It may not be the exact same thing, but it is pretty darned close. Look at it from this point of view. From 2009-2019, the Miami Dolphins had ONE winning season. Just one!!!! In the 4 seasons that Tua has been with the Dolphins, it’s been a winning season every year. And with McDaniel, the young head coach has not only has consecutive winning seasons, he’s had 2 consecutive playoff appearances. You don’t blow up a team that’s had that kind of success. You build around it and improve upon it. Now whether or not Grier is the man you want to try and be the architect to make the necessary additions I’d definitely a topic we can discuss but to blow the team up is idiotic.
Agreed, a lot will depend on next season and if we don’t win a playoff game or regress, that should be the end of Grier. He had all the resources to build a real winner and so far with all he had, there’s not really much to show for…
But that's not good enough! A winning season isn't good enough! It's like eating a sandwich made of dog poop for many years, and now eating a sandwich made of mud. Disagree. You didn't make it any further in 2023 than 2022 when Skylar freakin' Thompson finished the year for you. What does that say? This was our best shot at making a run with many QBs having a down year, hence why Tua was league leader in passing yards and it's one of the only years he'd have led in the last 15+ seasons. The only other year it occurred was a 16 game season. This is Tua and the team's ceiling. Your QB who NEVER stays healthy stayed healthy. You faced the least winning teams in the sport, and you still got your a$$ handed to you by every playoff team except one who is a perennial fraud. You are going to lose a lot of talent next season on defense (both in FA & injuries), you are on your 3rd DC in 3 seasons, don't have draft picks to make up for it, and are bad at making picks anyway. You are building a house on breadsticks, and pretending you aren't. This isn't going to take long to collapse. Expect this to completely crumble next season. The only question is going to be if they are tied to a cap anchor in Tua for multiple more seasons. History says they will be because Grier is running the clown show looking to save his job.
Not really. I want Grier to blowup and I want McDaniel to stay. The roster isn't McDaniel's problem. The talent on it is, and that's the GM's responsibility.
No, but they share the same problem, and one of them is responsible for it. The choice is to address it or be ignorant. The latter just delays the inevitable and makes the correction much more difficult.
Well got distracted at work. What I meant to ask.all the optimistic people. If we repeat a third year in a row with a December swoon.Would u be on board with a 4th year of McDaniel, Grier and Tua?
Depends on what exactly happens and what seems to be the problem that needs fixing. There’s no single answer. But if it ends like this year with Tua doing poorly in the playoffs, then at least Tua needs to go. McD I’d be more willing to keep as long as we make the playoffs, as 3 consecutive seasons making the playoffs is still a good start. Grier depends on whether it seems like there are too many talent issues.
Happy for Mongo that he finally got in. His wife said now that they achieved that goal, they are talking about the logistics of getting him to Canton in August! That would be pretty amazing, even if the other inductees would be somewhat overshadowed by his presence.
Don't worry about it, StaleTacos seemed to understand your post judging by his random like of it. Even though it made no sense and was incomplete.
To answer your question, the following questions need to be answered; What? Why? How? What happened to cause the December collapse? Why did the December collapse happen? How are you (McDaniel) going to fix it? We’ve all discussed ad nauseam our own personal opinions, some rational, some irrational as to what, why and how but none of us are the head coach nor the GM of the team.
I truly have no idea why u respond to anything I post.U are without.a shadow of a doubt the most annoying person on this site! I asked a simple question and have no answer!
