Thoughts on the Dolphins/Jags Game

Fire everyone

There is no excuse for the losses we've had this season. Three years is long enough to rebuild. Flores and Grier need to be gone.

Fire all of them.

We averaged 3.9 YPC against one of the worst defenses in the nfl today. We couldn’t establish the run and weren’t able to run when it mattered. As a result, we had to throw the ball 47 times. Not sure I’m willing to say the OL looked decent.

"KeyFin wrote:

I know people here will be in "fire everyone" mode for a few days, so I figured I'd get this one in here early before the site becomes unbearable. There were actually a lot of positives this week to talk about.

First and foremost, Tua looked excellent today with back-up receivers. Where have we heard that before? It's crazy that this was his 12th start and he's had exactly one game with starting wide receivers. No Parker, no Fuller, no Williams and Grant traded. As usual, Gisecki, Hollins and Waddle all looked good as well.

More importantly, the offensive line looked competent today- not "great", but competent. Tua had pretty good protection all afternoon and was ultimately let down by some key drops. He did have one pick on a pass that he didn't get enough air under, but otherwise it was a pretty good offensive showing. At this point, I would trade Williams, Parker and Fuller...it's pointless to keep starting receivers that never actually get to play.

On defense...well, it wasn't a spectacular day. Both our corners were out and for the most part, our defense played tough the majority of the time and then would give up huge yardage on a blown play. Iggy looked "eh"....he had several good breakups and also a few where he looked completely lost out there. The deep pass in the 4th quarter was perplexing- he had perfect coverage, perfect position, looked back towards the throw but somehow never saw it in the air...no idea what happened there.

The problem today was exactly the same as the Colts game- we drove all over that field but couldn't find the end-zone. It's frustrating as can be because we really dominated this game but once we hit the red-zone, drives just died out. They have to fix that quickly and I believe the problem is consistency- we can't keep the same players on the field from week to week.

I won't say Jones, Parker, Williams, Fuller and Howard were all healthy scratches since they were definitely nursing injuries, but I think we expected to go in any walk all over Jax without them so we gave people the week off to heal up. It clearly backfired though and we lost in spectacular fashion.

Let's talk about a few specific plays that changed the game-

• The punt that we challenged over the receiver potentially touching it- I really think it brushed his finger and that was a Miami TD.

• The 3rd and 1 we brought Brissett in for; I don't like that at all. Yes, it was a 20+ yard gain on a neat gimmick play, but Tua needs to stay on the field and command the offense in those situations.

• The 4th and 1 we went for at the end of the game was ultimately why we lost. Punt that football and settle it in overtime. With that said, however, we got a terrible spot of that football. Maybe we had the 1st down, maybe not....it was closer than that spot though.

• Jax going for it on 4th and 6 with five second left was an impressive, gutsy play. However, it bothered me that there wasn't a booth review of the play-clock. It looked to me like the game was over. Actually, there were a few plays I think should have been reviewed in those final 2 minutes.

• The two 4th quarter field goals by a kid off the street made me smile. Good for Jax breaking a 20-game losing streak in epic fashion. But I do think they got a lot of help from the refs at the end there, and it's Miami's fault for settling for field goals (and missing one) early in the game).

What's all this mean? I honestly don't know- we lost to the worst team in the league. Even with key starters out, we were still clearly the better team for all four quarters. But we had lousy play-calling down the stretch, lousy execution on dropped passes, and we just didn't do enough to overcome the Jags and the refs.

One big positive though- as soon as we took the 3-point lead, the defense went into cover zero and they were a lot more fun to watch. I can still see a dominant defense but we have to have the lead to make it all work. Playing from behind opens the opponent's entire playbook and it forces us into vanilla coverage, so the big takeaway here is that those long, dominant drives by our offense need to end with TD's.

Folks, we completely gave this game away despite improvements all the way around. I don't know what else to say- it's going to be an extremely long season and it's not from lack of talent. Our second string kicked Jax's butt but still couldn't get the win somehow.

Any positives you can get out of this game have to be tempered by the fact that we were playing Jacksonville, who has lost 21 straight games, and they were also dealing with several injuries.

So no, fire everyone is still the best course of action at this point.

"mlb1399 wrote:

We averaged 3.9 YPC against one of the worst defenses in the nfl today. We couldn’t establish the run and weren’t able to run when it mattered. As a result, we had to throw the ball 47 times. Not sure I’m willing to say the OL looked decent.

We tried to run, what, five or six times total? You can't fault the run for not working when you never actually try to run the ball. And guess where almost every single run went? Off guard to the right side. No sweeps, nothing exotic....just the most basic run play you learn in football.

"KeyFin wrote:

We tried to run, what, five or six times total? You can't fault the run for not working when you never actually try to run the ball. And guess where almost every single run went? Off guard to the right side. No sweeps, nothing exotic....just the most basic run play you learn in football.

