I like it. A pretty optimistic look at what all has taken place. That's pretty much how I see things.

We could regret not mending fences to appease Wallace but I doubt we will. Kenny Stills seems like he has a fiery and feisty quality in going after balls. People seem to love that about Jarvis Landry. That should make Stills very popular amongst Dolfans.

We got rid of Ellerbe's huge contract as well. That's a win in my book. Bringing in Suh, McCain and Cameron is all good news as well.


I can't wait until we get to the draft. There is just SO MUCH that can happen for us there! :)

 

Like all the input on Suh plain and simple. Better not throw any paper on the field and tie those shoe laces.

 

Is anyone else's excitement tempered by the fact Joe Philbin is still our coach?

 

His stock has definitely take a toll, my only hope is this bothers him enough that he steps his own game up and rises to the challenge. Change alot of his ways like his temperament.

 

Yea those bone headed decisions during the games will still haunt us I'm afraid.

 

Nope, I really like how cool Joe stays. No macho man Randy Savage antics.. All business.. No coach is perfect, talent on the team tends to make the coach not vice versa (generally speaking). In 6 years Rex Ryan has a .479 record but for some reason is seen as a coaching god. We say yeah but its the Jets, look who they had.. They say the same thing about us. Fans tend to be unrealistic about things. First I think it took a huge amount of courage for him to accept the job after losing a son. Since then he has had a rookie QB & RB with a plethora of injuries to key players (Jake Long, Dustin Keller, Reggie Bush, Brandon Gibson, Charles Clay, Daniel Thomas, Dimitri Patterson).. With 2014 being pretty brutal (Knowshon Moreno, Brandon Albert, Will Davis, Louis Delmas, Michael Thomas).. You can coach your *** off but without enough talent on the field your looking at a losing record.

If we stay healthy I'm not worried at all..

 

There are several problems with Philbin that should make one "queasy" even with a better roster:

1) He seemed not to have a good game plan going in, always needing that (relatively good) half-time adjustment to make up for it.
2) He doesn't know when to switch out starters, with guys like Jenkins only shining because of injury to another player.
3) He doesn't know how to deal with players that have diva-like personalities.
4) He doesn't utilize players best scheme-wise.
5) He doesn't manage the game well, including when to call timeouts and when to go for it etc..

You say you like how cool he stays. That's fine, Belichick is cool too, but Belichick at least understands the emotional side of the game and wouldn't call a timeout that just allows the other side (that is under pressure!) to regroup.

 

Just to point out that the coach who just won the Super Bowl had the same issue. Hence Tom Brady not playing until Bledsoe got hurt. Just saying I wouldn't use that as support for your argument regarding Philbin. There's been a litany of coaches who had that issue at one time or another.

 

Well, I'm not saying any of the points I listed are unique to Philbin. But it is a weakness of his.

 

Not the same situation by a mile I would say. Bledsoe was an established, effective QB. That's not something you generally toss to the side for a lower round draft pick. On the other hand, we are refusing to try players at spots like G and LB where we are already weak. Also, I would say it is the fact that Philbin really doesn't seem to do anything well, he has no defining trait.

BB is an ingame tactician that can coach circles around most people. Someone like Carroll is a master motivator, getting the best from his players. I just don't see what Philbin has to offer, what does he bring to the table that 50 other people could not?

 

Yeah he made a bad timeout call or two in his 3 years of being a head coach. Not a huge concern in my opinion. As to your other points..

1) He makes adjustments during the half and that's a positive, not a negative. When the Jets ran on us every stinkin play on the first game adjustments were made and we won. You could say he didn't have a game plan the first half but thats just being ridiculous. The game plan looked solid for just about every game. Mistakes were made on the field quite a bit that foiled them but the planning looked solid. I think this is skewed due to crappy beat writers that hate anything Dolphins.

2) I admit there were times where I wondered if what we were doing was the best (putting James on the left when Albert went down for example) but I wasn't in the meeting or at practices. As fans we can speculate and Monday morning QB, hindsight is 20/20. I wouldn't go as far to say not knowing when to switch out a starter for a backup. There are a lot of things that go into making the starting roster. If Jenkins should have started over Ellerbe you would think the LB coach would have been jumping up and down saying so. Was he? I dont know..

3) What do you mean? Stabbing? Fighting? On field confrontation? Quitting? Cussing during interviews? He wants professionalism and I respect that.

4) Meh, in some cases I guess.. Could be said about any coach I bet.

Im sure Belichick made plenty of mistakes his first several years with the Browns too. Prob why they canned him. I hear he retained his camera crew and ball boys though, with bonuses so they should be good to go.

 

I have to disagree. Coaching the most important thing in the NFL. There is not enough of a gap between the best and worst players. They are all elite. Now, of course Manning is better than Cutler and Brady is better than Fitz and Rodgers is better than them all (at this stage of their careers), but the difference between them is really not huge. Same with all other positions. They are all strong, fast, quick, talented. However, a coach is able to bring the best qualities of each player out and maximize those best qualities.

