At 2:50 into the video is where he speaks about Tannehill and the club's concerns.

 

Well isnt this kind of a...Duh? Its seasom three they are of course concerned..if he doesnt make the step this season those same sources are lookin for a new job.

 

Holy s--t! Is that Jason Cole?? I haven't seen him in awhile. It looks like ate a cow or something. Damn.

 

Any one of us regulars could've given an interview that Cole gave. A whole lotta nothin new, someone in club was mentioning this angle to the QB and frankly surprised that just saying innuendo is inside info.

 

The interesting revelation is that Dan Marino is there in large part to hone in for Steve Ross on whether Ryan Tannehill and Joe Philbin are the right guys for their respective job. He's also going to be looking at the job Dennis Hickey has done. This confirms what I suspected the moment the news came out.

Stringer has said this for a long time. The quarterback and head coach are the two most important positions on a franchise. I agree with him. I can only imagine it being a good thing that you have one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game helping determine whether the franchise has or does not have its most important position filled.

 

And, along those lines, it should be no surprise to learn that today Dan Marino came to visit Joe Philbin in his office.

 

Well, I agree....I didn't hear anything ground breaking or significant. Tanny, Philbin and very likely Hickey are fighting to keep their jobs...that is pretty much a given at this point...and certainly not anything anyone following the fins don't already know...

 

It may not be a revelation to you but when it was announced that Marino was joining as a special advisor to Ross the first thing I kept hearing from a bunch of people is that he's just a "figurehead" or he's only going to be working the business side and/or fan relations.

Jason Cole's report that Marino is here in large part to evaluate Ryan Tannehill, Joe Philbin and Dennis Hickey and tell Steve Ross what he thinks...is VERY different from that description as a figurehead business/fan-relations guy.

 

Agreed CK and to add, I think it's entirely possible that Marino and a few of the other "advisers" around Ross are there in part to start to collect names and prepare for the possibility that Philbin/Tanny are not the right guys in those positions... It's entirely possible that Ross felt overwhelmed when Ireland quit and he was suddenly in the market for a guy to replace him... Might be fans putting the cart before the horse, but Ross wants to be better prepared than he has been in a search for the 'next' guy/guys...

 

Start Moore. Yes, he does not play safe and methodical like RT, but he competes out there.
Keep Philbin, he's brought and installed the best system we've had since the 80's. Don't throw that away.

 

Moore did throw one touchdown for the other team and was a drop away from another.

 

Matt Moore only plays against 9 guys on defense. He has no idea where the other 2 are.

 

Simple. Get Wallace the ball long a few times and there are no more concerns. You'd think both of them would see that and work on it every extra minute they have. But no.

No one doubts that Marino could throw the long ball during his playing days. Maybe he can spot something wrong and suggest a fix.

 

Was that a revelation based on information Cole has received from the organization, or is that just his read on the situation? I mentioned this in the other thread, but the most interesting thing to me is that they publicly said Marino would advise Ross AND Garfinkle. To me, that indicates that he's going to be involved in a lot wider array of things.

I sure as hell would trust him a lot more to evaluate Ryan Tannehill than Dennis Hickey. I really hope Marino isn't evaluating the job of the GM very heavily, or at least Ross isn't relying too much on his opinion. I'm not sure Marino has the requisite knowledge to evaluate a GM. I'm a firm believer that administrators need to be evaluated on process, not results. Marino can look at the team and say if the players are good, or if the coaches are good. Hell, many on this forum could do that. But I don't see anything that would indicate Marino could evaluate the processes behind everything.

If Stephen Ross is just using Marino as one voice amongs many he relies on for football advice, that isn't really problematic in itself. Where it could be problematic is if Marino starts to feel that his advice isn't being taken as seriously as he feels, and we see a power struggle between Marino and Ross' other advisers. That could get very mess for Ross, because nobody is winning a public battle against Marino in Miami.