Had we tried to run the ball more the result would have been worse. Only positive today was Tua, nothing else. There's no excuses for the OCs, Flores, Grier etc. This is year 3 and we've seen too many accumulated bad decisions.

I knew someone would post this thread and I usually like all of your stuff but there is no defending this team not today not now they are a complete un objectional failure they have no heart they have no leader they have no coaching they have no GM and now they’re losing the fans and the team even if they win their next few games The wheels have fallen off the bus there’s no coming back from this two weeks in a Close proximity we lost to Indianapolis who sucks and now to a team who hasn’t won the last 21 games we barely won the New England game or we’d be oh and five this team deserves no credit nor breaks they haven’t earned it they should all be replaced and I’m sticking to that this season is over trade away everyone you can now and get some draft capital since our GM screwed up our draft already

"KeyFin wrote:

We tried to run, what, five or six times total? You can't fault the run for not working when you never actually try to run the ball. And guess where almost every single run went? Off guard to the right side. No sweeps, nothing exotic....just the most basic run play you learn in football.

If you can’t block the normal runs effectively I don’t believe exotic plays are going to change that. It’s a good point about not running more

Going against what was supposed to be the WORST team in the NFL? You have to temper any positives knowing they played a bad team, with a bad coach, and LOST! On a neutral field no less!! I hope we can pull out a win versus the Jest or the Falcons, but those are coin flip games at best now.

That said, Tua was good for a game where he was shaking off the rust, minus that really bad INT throw. Tua couldn't do enough to win it, and just enough bad to help lose the game.

"hitman8 wrote:

Any positives you can get out of this game have to be tempered by the fact that we were playing Jacksonville, who has lost 21 straight games, and they were also dealing with several injuries.

So no, fire everyone is still the best course of action at this point.

So why watch at all anymore? It sounds like you're officially checked-out for the season. I try to be objective listing the good/bad each week and I'm not going to stop because this team is in crisis-mode. We need a whole lot to turn this around but personally, I don't think "fire everyone" and start over from scratch is a viable path.

I mean, we've done that for what...the past 15 years? What's the point? If we fire Flores/Grier, then we're trading away Howard, Jones, Parker, Gisecki and basically anyone worth a darn. We'll probably keep Tua, gut the line, gut the defense and we'll be way worse off than when this entire rebuild even started. We don't have our own 1st rounder next season either, which means no sane head coach will want to take over.

So what does "fire everyone" get us other than a guaranteed five more years of mediocre football?

I'm not down for that path- it's more self-destructive than anything. Keep Flores, fire Grier and lose the "youth movement" that we've taken too far. Bring in some vets before the trade deadline and salvage what we can of the season. We can't install a new offense mid-season though so I don't see any benefit to firing Flores or offensive coordinators today. The rest of the year has to be about Tua and making him comfortable in this offense.

"Dorfdad wrote:

I knew someone would post this thread and I usually like all of your stuff but there is no defending this team not today not now they are a complete un objectional failure they have no heart they have no leader they have no coaching they have no GM and now they’re losing the fans and the team even if they win their next few games The wheels have fallen off the bus there’s no coming back from this two weeks in a Close proximity we lost to Indianapolis who sucks and now to a team who hasn’t won the last 21 games we barely won the New England game or we’d be oh and five this team deserves no credit nor breaks they haven’t earned it they should all be replaced and I’m sticking to that this season is over trade away everyone you can now and get some draft capital since our GM screwed up our draft already

Hey, I'm not "defending" anything- we just lost to the worst team in the league! But I was trying to be objective on why we lost.

"KeyFin wrote:

Hey, I'm not "defending" anything- we just lost to the worst team in the league! But I was trying to be objective on why we lost.

Nothing personal but your take was objectively bad. Just sounds like a list of poor excuses.

"KeyFin wrote:

So why watch at all anymore? It sounds like you're officially checked-out for the season. I try to be objective listing the good/bad each week and I'm not going to stop because this team is in crisis-mode. We need a whole lot to turn this around but personally, I don't think "fire everyone" and start over from scratch is a viable path.

I mean, we've done that for what...the past 15 years? What's the point? If we fire Flores/Grier, then we're trading away Howard, Jones, Parker, Gisecki and basically anyone worth a darn. We'll probably keep Tua, gut the line, gut the defense and we'll be way worse off than when this entire rebuild even started. We don't have our own 1st rounder next season either, which means no sane head coach will want to take over.

So what does "fire everyone" get us other than a guaranteed five more years of mediocre football?

I'm not down for that path- it's more self-destructive than anything. Keep Flores, fire Grier and lose the "youth movement" that we've taken too far. Bring in some vets before the trade deadline and salvage what we can of the season. We can't install a new offense mid-season though so I don't see any benefit to firing Flores or offensive coordinators today. The rest of the year has to be about Tua and making him comfortable in this offense.

