If that isn't admitting to tanking I don't know what is.

 

Owner-speak for "Trust us, we know what we're doing."

If only he had a positive track record in something other than real estate development.

 

Corporate football-speak presser-babble.
Management is deconstructing a football team while insisting the players and coaches are still trying to win.
Let's see how long the players who remain support the 'trying to win' assertion.
Unfortunately, Ross fails to comprehend that successful football franchises never tank to win.

IMO Tanking is three things:
1. The last refuge of a dysfunctional organization.
2. Ineffective at gaining the desired objective, and
3. Demoralizing and destructive to the players, coaches, and fans.
Thus tanking, as a useful strategy is empirically bogus.

 

To make that claim definitively, we would have to know the outcomes associated with 1) the average team that tanked, and 2) the average team that didn't tank, that was in a situation similar to the Dolphins'.

It could indeed be the case that successful franchises never tank to win, but it could also be the case that 1) those franchises have benefited from random positive outcomes (i.e., good luck), 2) that systematic failure (i.e., tanking) is more likely to produce such an outcome, and that 3) systematic failure (i.e., tanking) is no more likely to produce anything worse than the average long-term negative outcome associated with not tanking, when teams are in situations similar to the Dolphins.

 

While many of you read that as tanking, I read it differently. Here’s what I heard when I read that...

“Do we suck? Yep, we don’t have any established stars on our team. We cut them to free up that cap space.

We’ve been running the same playbook year after year and it hasn’t worked. We’re going to build a young team that’s going to learn and grow into a perineal powerhouse and bring the Dolphins back to the days of glory past.

Is it going to be painful? Absolutely. Are we going to lose? Quite a bit. But if these kids are truly committed to the TEAM and are motivated to continuing to improve week after week, after a while we’re going to be the dominant team in the NFL.”

Now that’s what I HEARD him say. Will it actually work? There is historical evidence to support it but in this day and age of desire for instant success, will fans be patient enough to allow a mighty oak to grow?

Fans are going to be screaming for Flores’, Grier and Ross’ heads this season. They’re going to complain all season long. We’ll end up the season with the worst record and be in the position to draft Tua number 1. But then what?

Fans will cheer and jump up and down for joy that we FINALLY have our franchise quarterback, the second coming of Marino and life will once again be grand, but if our OL can’t give this kid 3-5 GOOD seconds in the pocket, he’ll fold like a cheap suit and we’ll be right back to having this exact same conversation again.

To quote Bette Davis, “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”

 

People are waking up on this site. The draft picks have not been good. We can have all the draft picks in the world, but if we don't make the right selections, we are in trouble.

Tua is not going to make this roster an overnight success. I get tanking, but this is not how you tank. Tunsil was the proverbial offer we could not pass up. However, barring another crazy offer, I would keep Minkah. Tanking involves getting rid of old vets and bad contracts. Tanking is not getting rid of everyone.

 

Can someone point out examples of tanking actually working?? I mean sure, you try to lose all games so you can get the first round pick but is it worth it?? We went from a middle of the pack team to the worst to rebuild. Why can't we go from middle to better? Whomever is in charge of talent acquisition etc needs to make this happen by building from what they have, not blow it all up. Has any team, let alone football team done that and succeeded? Does anyone here really think that after 2-3 years we are going to be in the play-offs or are we going to be winning 6-8 games again and thinking about tanking again?

 

I'm not sure there are any definitive examples of tanking in the league to date. What we do have examples of, however, are teams' not tanking and remaining at best mediocre for fairly long stretches of time. Look no further than the 2012-2018 Miami Dolphins.

At least by tanking there is a process the team is engaging in that in theory can produce a turnaround in the team's fortunes. Not tanking provides no such process.

 

Hint: think of Sparano during the suck for Luck campaign. He had J. P. Losman to start the rest of the season, basically, a worse Curtis Painter. He had the tank locked up and he reeled off a few wins to save face...All he had to do was start Losman.

 

It can work. You have witnessed the problems of being 7-9 to 9-7. Tannehill's status with the team was perpetually in limbo, but here was the problem. Most of the time, top college prospects were off the board when the Dolphins were picking. You could send your entire future in terms of draft picks to get up in the top 3 picks, but that would require a team that was on the cusp of winning. We weren't. Getting rid of bad contracts and aging vets was a must in this rebuild. I absolutely think that this was a step in the right direction.

Here are the problems. Tua doesn't fix our o-line and our d-line. I get the whole notion that we have tons of picks and tons of cap space. But if you look at recent history, our draft picks have been at the worst bad and at the best inconsistent. Prior to a Minkah trade, we have 2 first and 3 seconds. As a community, we see ourselves adding 5 good players. Realistically, I do not think that is the case. We are nowhere near hitting at that high of a clip. Also look at our recent FA signings. How many times have we signed a guy and sent him away in a relatively short period time. Paying players that are no longer on the team has become an unfortunate norm for Miami.

