Ownership - An Attempt at Solving a Problem Only I Seem Willing to Identify

 

I am not a business genius. But I have managed more than a few highly successful businesses. The first skill you have to have as a manager is Identification – you have to be able to identify the people already on your staff who are both propping you up where you are and are capable of further growth. The next thing you have to be able to do is Interview. Because if you're taking over a new business properly, you're going to see something in the realm of 80% turnover in the first year. I'm not taking that from statistics, but from my life experience.

Every time I've worked somewhere with new upper management, lower management bails or is canned, and everyone attached to them does the same.

So you have to identify who you're going to make an effort to keep and who you're going to promote – and then you need a plan for how you're going to replace the chaff of your former staff.

Stephen Ross has given me no indication he can do either of these things.

He's bungled every decision he's made at head coach to this point. To say nothing of his decisions at general manager.

He wanted Parcels, but got Tony Sparano as a puppet. When, after three years, Pinocchio Sparano proved to be less than the sum of his strings, Ross started taking interviews before he'd fired his coach. Then he extended his coach. Then strung him along through a fourth disappointing campaign before cutting him loose week 14. My understanding is that Todd Bowles wasn't even under serious consideration for the job. Not only did Ross not get John Harbaugh (or any number of the other celebrity head coaches he chased), because no one wants to work for an owner who publicly courts your replacement mid-season, but he didn't even get a coach who wanted to be a coach.

Joe Philbin was checked out of football when he interviewed for Miami's head coaching gig. He did the interview because it was either that or suicide. Something or nothing forever. And he is who got the blursed job. We know how that went. Extension, then fired after a loss, Week 5, in London, in year four. Then Dan Campbell.

Then Stephen Ross checks out of the interview process for his head coach, gets impatient, and hires Adam Gase on the spot just to get the search over with. Because that's how anyone qualified to be hiring a head coach for a professional sports franchise would handle it – flippantly and petulantly, like a child, impatient in his ignorance.

Adam Gase resigns after three years of fuckery from his front office when his owner gets it in his head that he wants to tank like the Browns have. Right. The season after the Browns finished their 1-31 campaigns with Hue Jackson, Stephen Ross decided that he wanted a first overall pick to play with. Look at how much talent the Browns had, and how much hope with Baker Mayfield!

Sigh.

Only a fool sees the suffering of that fanbase and thinks to himself, “That – that right there – That is a winning culture. That'll sell tickets for sure.”

Fuckin a.

Then, in a move that surprised no one, he hired Brian Flores fresh off a Super Bowl win where his defense showed out like maybe no defense ever has before. I was into it. Still am. If you're going to tank, you ideally want a defensive-minded coach. A defensive-minded coach is going to have a defense-oriented rebuild. In Year 1 the defense is going to play way better than it should and generate a bunch of turnovers. Check. What they didn't expect, I think, was for Ryan Fitzpatrick to be more than serviceable. They wanted Matt Schaub circa 2013. Instead they got a guy with the ability if not the likelihood to get into the Playoffs.

It worked out. They got the quarterback everyone wanted. The fans wanted him – and if Jeff Darlington is right, and I believe he is (there's a reason he's promoted every time I see his face), then the owner wanted Tua, and Grier and Flores wanted Herbert. Womp fucking womp.

Then Ross convinces Grier and Flo to convince him that this team is Playoff ready, and they committed to Tua instead of committing to the rebuild.

Because Years 2 and 3 for a defensive-minded head coach are about identifying the quarterback. Usually, like with Mike Zimmer, the goal is to go out and get a quarterback. Defensive guys don't want to teach a rookie. Rookies make mistakes. They put the ball into danger. You have to teach them to throw it at all because they lock up under pressure and see tight windows as closed.

It's a whole thing. I've been writing about it, you can hear any defensive guru tell you these things. It's why Kirk Cousins is in Minnesota – Kirk is supposed to be careful with the ball and accurate downfield; those were his calling cards in Washington (he also carried the badge that he'd never won in Primetime, and I'm not sure he's ever gotten rid of it).

Quarterbacks are who they are. But that's a story for another article. I'm trying to burn Stephen Ross in effigy, here.

There is an adage, an accepted wisdom, in the NFL that you can't count on winning your Division with a rookie quarterback. This is where the idea that you play the rookie during a lost campaign comes from. It's why we were all so surprised to see Tua at all last year. And why some percentage of us had some predictable reaction to Tua's multiple benchings.

I thought they were brilliant.

I keep not saying this, and it's important:

Defensive coaches and offensive coaches are fundamentally different in how they think about the game. At the coaching level, football is sort of like Chess in that it is a wargame. It's more like the Live Action Chess they play at the Renaissance Faire than it is tabletop – and it's got many, many more moving pieces per turn. And the coach really only has control over what the pieces do insofar as he can tell them and hope they do what he says.

I am certain that I'm not being clear.

But coaching an NFL team is a herculean feat of military roleplay. We're talking LARP on a scale we don't appreciate nearly often enough.

Ahem.

I don't really understand how offensive-minded coaches think for a couple of reasons, but maybe most because I was raised by a defensive-minded coach. My dad coached for five or ten years of my life. But also because I think like a defense-oriented coach. As far as I can tell, offensive coaches approach the game something like this: If I can score on more of my drives than they do, I'll win. Whereas defensive coaches approach the game something like: if I can keep them from scoring more than two touchdowns and generate a turnover or two, statistically my offense should be able to score two touchdowns and three field goals, and I won't lose.