Serious question, do you want to see Grier run(ruin) another draft and off-season?

Doesn't matter if they fire everyone as long as Ross is the owner.

Sell the team!

"mlb1399 wrote:

Serious question, do you want to see Grier run(ruin) another draft and off-season?

Absolutely not- I think he's a bigger problem than just the people we're drafting. I said to fire Grier in my reply to you.

But then the question becomes, who do you hire? Not another "we found the best possible candidate from within BS". But that's what happened last time; multiple people turned down the job in Miami and we settled on a snake-oil salesman. And with our employee turnover, our wasting draft picks on projects and not even having our own 1st rounder next season, who's going to want to take the helm? Not anyone with an upward trajectory, I can promise you that.

I mean, we had to give Flores a 5-year contract guarantee to sign him...and he's a 1st time NFL coach. That's insanity and speaks to how desperately people did not want to work for Ross in Miami. So while I agree with you on firing the guy, we absolutely have to have the right person lined up to take over the role.

"mlb1399 wrote:

Serious question, do you want to see Grier run(ruin) another draft and off-season?

What does it matter? Ross will hire someone worse. Might as well stick with the devil you know.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

What does it matter? Ross will hire someone worse. Might as well stick with the devil you know.

If it's just bad philosophy on the picks, then I agree...keep him and force the guy to stop drafting long-term prospects. But if Grier is the reason we lost Gailey and Fitz after a 10-win season with everything going right, then he's a cancer that has to be ejected from the building.

I don't know how deep the problems with Grier actually go, but I'm willing to bet that he's made Flores's job a heck of a lot harder than it had to be. And if that's the case, I'd keep Flores for a year under a new GM.

"KeyFin wrote:

If it's just bad philosophy on the picks, then I agree...keep him and force the guy to stop drafting long-term prospects. But if Grier is the reason we lost Gailey and Fitz after a 10-win season with everything going right, then he's a cancer that has to be ejected from the building.

I don't know how deep the problems with Grier actually go, but I'm willing to bet that he's made Flores's job a heck of a lot harder than it had to be. And if that's the case, I'd keep Flores for a year under a new GM.

That’s the heart of the problem. There’s so much dysfunction on this team that it’s hard to pinpoint. All I know is Ross is the one constant and Grier is very, very bad.

"KeyFin wrote:

If it's just bad philosophy on the picks, then I agree...keep him and force the guy to stop drafting long-term prospects. But if Grier is the reason we lost Gailey and Fitz after a 10-win season with everything going right, then he's a cancer that has to be ejected from the building.

I don't know how deep the problems with Grier actually go, but I'm willing to bet that he's made Flores's job a heck of a lot harder than it had to be. And if that's the case, I'd keep Flores for a year under a new GM.

If the new GM wants him but Flores is more then on the hot seat after today...

"KeyFin wrote:

If it's just bad philosophy on the picks, then I agree...keep him and force the guy to stop drafting long-term prospects. But if Grier is the reason we lost Gailey and Fitz after a 10-win season with everything going right, then he's a cancer that has to be ejected from the building.

I don't know how deep the problems with Grier actually go, but I'm willing to bet that he's made Flores's job a heck of a lot harder than it had to be. And if that's the case, I'd keep Flores for a year under a new GM.

Fitz and Gailey were cancers. Grier's first mistake was signing Fitz. Gailey was a bad hire by Flores.

"KeyFin wrote:

If it's just bad philosophy on the picks, then I agree...keep him and force the guy to stop drafting long-term prospects. But if Grier is the reason we lost Gailey and Fitz after a 10-win season with everything going right, then he's a cancer that has to be ejected from the building.

I don't know how deep the problems with Grier actually go, but I'm willing to bet that he's made Flores's job a heck of a lot harder than it had to be. And if that's the case, I'd keep Flores for a year under a new GM.

Are you really thinking they should brought back Fitz and made him the starter?

Fitzpatrick on this team wouldnt make a difference… the talent is below average… fitzpatrick is also below average.. we need a complete overhaul, no more retooling, a complete rebuild.

I said it a few years ago when we got rich after the Tunsil trade (lol rich, we wasted every pick), those picks will set us up for the next decade or set us back, we have to get it right, especially since New England’s run was near the end. and we should have hired someone that can get it right, like Ozzie Newsome. We got it completely wrong on every draft since that trade.

right now the patriots look like they are steps ahead of us already.. we whiffed.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

Fitz and Gailey were cancers. Grier's first mistake was signing Fitz. Gailey was a bad hire by Flores.

I mean, we won 10 games with a gutted roster, a terrible line and not a starting WR in sight. The offense wasn't awesome by any means last year, but they were doing something right.