Will this work? It could, but I have my doubts. If we don't hit on our draft picks, we will be the Browns of yesteryear.

Buckle up, it is gonna be a wild ride.

 

When you only have an average GM, you need to pick VERY high to make it likely you'll get that franchise QB. That's the main reason we need to tank and can't just rely on our talent acquisition process to fix things. Been there, done that, doesn't work with our GM and FO.

As far as whether tanking has ever worked, the more important question is who has even tried it? Suck for Luck clearly, and that failed. Otherwise, it's only Cleveland who engaged in full fledged tanking not just for a QB but for their entire roster and it's too early to tell if that succeeded. In fact, that's a good reason to pay attention to them this year and next. There's also the possibility Detroit may have "tanked" but it's harder to infer intention in their case. If it was intentional it didn't work.

But it definitely has worked in other sports. Basketball doesn't really count because a single player can make a bad team a championship contender, but MLB is fair game and it definitely worked for the Cubs who broke a 108 year championship drought and worked most impressively for the Astros who were so successful at it that tons of teams are now playing copycat.

So yes it does work. It's just that it hasn't been tried in the NFL more than a few times. But it only works if you draft well. Astros drafted extremely well so that's obviously the Achilles heel here. Of course if we can't draft well, then it won't matter if we tank or not. At least with tanking you can somewhat mitigate the inability to draft a franchise QB with mid-1st round picks.

 

Couldn't you call what the Oakland Raiders did last year a tank? They got rid of Amari Cooper and Kahlil Mack, both were near the top of their game and no doubt the Raider Nation were wondering about the wisdom.

 

I would.

 

Looking at their games last year, one thing that stands out is the win against Arizona in week 11:
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/rai/2018.htm

Why beat Arizona, the team you'd be competing with for the 1st round pick if you really wanted to tank? They also won more games in the 2nd half of the season where it's really important to make sure you win that race to the bottom.

So I wouldn't put them in the list of teams that truly tanked. Maybe it's a "mini-tank" that's not uncommon when you have a new HC that wants to put his stamp on things and is willing to lose a few more games as a result, but is not deliberately trying to get that #1 pick.

 

You mean like the 'lucky' Patriots, Steelers, Packers, et. al?
I don't have the statistical evidence to back it up but I'd guess that the likelihood of teams winning consistently from pure chance is significant at the .01 level. (That means it's a hundred to one shot.)

So unless you have a different measure of success, the Dolphins will have to claw their way back from suckdom to return to mediocrity!
Sounds like fun, yeah?

 

The probability of a team winning 9 or more games in a season (i.e., having a winning season) is 0.4018. So if you wanted to calculate the probability of a team having N consecutive winning seasons just calculate (0.4018)^N. With N = 6 you get 0.0042 which is less than 0.01.

Of course the Patriots now have 18 consecutive winning seasons so the probability that occurs due to chance alone is 0.0000000745 lol.

btw.. the probability of a team winning 12 or more games in a season is 0.0384 so the Patriots having 8 consecutive seasons with 12+ wins (from 2010-2017) due purely to chance comes out to 0.0384^8 = 0.00000000000473 lol. There's nothing special about the Patriots of course. Buffalo's consistency in win% is actually greater than NE (standard deviation in win% is smaller) from 2001-2018.

Anyway, all this is stating nothing more than the obvious: team strength from year to year isn't completely random lol.

 

I was not about to overwhelm the board with such technical detail, but thanks for doing it for me!
Clearly, even if anecdotally, luck has virtually nothing to do with it.

 

Well I'd be a little careful about saying luck has nothing to do with team strength because all those calculations show is that team strength isn't random from year to year, which is obvious because you don't randomly choose the players and coach each year.

However, it IS possible to luck into taking a great player like Brady who improves win% consistently over multiple years. So luck can definitely affect win% in a consistent way but it has to happen on a player by player basis.

 

Since 2004, there have been three teams out of the 32 in the league that have a win percentage consistent with a 10-or-better-win season on average -- New England, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis. The other 29 teams have win percentages consistent with nine-win or worse seasons on average.

So if there is indeed a "formula" for success that doesn't involve tanking, it doesn't produce much success league-wide over the long term. The New England dynasty is certainly the exception to the rule, and we can hardly argue that not tanking, alone, will produce such an outcome, or that tanking alone will preclude it.

 

Well Ross is right.

For all my therapeutic postings this season, I will admit that tanking won't hurt my Fins fandom.

I'll have finamnesia and be pumped with everyone else drafting Tua #1 next year and all the other picks we have.

 

So what the hell was the point of your post?
To brag about your math skills?
Make up your mind.
I've made up mine.
Luck is not a significant factor over the long run.

