win football games. I am sick and tired of people blaming Carpenter for those early losses. The Dolphins could have lost the Rams and Seahawk games if these teams had made another play or two. The fact is that the Dolphins made the plays to win those games and they didn't make the plays necessary to win the games they lost during the season. Carpenter has made kicks which won games this season. So if you are going to blame him for the kicks he missed and the team lost. I guess you have to give him all the credit for the games the Dolphins won in which he made field goals. The Dolphins are 5-8 right now because they have not played well as a TEAM, for the vast majority of their games. Philbin took a team which went 6-3 with a backup QB over their final nine games last season and he has coached them to a losing record at this time. How this equates to him being defined as a , "damn good football coach", is beyond me. The offense is worse this year than it was in 2011. The defense is giving up more points per game this season over what it allowed in 2011. I have no idea if Philbin is a good coach or not. The record says he isn't, but I also recognize that he has a team which is lacking talent throughout the roster. Of course Sparano had to deal with this same lack of overall talent. I am certainly willing to give him another year to see if he can be more effective as an NFL head coach, but another losing season in 2013 would certainly appear to be a sign that he might not be a good NFL head coach after all. Hopefully he can have more success next year than he has had so far this season.
This is BLASPHEMY on a Dolphins board. I don't care how old or young you are to say this here on a Dolphins board should almost be good enough to get you banned.
I guess we have to excuse him somewhat he is just 25, but I still think the mods should step in here. That is a statement that borders on trolling because of the controversy it will cause.
It was either posted in ignorance or as a trollish post. Sorry you can't say that on a Dolphins board without knowing it would cause an uproar.
Unless he coaches well into his 70's he'll never catch The Don. Once Brady retires and he finds it difficult to win more than 8 or 9 games a year, he'll retire, while his reputation is intact, and FAR FAR short of The Don
Dude we haven't been "loaded with talent" except in the minds out of touch with reality Blind Homers.
I have seen some 4,000 acre cow pastures with less BS in it than I have seen in this thread. Why don't y'all quit bashing each other about things most of us have less knowledge than the coach's little finger instead of throwing hyperbolic statements around like Marine flamethrowers on Okinawa.
This would be closer to my argument. In many of the examples you posted previously I think you could make the case that there was a core of talent on those rosters (including a QB in place), but the team had been under performing for whatever reason. Add in the correct ingredient(s) (perhaps a change in culture, perhaps a Chad Pennington) and there's improvement. I think, at least in Philbin's case, that there are some extenuating circumstances- namely a still fairly raw rookie QB having limited resources at his disposal. I wonder if we had a QB playing up to the level of Matt Moore last season whether we might instead be more of an 8-8 or 9-7 squad, which I think would at least qualify as fair improvement given the lack of an extra weapon in Marshall and a weaker secondary.
The lengths some will go to protect Ireland, it's amazing. So he was the water boy under Parcells and then Sparano and is apparently still the water boy under Philbin. Do people really believe this stuff ?
Marshall I can't say because they weren't running Hard Knocks at that time. There's really no way to say and I'm actually surprised at the number of people that take refuge in the "you don't know you weren't there" line of argument with respect to which decisions were Bill Parcells and which decisions were Jeff Ireland, then turn around and take it for granted that Brandon Marshall was jettisoned at Joe Philbin's request. As for Vontae Davis, Hard Knocks made that one pretty clear that it was Jeff Ireland the whole way, with Joe Philbin's consent at the end.
Yeah actually we do know who made the call. The GENERAL MANAGER made the call. Because he has full authority over the roster and what he says, goes. And if you watched Hard Knocks you know that the Vontae trade was all engineered by Ireland with only Joe Philbin's consent at the end.
The Vontae trade was clearly Ireland's decision. The Marshall trade was very likely Philbin's/Ross' IMO. I see a lot less motivation on Ireland's side in that situation.
I'm still a little torn on it. I think a big difference between this case and others is that most of those coaching switches probably were accompanied by significant roster churn in order to acquire players that either already have experience in the coach's system or that fit the coach's system better. That didn't happen in Miami. They struck out on every single one of the 8 or 9 or whatever free agents they brought in, and so the only delta was really the draft...and those guys are just rookies. That could have consequences in either direction. You could make the case that one reason these coaches "need time" is because of the roster churn that typically accompanies the hire, which inevitably leads to some level destruction of talent base. I think those people that claim Philbin came up with the idea to trade Marshall (we don't know that one, at all) and Vontae (we do know that one, he didn't)...would take refuge in that argument. New coach, churning the roster, destroying some of the talent base in the process, going to take time. Of course I don't know that I really call that roster churn when it's two guys and the only new guys are draft picks. Just my opinion. On the other hand, you could easily argue that one reason other coaches have been able to achieve the improvement immediately has been because of the roster churn. Would the Dolphins have been able to go from 1-15 to 11-5 if they hadn't lopped off half the roster in one off season? Doubtful. So in that way you could argue that Philbin's being handcuffed to Jeff Ireland's roster is what prevented him from making immediate improvements. Personally, I think it's the worst of both worlds. They had simultaneous talent destruction without roster churn.
The only thing is I did hear that was in the works before Philbin was even hired. Otherwise I'd tend to agree.
I do agree that you can make an argument for that. However I am also not seeing a well coached team that is only failing due to the lack of talent. I do see many missed opportunities, sloppy play, poor tackling, HUGE brain farts, and a few other things that point to not the best coaching. Philbin may improve as a coach, I have zero desire to see him fired. I am just not sold on him as a coach at this moment.