Here’s a really good post from @Fineas It really dispels the notion that Tua was somehow a worse QB against some of these good teams than other “elite” QB’s. “The Dolphins played REALLY GOOD pass defenses in each of their last 4 games of the regular season and the wildcard game. In terms of passer rating allowed, the Ravens ranked 1st, the Jets ranked 3rd, the Cowboys ranked 6th, the Bills ranked 7th and the Chiefs were 8th. Collectively, those first four defenses allowed a yards per target of just 5.7 and a TD/INT ratio of 76/70. Their collective passer rating allowed was 75.5, which is 13.5 pts below the league average. Tua’s passer rating against those teams was 89.0, which is substantially better than the league average against them, but 12.1 pts lower than Tua’s passer rating for the season. Is it a coincidence that his drop in passer rating against them is so close to the league average drop against them? Probably a bit of coincidence involved, but it is hardly surprising that his rating dropped against the league’s best pass defenses; after all, causing low pass efficiency is what makes them the league’s best pass defenses. That Waddle effectively missed about 2.5 of those 4 games and Tyreek missed the other one almost certainly contributed to the struggles. We all would have liked to have seen Tua “step up” and raise his game against those top pass defenses; after all, isn’t that what elite QBs do? Well, no, it’s not. Not really. That foursome of pass defenses faced the group of Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Purdy, Hurts, Herbert and Prescott in 19 games (Lamar Jackson didn’t face any of them so isn’t included in this group of “elite” QBs, but he had a 75.5 passer rating against the Chiefs, which overall gave up a passer rating of 83.6, so he was 8.1 pts below the average against them).Collectively, those elite QBs had a passer rating of 84.5 against those first 4 defenses, so about 4.5pts lower than Tua’s rating against them. I didn’t check how many of those games those QB’s were without one of their top 2 receivers, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t 87.5% of them (counting Waddle as playing about half of the Cowboys game). Tua's late season numbers also look worse due to the unusual number of critical drops by Tyreek. There was the would-have-been 97 yard TD on the deep pass against the Cowboys. There was the dropped TD against Baltimore. There was the drop on the DPI play against the Bills that might have been a long TD if caught and, at the very least, a big gain. The low pass that was ruled a catch but overturned against Buffalo wasn’t a “drop” per se, but it was a catchable pass that wasn’t caught. Against Buffalo there was also the 3rd and 7 drop in the 4th quarter. Those were all intermediate or deep passes that, if caught, could havedramatically changed both the numbers forintermediate/deep throws in the 4th quarter of the season, as well as the whole narrative about the offense in the 4th quarter of the season. It doesn’t change the bad throws or bad decisions – those happened – but had those passes not been dropped the completion percentages and yards per target for deep and intermediate throws in the 4th quarter of the season would have been comparable to those in the other quarters despite that gauntlet of top pass defenses and despite missing Waddle for 2.5 games and Tyreek for 1 of them.”
Just curious on what. Say we blow the division with late season swoon again and either not make playoffs or get beat badly in first rd again.
I’m not dancing. If all you’re looking for is instant video game results then it’s a disingenuous question. The Miami Dolphins, the NFL are a collective of teams playing a game by men, real human beings, fallible and fragile with the potential of a catastrophic life changing injury each and every play. Some teams are fortunate enough to have players gifted with athletic abilities that exceed those of their counterparts on other teams, but are still human beings, subject to human error and injury. Games are also officiated by men, human beings who are also fallible who make mistakes and subject to bias as well. It’s human nature. My point was truly quite simple, the Dolphins have to evaluate what happened, why did it happen and affect a strategy and game plan to overcome that December collapse. If they can affect a strategy that show adaptability and demonstrates a true competitive performance, regardless of the outcome, then there’s no question you keep what you have. Sometimes the opposing team is just THAT GOOD that rarely anyone defeats them. Some folks here, after so many years of being in football purgatory have adopted an all or none mindset. This is silly. The the past 4 seasons, the Dolphins have had a winning record and for the last 2 years have gone to the playoffs. The last time the Dolphins were in the playoffs prior to McDaniel was 2008, 14 years of playoff drought and now we’re trending in the right direction. The team still has work to do, improvements to be made but to completely blow up what’s been clearly demonstrated as the right direction would only return the team back to the dumpster we’ve clawed our way out of.
A lot of things. What if an insurmountable amount of injuries happen? What if they need a FG to win the December game that would put them in the playoffs and Sanders misses it? What if the defense gives up 14 points in 3 minutes? What if Tyreek drops the game winning TD? What if Waddle is blatantly interfered with in the end zone, doesn’t catch the game winning TD while time expires and there’s no flag? The list can go on and on.
You cannot build around it if you do not have the cap to do it. Losing Baker, Wilkins, AVG, and the other 26 FA's is not building. Building is keeping you good players and adding
They are not going to lose all 29 free agents, and probably not all three that are mentioned. I think they will keep AVG and try to upgrade Baker for less money. Wilkins is a different story; he’s better and more valuable than Baker, but the question is how much more. If he wants market setting money, then it becomes a question of how much the organization values the defensive tackle position and Wilkins’ abilities and results compared to his peers. For instance, is a top DT worth a contract that would put him in the top ten highest paid DEs, a position that is generally regarded as more important?