 

The best team in the league over the past 20 years lucked into its starting Hall of Fame quarterback.

Or do you think New England’s skill as an organization had Brady designated as a Hall of Fame quarterback prior to the draft, and then waited five and a half rounds to take him?

 

The point of both posts taken together is that the statement "Luck is not a significant factor over the long run" is ambiguous.

It's definitely true that you can "luck" into drafting a great QB that many didn't think would be great AND that this significantly increases win% over a longer period of time (significant in a statistical sense). So from that perspective luck IS a significant factor over the long run.

However, the probability that you can "luck" into picking a sufficient number of such players to make your team a consistent winner year after year is absurdly small. So from that perspective luck is NOT a significant factor over the long run.

My first post supported your original point when talking about win% while my second post pointed out that you can't just make a blanket statement like "luck as virtually nothing to do with it" because individual players often stay on the same team, significantly affecting win%.

 

"Tanking" is a fantasy philosophy of fans and the media, and it's a foolish and ignorant thought process. Such a concept is never in the minds of professional and respectable players, coaches, or organizational staff.

The Dolphins are stripping this thing down to it's core, and rebuilding, the proper way, finally.

 

I'm in the minority here, but I 100% agree with your 1st statement. It's not in a player's DNA to tank and Flores wouldn't go for that either. We are still tanking regardless though because like you said, we're stripped down to the core and our trenches are bare.

Saying that we're rebuilding the proper way is foolish though- we have no idea how the team will rebuild past a new quarterback. Grier has overseen the scouting dept for almost two decades and he's missed time after time after time on linemen and DB/DE. What makes you think he'll suddenly "nail it" when evidence says he clearly won't?

Grabbing a potential franchise QB is a giant step in the right direction. I feel much less confident about the trenches and linebacker though to believe that this will be a quick rebuild off a couple of drafts. Maybe we get our 2nd shutdown corner and a few other big pieces, but if Flores picks poorly then this could easily be a 5 or a 10 year process that yields basically nothing.

Personally, I'm starting to feel like Rosen could be that franchise QB...which makes it even more likely that we'll be set at quarterback for a very long time. I'm definitely still in "show me" mode when it comes to the rest though.

 

Say your house got flooded/burned/hit with serious wind damage/whatever....
You have 2 options:

1. Tear it down to rafters and fix everything. The house will be unlivable during the process but it will be over in a couple of months.
2. Fix it a little at a time while still living there, understanding that some of the damage may cause structural issues while waiting to get to them.

 

When people say we want to rebuild the right way, they aren't guaranteeing a result.

Follow me here (it may be a little rambling and messy, sorry)

Everyone keeps pointing out all the coaching and scheme changes we've gone through. Everyone also points out that the one common denominator is Grier in all those failed regimes.

We know, that during all those regimes, Grier never actually final say on draft or FAs. We also know that these coaches had very different (from each other) player types they wanted. We also know that no regime that came in during that time wanted to start over. We also know Ross didn't;t really want a start over either.

What that means is that we've had teams with rosters that were mismatched for whatever scheme and culture the given regime wanted. There was a constant state of a handful of players from the past regime not buying in to the new regime. (Could even say that started in the transition from Saban to Cameron.) Those "not buying in" issues cause numerous problems from bad blood, crappy performances, etc. across the board from players to fans to even the local media.

So, finally Ross agrees to rebuild by tearing it down to rafters, and building out from there. He gave Flores an extra year in his contract and is letting his GM make decisions. That is what is meant about the right way. Sure it may fail. Grier may actually be terrible and Flores may be over his head. But the way we are doing this is the right way. Yes, this path has risks, but unless someone knows of a no risk way with guaranteed results, to go about this, then......

 

https://www.lockedondolphins.com/dolphins/everythings-gonna-be-alright-right/

Interest piece. Not too long. Click and read above.

Includes these Tweets:

 

I get the concept but I also think it's flawed thinking on top of flawed thinking. No, we haven't been a serious playoff team in 20+ years. But why?

It's easy to say, "Oh, we added the wrong free agents expecting to get that extra little boost from 8-8 to 11-5." Well, we saw that boost twice- once with Pennington and once in Gase's first season. But what happened? We lost the QB both times and the course wasn't sustainable without them. That's just football- you have to keep your players healthy and get a little lucky to avoid big injuries.

That hasn't been the only problem though. We've drafted poorly at times, and even worse we let great talent walk. In the past five years alone, we've traded away two pro bowl tackles, two pro bowl guards and a pro bowl center...is it shocking that we've had line problems for the past 15 years? It doesn't matter if you draft well or not if you can't retain talent, and a lot of that has come down to splashy off-season signings trying to get that one generational talent.

For instance, just Suh's contract alone would have paid for James, Pouncey, Tunsil, and three or four others- it was a fundamental error in thinking that cost us wins. And what did we do this season? We jumped in the Clowney sweepstakes to make the exact same mistake all over again.