It's a wordier description for a more complex approach to the game.

Complex does not mean better. Like with Pop versus Prog Rock, each has its fans, and neither is wrong.

Bill Belichick will tell you that offense loses championships, and I tend to agree with him. This is basically how he's won more than 10 games a season his whole tenure in New England: You keep games tight, and have a quarterback who can win when the game is on the line.

Seems easy.

Defensive coaches, basically, are playing for the last five minutes. Where offensive coaches want the last quarter to not matter.

As a defensive coach in a five year contract, Years 2-4 are about identifying the quarterback and getting the offense the pieces it needs statistically – or analytically – to succeed. Like how Pete Carroll's Super Bowl runs don't have wide receivers you remember, but you do remember Marshawn Lynch obliterating folks. This is how Brian Flores can continue to run Albert Wilson and DeVante Parker and Mack Hollins and Jakeem Grant and Preston Williams out on the field and tell fans it will be fine. Analytically, from a height-weight-speed perspective, this is among the most competitive wide receiver rooms in the League. The problem is that they're all made of glass and won't play enough consecutive weeks to build a relationship with their quarterback. Relationships with the quarterback are what lead to wins – because they manifest in big plays in key moments. Think of Randall Cobb catching that 3rd-and-long from Aaron Rodgers Week 5 in the middle of the field.

Brian Flores is betting on his offense to get enough third down conversions on long, contested drives to keep his defense off the field, and for his defense to create enough short fields to steal field goals. One part of that is working consistently. If Tua didn't get hurt, Week 2, I think this offense looks different right now. I think we're talking about the Dolphins differently. I don't think I'm breaking down all the owner's failings as I work myself into preaching patience.

The one thing Ross has ever gotten right was letting Sparano coach through his three-year contract.

I don't trust him to retain Brian Flores.

Because I don't trust him to identify the pillars of his organization. They walked away from Tannehill and replaced him with Ryan Fitzpatrick and now Tua Tagovailoa, two quarterbacks who are on their faces lesser players. Look what he's doing in Tennessee – getting sacked and allowing turnovers, yes; but winning without healthy receivers is the point). At least Justin Herbert was billed as a bigger, faster, stronger Tannehill with a livelier arm and more experience at the position.

Let's get this baby back under control.

Does Ross demand Flores ax both OCs or take the fall for them?

If that's what it takes, for Flores to cut loose two guys he was trying to promote for their loyalty and performance as pillars – in their previous positions— Well, frankly, I hate it for the guy, but sometimes you have to do the difficult thing. If you promoted them because you couldn't keep them if you brought someone else in, then they don't perform, that's on them.

Sometimes it's on them.

Just like Kyle Van Noy not being kept around is on him. He's not wrecking games in New England, is he? He was a progress stopper. Flores identified that. He and Grier have interviewed extremely well in their draft picks. That proves to me that they can lead this team moving forward. That the Rebuild shouldn't be canceled, and that, indeed, it's right on pace.

Tua has to develop. And that's on him.

Baker Mayfield is playing with a badly dislocated left shoulder and missed maybe one play after it was grotesquely redislocated yesterday – in a crushing defeat at the hands of the still undefeated Arizona Cardinals. Am I questioning Tua's toughness?

All the talk about defensive versus offensive minded head coaches, and I've never pointed out the winning formula. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady have looked so good for so long because Bill has never mis-identified his Offensive Coordinator. Never once has he missed and picked a dud.

Now, the teams who hired his offensive coordinators as head coaches, they missed. I don't even want to go through the names. You know who I'm talking about.

Brian Flores is three years in and he's six weeks into his third dud.

Dolphins fans want Joe Brady, and I don't understand why. What I want to know, though, is who he's going to bring in to run his offense. I'm realizing that in my not-exactly comprehensive list of struggling defensive-minded coaches that I forgot Robert Saleh of the Jets. I'm thinking of him now because he did exactly the thing I'm alluding to with my questions of Stephen Ross's ability to identify then interview the next successful coach: He got himself the next great offensive coordinator in Mike LaFleur, Matt's brother and fellow disciple of Kyle Shanahan.

Saleh made the inverse move that Sean McVay made when he became the next hot thing in Los Angeles: McVay hired the most experienced, best defensive coordinator in the game: Wade Phillips.

All of these flourishing offensive head coaches have outstanding defensive coordinators. Even Sean Payton has himself a former HC and fantastic defensive coordinator in Dennis Allen. In fact I can't help but notice how many former defensive-minded head coaches are finding resurgences as coordinators.

Dan Quinn and Gus Bradley are the two who jump immediately to mind. Because Vance Joseph and Todd Bowles have long since redeemed themselves for their head coaching stints.

So what I'm saying, at the end of all of this probably-pointless piece, is why does Miami want to let Brian Flores walk so badly when we already have precedent that he's going to get paired up with an offensive guru and go chase Super Bowls while Miami is in constant Rebuild mode but selling Playoff competition to their fanbase? Why do we encourage churn on the roster where players aren't performing, but a coach figuring out his coaching staff is a death knell?

I don't know, and I don't understand.

But I do know that Brian Flores isn't what's wrong with this team.