IMO, that's the difference between a playoff contender and a basement dweller.

Well, that and cheating in the Pats case.

 

A "call or two"? I remember two bad TO calls just against GB in their final drive alone. And it helped GB win the game. If the TO problem wasn't game-changing, I wouldn't care much either, but they have been too many times.

Yeah, I said his half-time adjustments were good. But we must be seeing different games if you think the game plans he went in with were good. In general, the guy goes in with similar game plans from week to week. It becomes predictable, and is the antithesis of what a guy like Belichick (at the other end of the spectrum) does.

No one here knows what went on behind the scenes, but we can tell that their evaluation wasn't that good (say of Jenkins vs Ellerbe) because of the on-field performance of both.

What he wants is fine. He just doesn't seem to know how to get it when it comes to diva personalities. What Wallace did would not have happened under Shula. Some people just know how to deal with diva personalities, others don't.

 

I can agree with a lot of that.. Look though, its not like we are basement dwellers. We were "in" just about every game. This team has been very competitive and that's a reflection of coaching. Those few "special" players we were lacking though is what Id say kept us middle of the road. Well and maybe a learning curve with a new OC. You could say its the coach, I say its the talent (or lack thereof including injuries). Probably a little of both. Im just not overly worried about Philbin that a some seem to be.

 

The same game we had the ball on the the goal line and couldn't punch it in on 4 tries? How about Finnegan tackles rookie Davante Adams in bounds on the fake spike play? The packers had zero time outs, game over, we win..

I dont know what to say really, we are always competitive.. You a Pats fan? lol.. At the other end of the spectrum do you mean honest? Yeah we were predictable at times. All teams are.. You create an identity as a team. It depends how you break it down. Guaranteed on 1st down we are either going to run or pass.. Predictable.

Yeah you wont hear any argument from me on that circumstance. How many of them are there though? Ellerbe was out from the beginning of the season though. Jenkins did what he was supposed to do, step up.

You dont know Wallace wouldn't have acted that way any other time.. I dont know what you mean by diva personality to be honest. I think he knows how to handle unprofessionalism though.. They end up gone.

 

That's obviously not refuting my point about there being more than just "one or two" bad timeouts in 3 years + that some of them were important in determining the outcome of the game.

Let me put it this way: out of 16 regular season games, we led after the 1st quarter in only 4 of them. We were tied in 3 others. For 9 out of 16 games (including a bunch we won), we were behind after the 1st quarter. That's evidence he's not coming into the game with a good game plan.

And no I'm no Pats fan, but I think Belichick >> Philbin.

How about their evaluation of Dion Jordan? Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by forcing him to gain weight and play DE? Now they're admitting maybe he should be OLB. And a major reason you don't see too many stories like Jenkins is because they prevent such stories from happening. I mean we had problems on the O-line and they won't start Turner, even just to see if he's good? What about seeing how good McCain is? I really have a hard time buying the argument that in all these cases the players just weren't good enough in practice.

That's the problem. They end up gone instead of being managed.

 

I'm not sure I agree with McCain being a slot CB. He's a Grimes clone. I'm fine with him and Taylor competing for the #2 CB. I'd like another CB added as well as the return of Delmas to the secondary as well.

 

Sure but a lot of coaches make questionable calls. Obviously if it works out it has the opposite effect. That timeout call wasnt the one reason we lost. That was my point. In the span of 3 years a "questionable" timeout call or challenge (loss of timeout) isn't gonna give me heartburn.

Was he his first 3 seasons? It may not matter to you but I think its fair to say Philbin has performed adequately.

So in other words in about half our games we were behind after the first quarter. Is that lack of game planning or lack of performance? I remember several games where we had good drives or good stops just to turn the ball over, drop an easy catch for a first or get a penalty. I think looking at the stat without proper analysis might be shortsighted.

Hard to really evaluate a guy who cant even be at practice. We have holes, not every answer is let the rookie play (even though most of our rookies did play at some point).. There were reports Turner straight out lost the job and McCain IDK about. He missed the trip to London for personal reasons. Maybe there were things going on with him behind the scenes.

Philosophy differences.. I like that Joe has a no bull**** policy..

 

There's no formal method of doing so, but humans are clearly fairly good at determining which of the huge number of possible causal factors for any event are the most important ones. If we weren't good at it, we wouldn't progressively get better at predicting and manipulating our environment through learning. So I think the opinions fans have on the effect of Philbin is valuable info.

 

I'm pretty sure if we hadn't had some key injuries we would have made the playoffs. That's all in the past though. I'm optimistic about this season and I really am enjoying this off season so far. Like the article says, as a fan you have to feel like we are on an upswing and have a plan.

 

If we're getting into situations then that same logic should be applied when talking about the original post. Also Jenkins did in fact replace a vested veteran as well.

