Now I am not trying to start an Ireland debate, but think Heckert is a good football guy and would be get IMO
Looks like Joe Banner won the power struggle. If Brian Gaine gets a GM job elsewhere (please…) then I'd love to bring Heckert in as the assistant GM. Ireland isn't going anywhere for at least this year.
Tom Gamble's next job will be General Manager, not assistant GM or anything under Ireland. If you want Gamble, you have to fire Ireland, and Ireland isn't going anywhere for at least this year. Frankly, with all the "person X is out" headlines on PFT this morning, I doubt very much that Gamble will be available in a future offseason where Ireland is theoretically fired: he seems set to become the GM of some team within the next month or so.
He's basically been in charge of non-draft scouting, which means there's another guy you can blame for whatever you please without realistically working out who was responsible for what.
There is no way of knowing who did what so everybody should get equal blame. I refuse to believe that Ireland spent the first 3 years bringing Parcells his coffee and did nothing else.
Gaine was originally hired as the head of pro scouting, and was promoted to assistant GM last year. He's fairly well regarded around the league and interviewed last year for the Rams GM job. He's generally considered a legitimate GM candidate and he's probably going to get some interviews this year. Jeff Fisher liked him when Fisher was down here for his interview last year. But personally, I don't think the Dolphins have done anything mind-numbingly awesome in free agency under Gaine's watch. Wake was an Ireland find, Starks is good but not someone you put at the top of your résumé, and anyone can recommend signing Karlos Dansby. The 2012 offseason in which Gaine was promoted was a free agent strikeout-fest coupled with a very "wait and see" draft. This is not a sterling track record to me, so if another team wants to snatch Brian "Jake Grove" Gaine away, they are welcome to him, IMO.
I'm sure internally they know who to blame. We can't just pretend there is no one to blame about certain decisions just because there are layers or bureaucracy involved with every decision. There is always someone to blame. When you are the "pro scout" and almost every one of your "pro scouting decisions" has been rubbish the responsibility must land somewhere. Our "pro free agent" signings have been rubbish. Even the roster space fillers have been crap. You can't sign 8 free agents a year and have none of them make any impact positively. If Gaine gets another job I think of that as a win. On topic: Heckert is not coming here to be an assistant and Ireland is not getting fired.
I'm sick to death of this. Have you ever had a boss? Did you have to do what he/she told you? Parcells says find me players that fit my blueprint. Ireland does that. WTF is hard to believe about that?
There's very much a decent argument that the Dolphins should have been more aggressive in free agency, but there's very much also a counter argument involving the merits of building primarily through the draft, or if saving up for this off-season is in practice worth it. Claiming what they did choose to do in free agency was bad is really just ludicrous. They signed insurance, which they near universally did not need. Gary Guyton was not a failed signing because Koa Misi and Jason Trusnik did what they were supposed to, etc. and so on.
Same here, I refuse to buy into the idea that Ireland would be here as a step and fetch it kid for Tuna. I also think Ireland is TREMENDOUSLY good at finding acorns, the problem is he is POOR at finding value for high resource cost players. Think of it this way, Thigpen outperformed how many draft choices of Ireland?