So no, I don't think you had to gut the roster completely to rebuild "the right way". A lot of the trades I agreed with since we were overpaying for average productivity. It's not losing those players that worries me....but the constant "shiny object syndrome" that has crippled us for so very long. And guess what? To compete in 2020 and protect Rosen or Tua, we're going to have to hit the free market and load up all over again....essentially negating everything we're doing this season.

Or maybe they stay the path and tank in 2020 as well- I have a feeling we trade the Tua pick for a huge ransom and key Lawrence in 2021. Is Tua worth 3 first rounders and some other trinkets? Heck yes he is! To me that's the smarter plan...give 2020 to Rosen and a sotra-decent patchwork line of rookies. That also limits the free agents needed to fill gaps and maybe it all works out, but it's just as likely that it fails. Remember, we need to draft about 30 quality players to fill out this roster and if the average hit/miss is 50%, this process could easily take 5+ years.

So no, I'm not against the concept here at all and I hope we DON'T draft a QB next season. I really hope that the organization can realize WHY those "grab a few players to complete" situations failed because they were highly situational. I mean, if we tank for Tua and he gets a season-ending injury in year 1 or 2...is it really that different from RT winning 10 in a row and getting hurt? People will argue that its way different but it's the exact same scenario. We've had bad luck in Miami and it's been compounded by free agents that we couldn't afford.

The last thing you ever do is trade away young talent and we've done it over and over again- I mean, Vontae Davis was 7 years ago people! Chris Long was a few years before that. We've let young studs walk over and over and over again- that's why we're continually an 8-8 team.

 

Right, the QB was the problem.

How do we get a new one that has a real shot at greatness?

 

Did you not read what I wrote? We had Rosen before the true tank even started, plus our record all but guarantees a shot at Tua or Lawrence. We only need 1 pick for either of them and that's given to us each season automatically.

 

You're equating Tannehill to Pennington. Pennington finished 2008 2nd in passer rating. That was rare even for Marino.

Tannehill never did better than 12th, even when you look at his infamous "best 8 games" or so in 2016 (once the comparison is made to all other QB's best 8 games in a row). So the problem with your analysis is that as long as Tannehill was our QB we were NOT going to make the leap to a consistent playoff team unless you stack the rest of your team with way above average players which we never came close to doing, showing how difficult that is. And even then the likelihood of winning a SB with an average QB like Tannehill is very low.

Have to fix the QB problem first and there's just no way to do that with decent probability with our average FO unless we pick #1.

 

I'm not comparing Tannehill to Pennington or trying to imply they were on the same level- I simply said that those were 10+ win playoff teams. That's the goal, right? Consistent playoff berths? Well, we've done that twice in the past decade and in both cases, the QB leading the team went down.

So if I want to play devil's advocate here, I'd say that we already had (and lost) our consistent playoff team twice due to injury. We could say the same of the Steelers and Big Ben- they're a playoff team with him there and a fringe team without him. We know that though from a decade of work that supports that conclusion- we don't know that with Pennington or Tannehill since they were "one and done".

But like I said earlier, I don't think the QB's going down was the MAIN ISSUE (it's a big one, of course)- I think it all comes down to picking the right rookies and retaining them past 4-5 years. That's REALLY where championships are built. We've absolutely sucked at that- just try to name Dolphin draft picks that made it to their second contract.

Howard, Parker and Grant...that's all we have to show from the past 5 years. Five drafts, 40+ players and only 3 took that next step. That sucks and many would argue that we should have traded Parker by now.

 

I read what you wrote its just incorrect.

There is literally no reason to think Rosen is the guy. Even if he plays great this year, we still should take a QB.

 

If we're taking Lawrence or Tua, Rosen is your backup plan either way. So if he plays great this year, then he'll probably be on the same level next year too as we wait for Lawrence.

But if he plays poorly and we're not trying to win anyway, how does it possibly hurt to start him in 2020? It's a solid plan either way to let him develop.

 

I’m for this. Draft a guy and let both of them compete. Best man gets the keys to our franchise for the next 4-5+ years.

 

And?

 

And if the team thinks the prize is Lawrence, then there's no reason not to start Rosen in 2020. If he turns into the guy, that's great. If he doesn't, that's fine too because he was always the backup plan anyway.

 

Yes you are comparing the two, at least in terms of effect. You did it again in the post above. This quote best summarizes your argument:

You're saying the "course" wasn't sustainable without them. That's true for Pennington but not true for Tannehill. And now you're suggesting losing Tannehill to injury is really no different than losing Roethlisberger. Except that it's not. A 10-win season is an exception to the rule with Tannehill while it's closer to the norm with Roethlisberger.

And that's what we want from our #1 draft pick.. to hover around "well above average", not to hover around "average" like Tannehill.