Dave Hyde dropped that gem this morning, dubbing the Ireland/Philbin regime 'LandPhil' in today's Hyde 10. As I mentioned in Club, this new code of conduct committee is a nice step. But honestly, isn't that the job of the head coach? That is a quote from the first name Stephen Ross listed on the new council; Tony Dungy. So what you have is the owner of the Miami Dolphins asking for an NFL investigation of his locker room/organization and creating a committee to implement what his head coach -- whom he threw considerable weight behind on national TV just 150 minutes before kickoff -- should be doing. Not just setting the tone, but getting the right player leadership in place. There are questions as to whether Joe Philbin actually listens to his leadership council. Not to mention he jettisoned everyone on the previous one. And to me, that is yet another example of why this franchise continues to be lost at sea. You can't gush about how amazing your head coach is while simultaneously farming out a specific function of his job. It just demonstrates to the public and the rest of the league that you're incapable of solving your own problems.....and you know it. Immediately after the PC, ESPN went to their round table for analysis. Tom Jackson sort of hinted at having an open mind. The others said a few things. When they got to Ditka, he said "no comment". And that summed it up for me. Since a sale of the franchise is extremely unlikely, I think we have to hope that Ross finally clears the decks completely (coach and GM) this time, and has enough good people around him to make the right decisions on a new regime, because he hasn't demonstrated an ability to do it on his own. And even though his instincts on Jim Harbaugh were correct, he handled the situation so poorly that you have to believe he burned a lot of the trust he might have with respected coaches. When you don't have the decency fire your head coach before looking for another, that looks pretty bad. Hopefully the association with the people on this new council will rub off.
I disagree with this statement. He had to gush because Philbin is still on the team and he still wants to win. It would have been a bigger disaster if he didn't gush about his coach because then he would have no chance of keeping control of the locker room.
And yet in the same press conference, he announced he's hiring a group of two legendary coaches and three legendary players to basically tell the coach how to handle protocol and the locker room. I understand why he might gush. But it sounded to me like he believed what he was saying. And that's my fear.
Is it me or is this the only team where we get the references "leadership council" and "committee" in every game? Seriously, we need to get our **** together.. Too much off the field politics and not enough actual football. So embarrassing.
The best course of action is to gut everything and start fresh. These half-measure band-aids are what got Miami to this point, and will continue to do so if they're not fully remedied. I'll have my Ronin's 4-5 Thoughts up later today. I was too tired after the game last night and had a busy day in the office.
I am so sick of hearing council what are we a Band of Apache's on the plains. I wished Wayne H would of sold the team to someone else . what are the chances that Philbin and Sherman are gone after the season ?
the new committee idea is pathetic in my opinion. so we're going to bring in tony dungy and some other guys to teach philbin how a locker room should be run. am i the only one laughing at this. you mean to tell me the guy we have running this team needs on-the-job training. dont train him, fire him.
My concern is that Ross is, yet again, more worried about appearances rather than substance. Nothing says action more than creating a committee.
The only conduct this team should be talking about is the conduct on the field. The other stuff going on is mental masturbation. I don't want to sound too much like a cave man, but I wouldn't care if they had human sacrifices in that locker room if it would produce dominating play and perfect execution.
All locker room leaders will be taken away, George. Welcome to the age of NFL micro management. I think it will hurt the game.
Not sure why you'd say that. We had Edwin Pope and Bernie Lincicome down here in the 80's (Pope way before that with the Miami Herald), I've enjoyed Jason Cole and Barry Jackson quite a bit, but Hyde has been at it for over 20 years and imo doing a darned good job of it. I've always enjoyed his articles- solid, insightful, straightforward, well written- he's an excellent sports writer imo. Was then in the early 90's, still is now. I haven't seen any drop off, on the contrary I think that he's been consistently carving out quite a career for himself as a sofla sports writer, we're lucky to have him down here. Seems like a nice guy, too.
So everyone has just completely given up on Philbin huh? I don't quite understand why it's fine for others to learn on the job but not for Philbin. I for one hope this adversity gets him to work on the things he needs to work on. The guy is a year and a half into his head coaching career and I'm not ready to give up on him unless the team completely collapses the rest of the way.
I think that he did Dolphins play by play on the radio way back when before my time, was big on late night talk radio I think at WIOD. I don't remember him being a columnist down here, though.
The problem is for Philbin to be successful here he would have to change a lot of his basic management philosophies and player management practices. Are players going to accept this after working for him previous for a year and a half? Imagine going to work tomorrow and your boss of 1.5 years completely changes all of his practices and philosophies, it kind of undermines his previous self as well as it leaves you asking questions; who is this guy? who does he think he is? why is he changing all of a sudden? etc. Like Ross himself pointed out there is a problem with the culture of the Miami Dolphins. How are we suppose to keep the main guy responsible for dictating and directing our culture while changing it at the same time? It would be much easier to have a new GM and coach come in and assert their new beliefs, philosophies, and culture. All that being said, I still think Philbin is our coach next year.