Even though I do agree that Vontae was Ireland's decision, however I do think there are some off camera stuff with Philbin and Coyle that made the decision easy. The one of the things Ireland alluded to was that Vontae was not part of their long term plan, and that had to be a discussion with coaches.
The team as a whole isn't playing any worse than the average team since 2004 that's gotten similar play from its rookie QB, so I think the answer to that would have to be yes.
I think it likely would have been an issue discussed during the coaching search. I can't really see many new coaches wanting to take on Marshall. An established coach like Lovie Smith, that already has his lockerroom fully behind him can take that kind of risk. But usually when you see coaches get torpedoed by a lockerroom, there is a catalyst that usually resembles Brandon Marshall. And when it comes down to it, when you have a rookie HC and a rookie QB, you can't expect to win a lot of games. If Stephen Ross is going to field a team that isn't making the playoffs, he probably would like to avoid writing Marshall a big check in the process.
I think we saw frustration with Vontae on the part of the coaching staff, and they benched him in favor of a guy that Ireland had just signed to a two year deal. But if you really looked at it there was no more frustration with Vontae from the staff than there was with John Jerry. The difference is they didn't trade Jerry and they gave him the opportunity to push through it, and he did.
And no Super Bowl wins ever for the Seattle Seahawks and a handful of other teams. You can't take an event that's extremely unlikely to happen in the first place and attribute a cause like that to it with any certainty.
I think all of that can certainly be debated either way because the big "elephant in the room" other side of the argument is what an incredible talent Brandon Marshall is and how much of an asset he is on the football field. To this day across the league there seems to be unanimous lament that the Dolphins are missing Brandon Marshall and didn't replace him. So I don't think there should be any assumptions that of course every coach out there would want to ditch one of the most talented football players in football today. And so when you've got a clear two-sided debate philosophically like that, and almost no data on what actually prompted the trade and with whom the idea was sourced, I don't see the assumptions here. One thing we do know is that Jeff Ireland is the General Manager of the football team and has final say on the roster and no trade happens without him literally signing on the dotted line.
On top of that, Vontae Davis was being allowed to "work through" his problems as well, in the form of a demotion. How much and how hard he was going to work through it was up to him. It just so happened that during that period, the Colts called and ultimately offered a 2nd-round pick for him. It's not like the coaches gave up on Davis and went to Ireland said "get 'em outta here!" while taking some vastly different approach with Jerry.
I'm sure he would have but that's also a little beside the point. The point was that temporary disappointment with Vontae Davis did not necessarily carry any more weight or long term implications with this coaching staff than disappointment in John Jerry. And in fact, if Vontae Davis were to have not been traded, he'd have been starting again by like Week 4 or 5 because of Richard Marshall's injury. And with the way Marshall played prior to the injury, and the way Vontae has played in Indianapolis since that disastrous Week 1 outing where he'd only just been inserted into a completely new and alien defense...chances are Vontae not only would've kept his job but reclaimed his status over Sean Smith as the top corner.
That is about as much speculation in one post as you will ever find. Davis got lazy in Miami because he was comfortable. Trying to light a fire under his *** failed. He was too far gone to recover.
If someone other than Ireland was making the pick, I would agree with you. But since Ireland was the GM when Davis was taken in the first round, I don't have much confidence that Ireland will select a better player than Davis in the second round.
And if there was ever any solid objective evidence presented that Jeff Ireland has done worse at drafting players than the average GM (and no, the team's record, in itself, doesn't count for me as "solid"), I'd agree with you.
The solid evidence is that there aren't a lot of GM's still with a team after five years, if the teams winning percentage is below 500, as the Dolphins record has been over that time period. Stating that the teams record doesn't count makes no sense at all. Because the ONLY thing which matters in the NFL is wins and losses. There is no other criteria you can use when determining how effective a owner, GM, coaches or players are. If the teams record of 36-41 over the time Ireland has been the teams Gm means nothing to you. I am not quite sure why you even watch football in the first place. I happen to watch the game to see the team I root for, win the game and for no other reason. I don't bet on games and I could care less about statistics, injuries, and any other factor, except if they win the game or not. Under the leadership of Ireland, they haven't won enough to justify him remaining as the teams GM. It is as simple as that and most real Dolphin fan agree that Ireland needs to go.
I watch because I EXPECT them to win. My frustration is that with Ireland as the teams GM, I expect it less and my desire to attend games has diminished over the past few years. I will admit that for a long time, I refused to do anything else or even to travel to a different location, if it meant that I would miss seeing the Dolphins play a football game. I no longer feel that way and I have no problem with traveling or missing a game to play a round of golf while the Dolphins are playing. I can always record the game and watch it later if they win. This organization, under Ross and Ireland have actually made football far less important to me than it used to be. Hopefully they can do something to make their games relevant once again. The fact attendance continues to decline, as well as the drop TV ratings for Dolphin games clearly shows that I am not the only person who is fed up with the direction this team has taken over the past five years.
I said the team's record, in itself, isn't solid objective evidence that Jeff Ireland is worse than the average GM at drafting players. Try this scenario on for size: Bill Parcells pulls the trigger on Tony Sparano, Jake Long, and Chad Henne. Between 2009 and 2011, we're watching the ill effects of those decisions in terms of the team's record, while attributing them to Jeff Ireland instead of Bill Parcells. And I don't care what anybody here says. You can't tell me you know that scenario isn't the reality of the situation. You can think you know, but you don't, really. This is why the team's record alone says nothing for certain about Jeff Ireland's drafting ability. And that'll be my last post on this topic in this thread, because nobody here is going to bring any objective information to bear that can shed any new light on this, and I'm not going to get into one of the "subjective slugfests" that are so common here.