 

I agree with you for the most part. I'm not sure Marino is qualified to evaluate the GM and may indeed fall into the trap of just isolating like one pick or saying "He drafted so and so instead of so and so (who was drafted a round later)".

But I do trust Marino to tell whether we have a championship caliber quarterback or not. I even trust Marino to have a weighty voice in the General Manager's duties when it comes time to picking a new quarterback. He should be involved in that evaluation, and his grades should matter to the General Manager.

I also trust Marino to tell me whether the coach is doing things right or not. He played under two of the best, even if he did feud with Jimmy Johnson a little.

If Dan Marino is here to make sure we're picking the best Head Coach candidate we can, and we're putting the best Quarterback we can on the roster, and those are definitely the two most important pieces when it comes to winning championships...then how can anyone make the argument that Marino is just a figurehead or some such?

As for the issue of him feuding with others on Steve Ross' council...possibly, but I'm not sure how likely. The reason I say that is Dan Marino is the lone football guy on that council. That's why I've been shouting for so long that Ross needs to add him. The only football guy that Ross can claim to be close in his ear is Carl Peterson and he is not in any way affiliated with the Miami Dolphins. How is Matt Higgins, with his background, going to go up against Dan Marino when it comes to telling who is a good football coach and who is not? How would Jorge Perez do that? Tom Garfinkel's background is in baseball and racing. How the hell would he end up in a feud with Dan Marino over a head coach hire or a quarterback decision? The most likely to end up feeling strong about disagreements in this way is Dawn Aponte, and the Dolphins keep going out of their way to make it clear they don't consider her a football person. And her star will fall considerably when/if Joe Philbin is ousted anyway.

The guys that could go up against Dan are the football guys...Joe Philbin and Dennis Hickey. And they're the ones being constantly evaluated.

 

If a process leads to poor results, doesn't that invalidate the process?

If Hickey's evaluation scheme leads to poor players being drafted and signed in free agency, how good could his process have been?

 

He's getting at the fact that there's such a high randomness factor when it comes to personnel results. You can be good at what you do and have a stretch of poor draft picks/free agent signings. But over time, that will even out. The key to staying steady in your evaluation of the evaluators is to keep evaluating the process and seeing if that is flawed.

Essentially it's like evaluating players. You can't evaluate players based on the play result. You have to dissect what the player did and evaluate that, because plays can result in this or that for many random reasons. But if the player is executing correctly and in a compelling manner over a number of repetitions, the results will reflect his skill set.

 

Thats exactly what I was hoping for from Marino. I don't think he was the knowledge or expertise to be a head of football operations/GM/etc., but he damn sure can spend some time with both Philbin and Tannehill and say, "This ain't the guy." Or at the very least, I would trust his opinion on that over Ross's.

He might end up being a positive influence on Tanne and our recievers too, who knows how much he'll be at practices, but all I hope for him is that he can give our clueless owner some good advice.

 

As a serious aside, how do you determine whether the process is flawed considering the randomness of the results? Short of a guy's process being throwing darts at a board or just blindly following Kiper's ranking, I don;t know how you determine whether it's a good process or a bad process except for the results over a given period.

Was Jeff Ireland's process flawed or did he just have a bad run?

I can see evaluating an overall philosophy, like does this guy value X & Y positions to the extent you think they should be valued, but there seemingly is no way to tell whether the evaluation process being used is better or worse than anybody else's.

Moreover, your "process" however you define it should always be evolving. When you grade Jimmy Graham as a 4th round pick, he gets taken in the 3rd and proves to be a Top 10 talent, how do you tweak what you're doing to avoid that kind of mistake in the future.

At the end of the day the only thing that you know with any certainty is the results. I don't know how you evaluate much beyond that

 

That's one I'm not sure about. He's not here to coach anyone. I don't know how much direct contact he'll have with players. He might be there at those practices, but mostly as an observer. I think he will be discouraged from being a direct resource to players on the team.

That doesn't mean he won't be able to keep the pulse of the locker room though. There are other ways to do that.

