hey fin fans whats up ? I forgot which channel it was on but two nights ago one of the sports channels had a show on Jimmy Johnson and it was a good show but t put me in a funk because of Marino's injury and the turnovers that last year. but Terry Bradshaw stated that with Marino at the end of his career he told Jimmy that taking the dolphins job would be a lost cause so I wasn't very happy with his comments but looking at things with some perspective the real bugaboo with this franchise is that those years of going 7-8, 8-8, 9-7 and 10 -6 did us more harm then good , I think having gone 2 -14 or 5-11 for two years in a row would have allowed us to get better draft picks and Jmmy talked about that very thing.
If Jimmy would have drafted some offensive talent, Marino was still capable of winning a SB. Instead he passed on Randy Moss for some 4th round pick with equal measurables, drafted a bunch of ****ty running backs, etc... What Marino did with the level of talent around him was pretty damn good (minus the final year because of injuries). It was Jimmy's prized D that gave up 64 points in the final game, I would add. If Jimmy had any heart, he would've stayed on, and continued building. Instead he quit and left us with Wannstedt. And even if he did stay on, Jimmy was no QB guru. Fact is, without Marino, he never had a chance anyway. And really, his heart was never really in it. No different than Saban. Just a doomed scenario all the way around.
GM Jimmy built an awesome defense. In four years, he drafted some of the best players in the history of the franchise; Zach Thomas, Jason Taylor, Sam Madison, Pat Surtain, ect. However, he was equally inept at drafting on the other side of the ball, and so coach Jimmy couldnt pull it all together. We beat up on crappy teams, and got our butts kicked by good ones. All said, his defense was good enough, that even after he left, Wanny was able to ride it to four winning seasons before his own incompetance led to it all falling down. At the end of the day, the Dolphins outright sucked at drafting offense from about 1993 until very recently. 20 years of screwing up on one side of the ball isnt going to win you many super bowls.
Jimmy drafted really well defensively but drafted terribly on offense. Don't know if it was the NFLNs, "A Football Life" - I saw that one. Very interesting. JJ was pretty cool. His philosophy just didn't match Marino's game - who was a gunslinger. JJ could not tolerate the turnovers (he was a major stickler for that at Dallas). And, Marino could not adjust to that - he simply was not going to be (and could not be) morphed into Troy Aikman.
I have to agree with this premise. JJ just never had his heart into it. It seems that his main goal was to dethrone Shula. He had hated Shula since his days at the U, because Shula didn't like him and his ways, so after he managed to do his evil deed, the game he wanted to play was over, and his heart was never really into being the Dolphins coach.
JJ, either consciously or unconsciously, did several things to undermine Marino. He could have kept this weapons together in 1996 that Marino had chemistry with, yet chose not to. Fryar could have been resigned for what Fred Barnett was signed for. Pritchett and KAJ were no better than Byars and Kirby, at least from a pass catching standpoint, which is what Marino needed ideally. Kirby lasted far longer in the league than KAJ did. Replacing Gary Stevens with Kippy Brown was a terrible move too.
Sorry, but during the last couple of years Marino was playing, he was NOT the same guy. He had lost his velocity on his throws because of his Achilles. His heart was still there, but the body had gone. I hated watching him play like that.
He still had velocity after the Achilles, for a few years anyway. In 1998 or 99, forget which, in a game against Indy, I remember him taking a shot that I think resulted in a pinched nerve in his neck/shoulder area. He had a game or two right after when he couldn't even throw a 10 yd out with enough mustard to prevent a pick. I remember a game not long after the Indy game, against the Pats, where Damon Huard had to come on because Marino couldn't throw. Damon threw a pick 6 on his first series or pass, forget which, but then after that, he led us to a comeback win. Marino played again in a week or 2 after that, but I think it was from that point, the Indy game, where he was never quite the same throwing.
JJ's unwillingness to fit his style to his players was the problem (along with being a ****** when it came to drafting offense).
That's mostly right. The Pats game was the next game after the Indy game and Marino came out after 3 pass attempts. He missed the next several games and then came back, apparently too early, in the thanksgiving game against Dallas in which he threw 3 INTs. He had one good game after that, but really wasn't the same. I don't think the Achilles was a cause of his decline. He had a few good years after the Achilles.
