Lets not forget the biggest bust of all, Pat White and our excellent WR Turner..

 

Yes he has passed on some guys but we are definately younger and better off on talent than when he got here. Then again it would have been hard to get much worse than the 1-15 squad when he got here. I think with what Ross is doing to Sparano it shows no one is a safe bet.

 

Didn't Bill P. make those picks??

 

Good post, and great points Zach. And, to those that point to how much better we are today than we were three years ago, just think how much better we might be with better drafting and better FA acquisitions? I guess it's the proverbial is the glass half full or half empty?

I will say this...if Ireland is the only thing standing between us and Cowher, and Ross is sticking with Ireland, I think he's being very foolish.

 

I think you mean "when he was given a quality QB (who just so happened to have his career year), the easiest schedule in the NFL, A Tom Brady season-ending knee injury, and another monumental Jets collapse" he went 11-5 and won the division.

 

Don't forget Sparano was also given one of the easiest schedules if not the easiest to play against.

 

Playing devil's advocate for second, Ireland also helped build the defense, that Nolan had no problem turning into a top unit. Maybe with Harbaugh, it will be understood he "picks" the offensive picks or at least as real say, that I'm still not sure Sparano had. I don't know.

 

Who's to say Nolan didn't have some input on how that defense got rebuilt?

 

Ok, but what does that have to do with 2008, I am confused.

 

You can go down that road if your intent is to knock Ireland down a notch, yeah he hasn't been the greatest GM but he has done a good job nonetheless and for now I don't see him as a problem.

 

I don't think he forgot to coach, I just think he lucked out on so many fronts in 2008 it made the job he did look better than the coach he really is, which is not saying he is a bad coach just that with a much more tougher schedule the past two years he might have been over his head.

 

One could made that arguement and be reasonable.

 

Two things just may have happened here: 1) BP overruled a few decisions that turned out bad and 2) Ireland told Ross I was not responsible for a lot of this. Lastly, knowing Harbaugh personally provides some leverage in our efforts to sign Harbaugh.

 

Remember a couple of things before we go destroying Jeff Ireland. We don't truly know how much control he had over alot of his picks and FA signings. I know there was alot of collective agreement going on between Parcells, Ireland, and Sparano so maybe Pat White wasn't Ireland's choice. On the flip side, maybe Ireland was very much against signing Wake. In the end, I can tell you Ross has a much better understanding then we do of which guys Ireland was behind and which he was for.

The other thing is not every GM hits on EVERY single pick. How many teams passed on Hakeem Nicks? I think it was like 27 teams. I would say 25 of those teams today would have drafted Nicks had they known what he would turn into. How many teams passed on Desean Jackson (2nd round pick)? Or Mike Wallace (2nd round pick)? Interestingly enough, Andy Reid passed on Jackson in the 2nd for Trevor Laws. He then took Jackson with his next 2nd rounder. Had Andy truly known what Jackson would turn into, do you think he would have take Laws ahead of him or do you think they would have traded their 1st rounder that year had they known Jackson would be this good? You don't take a chance like that, you know he's that good, you draft him ASAP. Even the team that drafted Jackson didn't truly know how good he could be. Lastly, do you think the Jets are a little frustrated that Tannenbaum didn't take a chance on Wake (or didn't even bother looking into him)? How about all 32 teams that decided to NOT draft Bess (including the Dolphins). How do you think we were able to sign Dansby and take Marshall from the Broncos (still a Top 5 WR in this league) for only two 2nd round draft picks.

In the end, Ireland has made his share of mistakes but he's also had his share of successes. Hard to say which of the failures and successes are truly on him, but at this point, I guess we assume they all are. That being said, he's been a solid GM (not Scott Pioli or anything, but solid) and I have no problems having him stick around. I say this especially b/c I would hate to see a big head come in here and want complete control. We have seen in the past that this is a recipe for disaster. I like having the two seperate entities - Coach and GM (working together mind you).

 

I never understood this knock on the success of the 2008 season. If you look at the Dolphins schedule that year, they lost both of their non-common games (Baltimore and Houston).

Basically, everyone they beat was also on the schedule of the Patriots, Jets and Bills. The point being that everyone in the division benefited from playing an easy schedule. At the end of the day though, the Dolphins had more wins than any of them.

 

Really have to agree with this....I remember biting my nails, punching walls, etc. b/c we were losing to Seattle or Oakland or San Fran with 8 minutes to go. Or we were beating them and they were marching right down the field for the game winning TD. We got luck in alot of those games in 2008 and we also broke a record for least amount of turnovers that year in what could have been the easiest schedule in the history of football.

 

Not a knock, just putting things in perspective.

 

Seems awfully fishy that BP urges Ross to keep Sparano, you can fashion a reasonable guess as to why, yet Ireland is the only man seemingly left standing.

Edit: Or...Ireland may just be a smooth operator fit for a Godfather/Sopranos movie/show respectively.

 

That still does not make him a good coach or leader. The team has been disastrous at times on offense, defense and special teams. Sometimes for the entire season, at others for several games. Who did he choose to coach these areas, honestly they have been disasters too. The only thing that saved Tony in my opinion was the wildcats appearance in 2009 because the offense was looking pretty bad back then too. Is it entirely his fault? No, he's had some bad luck and a GM that has not helped matters but that does not excuse the play you see, which to me looks confused all too often.