 

The timing of this seems odd, particularly here in the 11th hour, on the cusp of a new season.

...apprehensive to say the least.

 

If Marino is evaluating a GM, we're screwed if Ross listens to him seriously. He has ZERO experience/expertise in evaluating player acquisition/analysis from a real team standpoint. CBS/HBO don't count. If he's evaluating an HC, I could see some limited value there. However, this HC isn't tied to Hickey in any way whatsoever, except to the extent Hickey came in and had to work with him on this year's acquisition to support the team's system/goals.

I don't think he's really evaluating all that. I think he's learning on-the-job. Maybe spend a couple years learning the business side of football operations. I AM convinced he could help RT with the long ball...maybe pick up on something or recommend something that worked for him (even though it seemed like he was BORN to throw bombs...as we all know).

I think Danny's just one more voice in the chorus, it's up to Ross and his current and/or prospective GM to lead the harmonizing. I don't think his part will have a major, shaping impact on the organization, at least for a few years.

 

Isn't that Ross' forte though? Doing sh** at the absolute WRONG time?

 

Yeah its a little blind hope on my part based on the fact that he had a reputation for chewing teammates out in practice. It'd be nice if he would have a few words or pointers now and then privately.

 

My only problem with him making that statement in a serious, crucial situation that results in hiring/firing, is he has no clue what it takes to be a championship coach or QB. Sorry, and I may get blasted, but he don't.

His natural talent was ridiculous. Can he see that in somebody else? Probably. Does that mean his formula is the only one? Nope.

Love Quarterback Dan Marino for life...not sure about quasi-GM Dan Marino.

 

That's not as impossible as you make it out to be. I'm not going to say it's easy, either. But I'll give you some examples.

A lot of front offices have an inordinate amount of redundancy in their scouting process. You have an area scout evaluating a guy, then the national scout, then the director of college personnel, then the general manager. Somewhere in between those layers you also have cross-checks being done by some other scouts in the front office (be it a pro scout, or an area scout from a different area, or position coaches. Additionally you have a scouting layer that derives from the coaching side, whether that be position coaches or the direct input from a coordinator or even head coach will depend on the team.

The question to ask is given the TRUE nature of player evaluation, which means an understanding of the volatility inherent to each evaluation, and the myriad factors that must be considered, is such a redundant scouting system adding value or detracting from value? One could argue that the redundancy increases the "groupthink" factor which actually can detract from the value of your evaluations.

I'm not saying I know the answer to that question but I do think the layers of redundancy, the structure of your process, the tools being used and how they are being incorporated...all those things constitute things you can evaluate for structural soundness in lieu of just evaluating whether or not you've nailed one of the pair of second round picks you've made as a GM.

Another example would be when the Dolphins didn't realize that Eugene Monroe was available in trade, and he was surprisingly dealt to the Baltimore Ravens for a low price. You can evaluate what, if anything, structurally prevented you from realizing that player was available.

You can also evaluate the soundness of many of the philosophies upon which a team's free agency strategies are built.

Both. And he had a long enough run that if he were really a good GM, it would have shown in the results.

 

He's interning at this point..that's about all I know given the info we have,

 

Vintage.

 

I think Marino will definitely evaluate certain players, especially Tanne, but he won't have the contact. He'll make his opinions known to the staff and to Ross and I'm sure that will carry weight. It's the Marino trickle down effect. :pointlol:

 

Right, I trust Marino to do those things. But to what degree? I would trust a lot of people on this forum to do that. My point isn't that Marino can't do those things.

Can Marino do that better than anyone else Ross could have hired? I don't believe so. So I'm led to believe that Marino was hired primarily because of how he is received by Dolphin fans. If he wasn't a Dolphins, would he have gotten the job? If all this is the case, then should I be happy that they hired Marino, rather than say Chad Pennington?

Peterson isn't officially affiliated, but aren't him and Ross like best friends? IIRC they basically work in offices right next to one another in NYC. Also, isn't Tannenbaum advising Ross as well?