Are we going to lose some players from this year’s roster? Of course we are. Every team loses players due to the salary cap and the inability of the front office/player able to negotiate an extension to reduce cap space. It always happens. Not to mention there are some players whose time has come and that proverbial can that was kicked down the road has reared its head again and there’s no other way to negotiate their contract. If memory serves, the only player that fits that bill is Jerome Baker. Sadly, I see him being traded or cut. Howard’s time in Miami may be up as well depending on whether the Dolphins want to pull the trigger on Smith. Wilkins is due his payday, but how much of a payday that should be remains to be seen. If Ross cracks open the checkbook and offers x amount in signing bonus, that reduces the cap hit…but how much remains to be seen. With 6 moves, the Dolphins can go from being $40 million over the cap to $16 under the cap. There’s some work to be done but to automatically assume this team is being disassembled due to the cap really don’t understand the cap and how it can be easily manipulated. Don’t panic, wait and see.
Keep ignoring the evidence that’s been shoved in your face, and even broken down 3rd grade style, that shows the Dolphins will have plenty of cap space and not have to get rid of… well, really anyone that they want to keep.
The Dolphins can keep everyone they want to pay. If they want to pay Wilkins, they can. Same with AVG or anyone else that’s a FA. The question will be who do they want to pay… not if they can pay it. With 6 moves they can be over $50m in the black. With a few more they can be as high as $80m in the black.
And I think a lot of that goes to the question, who wants to remain with this team and keep it intact and who’s in it for just the money. I really believe, after seeing Hard Knocks that Wilkins and Sieller REALLY love playing together.
I too took awhile off on this board because of sad way in which this ended. I couldn't even finish watching Hard Knocks because it hurt so much. In my mind, this season was a great season that just unfortunately ended in a whimper. I really do think that we got banged up badly at the worst possible time. We went from having an elite pass rush to literally bringing guys in off the street for a playoff game. Because of that, I knew we were gonna lose one of the coldest playoff games in NFL history. Here is the positive aspect of this: I really do not relegate blame to anyone. I think the players played well, the coaches coached well, and Grier put together a winning roster. I just think that we got unlucky. I am concerned about the future because I know that we need to shed salary going into the season, and we will be losing solid players.
Name teams that you think would have won the Super Bowl if not for [insert event(s)] in the last 20 years.
Like which Dolphins team was gonna win the Super Bowl if X hadn't have happened in the last 20 years? For example, the 23-24 roster may have won it all if we did not get a flurry of injuries at the end of the season.
Tannehill didn't have these weapons or this coach. I think Tannehill could have functioned perfectly fine in an offense where he determined presnap where he was going to throw.
Every. Single. QB. Needs players around them to succeed. Would RT play better with these guys? Sure. Tua played better with the same guys RT played with though. No doubt McD is a great coach, but let’s not pretend that Tua didn’t have some great games with Devante Parker and Flores. With all the “win in December/January” nonsense some people seem to have conveniently forgotten that in his 1st year Tua went 4-2 and in his 2nd year in the league he finished the season 8-1 going 4-1 in Dec/Jan. These last two Dec/Jan were filled with injuries. Let’s not pretend that RT is a better QB. His first two years in TN were really efficient, but he wasn’t doing anything. His first year there he only threw the ball something like 275 times. That’s about half as much as a QB makes in any typical season. And he threw for about 2500 yards.
That's being a bit disingenuous. His first year he didn't play until halfway thru game 6. So thats 2500 yards, 22 TDs, 6 INTs, 4 rushing TDs in 10.5 games and a 117.5 QBR. Year 2 was a full season with 3800 yards, 33 TDs, 7 INTs, 7 rushing TDs and a 106.5 QBR.
I'm not saying that Tannehill is better than Tua. He certainly has some advantages physically that Tua does not, while Tua may have better anticipation and seems to have better accuracy. I'm simply saying that Tannehill would most likely have looked drastically different in this offense. Honestly, the biggest crime was not giving Tannehill an oline.