 

Yeah, a lot of coaches make questionable calls. But I think it's fully justified to put the time out issue as one of Philbin's weaknesses. I guess we just disagree about the seriousness. We've been close to the postseason (like 1-2 games out) for a few years, and in that case it's important to list things that might have given us that extra win or two. Personally, I put Philbin's game management (timeouts being one aspect of it) as one of those.

OK here are the stats for all three of Joe's seasons at the end of the 1st quarter:

2012: 4 ahead, 5 tied, 7 behind
2013: 4 ahead, 4 tied, 8 behind
2014: 4 ahead, 3 tied, 9 behind

LOL.. now that I looked it up, it's getting worse in a very predictable way haha! OK, jokes aside, we obviously don't know what the exact reasons for this are, but given that we tend to make good halftime adjustments, it suggests that the game plan is one major reason for the bad 1st quarter performance.

Yeah, who knows about the rookies, but when you see the occasional success of one after an injury, and you don't see younger ones put in when the unit is performing poorly, it just makes me suspicious and biased towards thinking Philbin is part of the problem. Is he? Who knows, but that's how it looks to me.

 

Can't be sure, but your bias should be that humans are pretty good at credit assignment. I mean, whether in business, the military or other organizations, it takes humans far fewer "trials" than would be predicted by assuming we can do no better than chance, to improve performance by replacing a specific individual in the organization with another.

Oh, and what's happening on a message board like this here is similar to "market-based" social decision making. There's a lot of research showing that tends to produce pretty good results, even though people have all kinds of biases.

 

Well, on this we are 100% in agreement.

 

I think we both have valid arguments. My personality is to give people the benefit of the doubt. Last year during a few of the games I kept notes.. (Clay drops easy catch on 3rd and 5. False start on 3rd and 3.) just as an example. It makes it easier to see why we lost or were put in certain situations. During the games Ive done that I was able to pinpoint specific issues. Its actually why I have a favorable view of Philbin. After a loss I am usually upset and want to blame someone. The coach is usually first but when I looked at my notes it became difficult to lay the blame on him.

 

What's the proper analogy here? We're trying to improve the team, and trying to identify who is at fault for what. The parents are trying to improve performance of the child (team) and trying to identify who (other people) or what (things like what the child eats or does) is at fault for what.

Yes, I bet parents do that WAY better than chance. If they didn't, we might not be alive.

 

The question is not whether others deserve blame; it's a team game so yes there's blame to go around. The question is should we hold a relatively negative view of Philbin because he's not an "above average" (or so) coach. In other words, should we look to replace him or not (just like the conversations we have about players).

My answer here is an unequivocal yes, tempering it only with the benefit of giving Tannehill and others another year in the same system (they started to click more from game 5).

 

I have no children, and you're right most parents have a biased view of physical attractiveness of their children. But that's not the proper analogy. The proper one is to ask whether parents could identify factors that could improve the physical attractiveness of their children. That is, out of all the possible reasons for the performance of the child (where let's say attractiveness matters), will they be able to pick out the ones that are (actually) most influential. I bet they can.

 

Drew Bledsoe is a super bowl starting QB. It's not like Belichick started Jamarcus Russell over Brady. Brady was also a 6th rounder so he'd have to blow everyone's lights out to start that first or second year.

Meanwhile Dallas Thomas.

 

Yeah, all that's possible in theory, but as I said before: 1) people are fairly good at credit assignment, and 2) all kinds of organizations make far better than chance decisions on whether someone should be replaced or not, measured by collective performance. And a lot of those decisions are made collectively by people within the organization where you get the same issues you described above.

No, the correct bias here is that the average opinion on a message board like this is likely to be fairly good. Obviously, there will be major misses, but on average we probably do well (one could theoretically test this by comparing "average opinions" here of say draft or FA prospects to what actually happens).

 

I know that when I see a child that misbehaves constantly, and is a problem, the first place I look is at the parents, as I automatically assume that it is a training issue.

Not sure how that applies. Lol

 

Yeah, let me just respond to this.. Let's remember that in the Dolphins case, we the fans are not directly choosing who is hired/fired, so the example you posed shouldn't turn to: "Would a parent think he/she is the primary reason for the child misbehaving?"

In all cases, the analogy has to be whether you can determine which of various influences other than yourself are most likely the important ones. So, if a child gets sick (and let's say the reason was not the parent), would a parent perform better than chance (chance = just randomly picking out causal factors) in identifying the primary causes?

 

Yeah, remember the question is whether it's better to go with "We just don't know", or better to assume fans are biased towards more accurately picking out who bears most responsibility. "We just don't know" = weighting all possible causes equally. I think I've successfully argued that's not the position we should take.

We're much better than random. So, while you're right there are big misses (though remember there's some selective memory there), the question is how that compares to just randomly choosing what the problem is.