The big problem is if Marino ever goes up against Ross himself. Supposedly we are to believe that Jeff Ireland wanted Mike McCoy, and Ross wanted Philbin. Generally speaking, when your owner overrules the GM on a HC decision, that likely isn't going to be received well by fans, and with good reason. But in Miami's case Jeff Ireland was so unpopular, that nobody seemed to care.

But imagine if Stephen Ross did that to Dan Marino? Could you imagine if Dan Marino wanted Coach X, and Ross decided to go with Coach Y? If Dan Marino doesn't necessarily get his way, does he stay a good soldier, and support the choice as his own publicly? Or does he decide that he isn't going to let his reputation with Dolphin fans be tarnished by decisions he may not necessarily be on board with?

Now if Marino truly was a football czar in the sense we are used to - having experience in every area of football administration, then you can expect Ross to essentially give him complete control. But as you mentioned, he likely isn't capable of evaluating a GM and the administrative stuff. But what if he decides he is capable of doing that? Does he know his limits? There are a lot of dynamics at play here, and if Ross isn't careful he could end up being hated by Dolphin fans if things don't work out with Marino.

I just think this needs to be a position with very clear boundaries, and an understanding of what exactly Marino will be doing. The fact that the boundaries are very unclear at this point is rather concerning IMO.

 

Are you even a Phins fan?

 

He couldn't be. If he is there to advise Ross on how things are going, he should have no influence as to what he is observing, only to advise Ross on how it is devoloping overall. It would be a conflict of interest to start meddling with players and coaches, and then give advise to Ross on their devolpment.

 

That could well be.

The alternate? Ross arrived unexpectedly at Philbin's office last week, bursting in to say, "Hey, guess what? I can get Dan Marino to come in, offer us some tips, see what needs fix'n, and help you guys out!"

 

Especially with today's NFL, results can be heavily skewed by variance or luck. The Miami Dolphins very well could have a QB-HC combination of Drew Brees and Nick Saban. But they don't, presumably because of a doctor's opinion. I'm not sure that decision necessarily reflects upon skill, rather than luck.

I don't know. I'm not sure anyone here knows exactly what Ireland's process was. There presumably was a collaborative effort happening. Ireland didn't mesh with people he had to work with.

I think people give too much credit to broad philosophies, and not nearly as much credit to the actual process. By process I mean on the most granular level of how resources are allocated and decisions are made. How many scouts does the GM assign to which location? How often do these scouts meet with the GM? If a scout really likes a player from some tiny D3 school, how does that scout communicate that, when they know they may get a lot of skepticism and pushback on their evaluation? How does the GM evaluate his scouts' performance? We saw a little of this already with Dennis Hickey apparently not wanting scouts to work remotely. He claims to want a collaborative environment among the scouts. Thats a good example of process.

 

I actually fully agree with your last paragraph. Lets be honest here, tge success or failure of a GM has a LOT to do with how he manages his scouts and how good those scouts are.

 

Why does anyone on here think that they know what exactly Marino's role is? Or how well defined the boundaries are or aren't? All the criticisms may have been answered...to people who need to know.

 

Imo the concern comes from individual playmaking ability, whether it's subtle movement in the pocket to reset the platform or movement side to side to reset the pocket, or running for a few first downs on crucial Third down situations, these are things that Ryan has not shown good movement doing.. the ability to multitask, processing downfield with peripheral vision of the rush is a must, having the game slow upstairs while at the same time have the body react and move quicker..the scheme combined with his skillset will produce better production, but it's all about playoff wins..

I just want to see this kid recognize a lane and punish a defense for turning it's back on him then finish with a run, then get up, scream at your players to get back into the huddle ASAP, then back at the Los..

This awareness has been missing and I need to see it to be sold in terms of a franchise guy.

 

THERE's so much wrong with that statement. saying Tannehill doesn't compete is stupid. The current system wasn't installed by Philbin.
maybe your statement was sarcastic. if it wasn't, then ...damn.