The Special Teams coach. They were terrible this year. I know they've had bigger fish to fry but something needs to be done.
plenty of time for that should they feel they need one. I agree with you but I think we have some more time.
The team made some really questionable choices on kick offs this past season, kicking intentionally short and giving up big returns because of it. But we don't know whether that was entirely Crossman's call or whether McDaniel directed him to do it. I got the vibe that at least part of it was McDaniel being overly ambitious, especially against other HCs who he's friends with. If so, I really hope that he dials it back in in coming seasons and just has Sanders (or whoever the kicker is) boot it out of the back of the EZ every time. If those were all on Crossman, then he needs to pull his head out of his butt and play it safe from here on out. Outside of those situations, the return coverage wasn't spotless, but it wasn't awful either, and part of the problems can be explained by ST players being injured and out for the year, or defensive starters being out, and their replacements being pulled away from ST, leaving bottom feeders on the ST units. People complain a lot and loudly about Jason Sanders, and he was absolutely less effective from long distance. But on kicks under 50 yards, he was one of the best in the NFL this past season, and is now literally the best in Dolphins history from 40-49 yards, so people need to let up. He shanked one short kick, but was 19/20 from 30-49 yards. And Morestead was very solid with directional punts and hangtime this past season. Few complaints about that at all. I don't care about returns much, and would rather take a knee and get the touchback every time on the KO, and just make the secure fair catch on PR and make sure that we aren't pinned deep.
If you’re going to fire your special teams coach (which I’m not opposed to looking at) then you have to take a look at who’s out there…who’s available. you can’t just fire that kind of coach without having a viable alternative to replace him.
Firing him might not be the answer. The first question that begs to be asked is if the current coach has a plan to fix the problem. He and McDaniel have had a chance to see what worked and what didn't, so terminating the coach might be punishing him for poor performance when correction and adjustments might be what's needed.
They gave up too many long returns in critical situations. Maybe it's not the coaches fault but I like to blame someone.
I think this was a bigger part of the problem than people realize. There were so many injuries on D that resulted in special teams stalwarts being pulled, resulting in less availability to play ST. As the injuries kept piling up, more and more guys got pulled, resulting in different groups playing on the various ST units from week to week.
Most of those were preventable. That's my issue. They chose to give those long returns up. Stop being bold with it. That's the answer.
To be fair, the Dolphins have had an extremely bad time with injuries lately, far worse than a lot of others. Whether that's a matter of bad luck, picking injury prone players, the fault of the training staff and doctors, or some combination of all of it, I don't know. Hopefully we can move beyond that soon.
Main reason is we pick injury prone players thinking they will magically stop being injury prone for us.