And then we go out and waste draft picks on players like White, Turner, Nalbone, and Murphy. This to me is why this offense is so inept. Offensive line injuries and flat out missing on picks (Murphy, Thomas, Gardner, Jerry) certainly have not helped. For all the help the defense has been given, the offense has been almost a complete miss. If Ireland stays the goal has to be to find players, not just "guys" to do the job.

 

There are many teams this year with easy schedules in the NFL that did not end up 11-5. Where are the 11-5 teams in the NFC West or the AFC West?

 

Lost in all of this, as far as the pro-ireland fans should be concerned about, is that these

clowns have a different draft philosophy from most of the nfl. They pride themselves for

having a much smaller draft board thus intentionally passing on better (cough, speed) talent.



This ireland quote is from a lengthy pre-draft interview in 2009:

(On if he sets “size molds” on the draft board) – “I think you are firmer more on your

higher picks and loosen more as you go. We are pretty firm on certain rounds and more firm

on certain positions. I think Bill and Tony (Sparano) and I think the only way to be

dominant in this league is to be big, be strong and be powerful, so one of the keys to our

success is to be big.”

http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_football_dolphins/2009/04/dolphins-gm-jeff-ireland-unfi




Well, there goes the ridiculous notion that "parcells made the bad picks but jeff made the

right ones." It was and still remains a shared philosophy.

So do you honestly believe ireland can do a total 180 and draft faster players? It doesn't

matter what he desperately promised ross because his beliefs are his beliefs.



"We don’t stack the board with 257 players. We stack the board with less than 150 players."

 

way to disregard the other stuff

 

but you also have to remember in 2008 not only having the easiest schedule in the NFL, having brady blow out his knee week 1, the phins started 0-2 losing to the jets and the cardinals

they came out with the wild cat that they unvailed in new england which took everyone by surprise, which helped the struggling offense, in 08 we still scored the second to last amount of points in the division only to the bills

but as 2009 and 2010 the wildcat fell off the face of the earth and it showed the inefficiencies we had since 2008 that were covered up by the wildcat

 

The other stuff is just as pointless. 11-5 is not easy in the NFL, even with all of the other stuff.

 

No it's not. The point is that everything that could have possibly gone right for us that year did...Healthy and career year for CP, healthy Ronnie Brown, a defense that over-achieved, and every possible break went our way that year.

 

One/Sparano cannot forget what one/Sparano has never known

 

Not every one, houston is a good example of that.

Nothing you mentioned takes away from the accomplishment. Where are the 11-5 bad teams this year? There have been teams with cupcake schedules and not too many injuries.

Plus how is, "Good quarterback play" a slam?

 

that is just BS.

 

I would think any big name coach would want his own GM
not a tag along from a failing franchise...just saying

 

-Given a quality Qb..

Not really, if one recalls CP had been waived in NY

-Easiest schedule in the NFL

Just win baby

-monumental jets collapse

We still went up to the meadowlands and took the division away from them.

What I think is especially funny is this tendency to ignore what did work, and trumpet what did not work.

Pick whomever you may think, and this goes to anyone, is the best drafter in the NFL post their draft, then post Irelands' 3 drafts in comparison.

 

The Jets made a crappy personnel decision. Their loss was our gain. And he basically was given to us, as he made 0 other FA trips to other teams.

I know you only have to beat the teams you play, and I have no problem beating up on softies, but it's not like we tore through anybody. We won, yes. Until we played a good team in the playoffs, that just happened to beat the pants off of us in the regular season that year as well. We also had all the West Coast teams (SF, OAK, SEA, SD) come to our house that year, we didn't go out there.

And we didn't take the division from them, we took it from the Pats. Had we lost that game, we would've lost the division to the 11-5 Patriots.

 

It's not a slam, and we weren't a bad team. It just so happens that everything had to line up perfectly for us to get to that 11-5 and give the illusion that we were slightly above average.

 

See, that doesn't make any sense. It just so happened that Miami got good play from the quarterback so they looked like a good team.

Come on, how can you not see the flaw in the argument!?!?

With your logic using injuries and poor QB play I can make the argument that Miami is an above average team who just didn't get the breaks, and created the illusion of a 7-9 team.

 

You're focusing solely on the QB situation, which I have no beef with. I'm just saying that Sparano's best coaching job just so happened to occur on Penny's career year and everything else being the perfect storm for us. It's been documented here and in a billion other places that this coaching staff has pretty much failed to adapt to anything, outside of using the wildcat. Don't forget, Penny played like *** the first 3 games of 2009, and we were 0-3.

The argument could certainly be made for less-than-adequate QB play and injuries hurting us this season, but with that being said you can't ignore all the other flaws with Sparano. Between what former and current players are echoing, our own eyes seeing he can't adapt, odd timeouts, allowing sub-par playcalling to continue, hanging on to his buddy ST's coach, and the myriad of other issues should definitely warrant him getting the boot.

 

Ireland is safe because he is an excellent GM, that simple
you don't throw the baby out with the bath water