Joe Philbin has tried most everything, really, to reverse the sustained mediocrity that infests the Dolphins. He hired two NAVY seals to serve as the players’ confidantes. He has his players participate in something akin to speed-dating. (More on that later.) He placed a shield in his locker-room as a symbol of the team’s spirit. He hooks his players up to four devices to test everything from how many yards they’re running in practice every week to how often they wake up and other factoids that are somewhat enlightening but aren’t of much help covering Rob Gronkowski. Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/spor...ilbin-has-tried-everything.html#storylink=cpy -------------------- Philbin tries everything except becoming the alpha dog leader that he's supposed to be as an NFL head coach...because he can't. He works hard and he seems like a good guy, but he's not NFL head coach material and he shouldn't have been brought back, Ross screwed up AGAIN. At the end of the day, the ultimate weakness of the Dolphins in the post Shula era might be that the team owners have been rather clueless when it comes to hiring people to run their billion dollar team. It cursed Huizenga and Ross is failing, bottom line, at getting this team where it needs to be. Philbin is not the answer- my opinion of course, but when I read articles like this I have wtf moments and it seems to me that Philbin drains the energy out of his team as opposed to lifting them higher as a good coach and leader of men should. Btw- it's not about being quiet or loud. It's about commanding respect and being a leader. Who was quieter and showed less emotion than Tom Osborne and Tom Landry? Not many, if any. But they were leaders of men and they commanded respect, and they were excellent coaches. All this crap that Philbin tried as per the first paragraph of the article above- my guess is that it deflated the team and made them think even less of him- because all of this "try anything" crap comes from a position of weakness. Crutches because as a leader of men, Philbin simply cannot inspire men and players on his own, so he desperately grasps for anything that he can think of to fill the void created by his weakness and lack of leadership skills. And these extreme examples, which I'm guessing annoyed the Dolphins players even more on top of the terminal annoyance of having to play for a weak leader, didn't work - the team came out flat and flopped the last two games of last year and this year we're out of the playoffs again. And on top of that we had last year's epic disaster in the locker room and rumors this year of player dissatisfaction as to Philbin. Steven Ross screwed the pooch, again. Another billionaire team owner with a ten cent football head.
Or alternatively open minded coach seeks aggregation of marginal gains to out pace opposition? It depends entirely how you view it. I think the question to be asked is are we performing better, worse or the same as we could expect with another coach? We were told repeatedly that this d was top 3. Nope. Just not true at all. Has their regression to do with coaching or injuries or is it regression to the mean? The offense is about what we expected. I'm pretty sure if we dig out old threads from pre season with peoples predictions of tannehill (or targets for, either works) we have probably exceeded what people expected. ST has been up and down all year. My opinion is if we can't guarantee a better coach we should stick with Philbin. Firing him and hoping to hit on a winner is a fairly dumb strategy. Harbaugh would be great but clearly ross knows more than us otherwise we'd surely be making a bigger push. So that leaves sexy rexy. Is there a more polarising coach? Players clearly like him, but the last few times dressing room has shown it clearly like Philbin too. Defensively he is stronger than coyle. Would I give him the keys because of that though? Probably not. We could also point out that perhaps he hasnt coached up enough talent in ny. So experienced coaches available are cower and gruden. Neither are interested. So its a coordinator. Maybe another few years of growing pains. I'd regrettably stick with granpa Joe. I just don't see who the improvement who is available is.
Is sticking with a coach who has so far proven to be mediocre at best a dumb strategy? If you stick with a coach like that, you're just delaying the inevitable and wasting time. The amount of time wasted by Huizenga and Ross so far is incredible, we're talking two decades. Great businessmen in general, but not so great in the business of football. As to getting a better coach, there's never a guarantee. You can get superior football coaches like Saban and jimmy Johnson and they still don't work out. But what's worse imo are the Wannstedts, Camerons, Sparanos and imo Philbins brought in, just not quality head coaching material. Twenty years of a rudderless ship.
The team has two Pro Bowl players. Look through the numbers of Pro Bowl players for the top teams in the league, and then determine whether Philbin has the kind of talent to compete with them. The fact that the team is on the cusp of playoff contention is a testament to Philbin's coaching, in fact.
Too much criticism and not enough analysis IMHO. At least know a little about the coach and the program he's implementing before you break out the bash stick.
On the cusp? This team has playoff caliber talent and Philbin failed to guide them to the post season for the second straight year when we had it in our grasp. On the cusp? Thats funny.
Just google the Dolphins roster and you`ll find it. Seriously, it sounds like you`re saying this team actually overachieved this year despite their horrible roster. Wrong, we underachieved, again, injuries and all.
If I Google the Dolphins roster and do some additional research, I find that the team has two Pro Bowl players. If I do the same for the teams that have the best records in the league, I find that on average they have a good bit more than just two, and that their quarterback is typically among them. That makes them fundamentally different from the Dolphins in terms of talent in my opinion.
Are you seriously arguing that number of Pro Bowlers is what determines a team's talent level? You do know there are 22 starters on offense and defense, right? The Bengals have 2 Pro Bowlers, and they're in the playoffs. Chargers have 1, and they control their own destiny today. This team has a solid roster from top to bottom, except in cases where our clueless coaches don't realize they're not playing our best players and they need injuries to happen to correct the situation (IE Ellerbe, Dallas Thomas).
The correlation between win percentage and the number of Pro Bowl players on a team in 2014 in the NFL is 0.74. That's a strong correlation. The teams you mentioned -- Cincinnati and San Diego -- are exceptions to the rule.
