The article is a week old, but it was an interesting read on Gase from the viewpoint of of AFC East reporters. With the exception of the Jets, it seems others are giving high praise to Gase.
ahh the Jets. The league's worst situation. The rankings are not an indication of how they progressed. They were so bad in the first 5 games that the stats were tarnished. I'd like to know what they were in the last 11 games
As MC Hammer would say, I think he's too legit to quit. Gase is definitely a long term solution even if we end up sliding this year- he's just too darn good at what he does and he demands respect. If you look at Shula, he was 8-6 as a first year coach (in Indy) and then went 12-2, 10-3-1, 9-5, 11-1-2, 13-1 and 8-5-1. Once he took over for Miami, he had 7 straight seasons with 10+ wins until they finally went 6-8 in 1976. Then he was above 10 wins 7 of the next 10 years. Add it all up, and he had two losing seasons between 1963 and 1995- he's probably the best NFL coach of all-time. So when people say Gase is the next Shula, it's way too much to expect from anyone. Yet I just feel that he's going to have the same type of history here...it's exciting to see it start to unfold.
I thought the Jets guy was positive on Gase as well. He doesn't believe in the talent on the team, but he had plenty of praise for Gase. I also thought the comments on Tannenbaum were interesting regarding his track record for identifying good coaches. I'd forgotten about Steve Kerr.
Competitive is too foggy for me. Did every unit try? I believe so. That means they were competitive IMO. Under Gase that is actually one thing that should always be true, but each unit will not always be talented or even good. Were they all good last year? How did most people feel about our LB's last year for example? What about our secondary, especially once Reshad went down? I don't remember feeling great about those 2 units. But I feel they were competitive, with nearly each guy, whether over matched or not, always giving everything he had.
How the hell do the writers for the Jets and Bills know what a permanent coach looks like to compare Gase to anyways?
I think we are talent-wise this year. Last year we probably weren't often competitive in the secondary when 3 out of 4 starters missed significant time and I felt the LB unit was also under-manned.
I do believe strongly in Gase. The team played hard for him all season, and won a lot of tight ballgames that they would have lost under most of our coaches the past 15+ years. Players played up to their talent level, and stepped up in big moments, and he gets almost universal praise from the locker room. Stills was quoted as coming back in large part due to Gase as coach. I fully expect the results on offense this season to be terrific. I just hope that between the very strong schedule that we face, and the trouble spots on the OL and defense, that if we don't match last season's win total, the fan base and media don't turn on him. I think that we should be building a lot of momentum to be a true contender in 2018 and beyond.
We often talk about our thoughts of the potential development of many of our players over the course of the year, and I think it is fair to discuss how we expect Gase to grow as a head coach as well. Like any new job, I imagine you learn a whole lot in the first few years of doing it. I know hating on Tannenbaum is an easy way to get likes on this board, but if you look at the draft, you really can see that Gase's fingerprints were all over it. In addition, you can see that Gase probably had a lot to do with the acquisition of Julius Thomas. Undoubtedly, I think that we really do have a lot of talent on offense, and there is definitely pressure on Gase to turn that power into points. Last year, we ranked 19th with 22.1 points per game. I tend to think that you would begin to see a payoff in terms of wins at around 24 points per game. Additionally, that signifies a realistic goal for expected growth. One thing that gets less attention on this board than I think it deserves is player development. I don't think that Vance Joseph nearly got enough credit as he deserved for last season. Consider some of the players that he was able to really help grow: 1 - Tony Lippett - This is one that really shocked me. I assumed that Lippett was a project player that would likely not pan out as many position change players seldom workout in the NFL. Not only did he play well for us, he started games and made key interceptions. 2 - Andre Branch - Andre was a early second round pick by the Jags that they eventually let walk. Within a year in Miami, he signed a hefty extension. 3 - Byron Maxwell - After signing with the Eagles, it appeared like Maxwell was going to go down as one of the worst free agent signings in league history. Many fans including myself were horrified to see the Phins trade for him. Early on he was benched, but soon after the benching, Maxwell really seemed to turn things around and ended up with a respectable season. 4 - Kiko Alonso - Kiko was on his third team in three years. Remember, after the Eagles trade, the Phins were the laughing stock of the league, but like Branch, Kiko signed a nice extension in the offseason. I personally would like to see this kind of development on the offensive side of the ball. We saw nice growth from Tannehill, Ajayi, Tunsil, and Stills. Here is a list of some of the guys that we need to see improvement from in order to see the continued success of both Gase and the Dolphins: Asiata, Ford, Drake, Carroo, Grant, Duarte, Doughty, Parker, Morgan, Scott, Williams In addition, there is an awful lot of value on hitting on mid to late round picks because they can provide cap relief for a considerable amount of time. As we look to evaluate Gase, these are some guys to watch. I am not saying that each one of these guys should emerge as starters. Of the mid to late round selections on this list, there were reasons why each player slipped, but the job of coaches is to work with these players to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
I wasn't a fan of Vance Joseph nor his defensive philosophy. The whole "bend but don't break" mindset doesn't work against NFL powerhouse offenses like the Patriots. You can't be be 30th in the league in yards allowed and expect to be successful. For me, it wasn't so much a lack of demonstrated ability by the players on the field as it was the execution of defensive schemes. As I've said many times over this off-season, Miami's success isn't going to ride on the offense this year, it's going to ride on the defense. Matt Burke, you had better not let us down!
I think that our defense will be better. It almost has to be, between how many players missed time last season and the improvements that we've made. Somewhere around the middle of the pack seems realistic. But I think that we still live and die with our offense. I forsee a number of shootouts, especially early in the year.
I do indeed hope or defense will be better than last year's, but I still stick with the team living or dying on the defense this year and here's my reasoning. Last season we had 12 games in which our opponents scored 20 or more points. Of those 12 games, we won 7 of them and of the 5 we lost, those were to the Patriots (twice), the Bengals, the Titans and the Ravens. See a pattern? Teams that consistently go to the playoffs (save the Titans) were able to roll over Joseph's "bend but don't break" defense. That's not going to cut it! The offense demonstrated we can put points on the board but we can't have a defense that allows scrub teams to remain in contention to win games in which we should be blowing them out of the water.
