Umm... because we started at zero?
Tore the team completely down... surely you remember this. It was in all the papers...
This exactly
Most teams are adding to their core team, but Miami has to do major rebuilds and coaching philosophies every 3 years which destroys team building and resources.
For example, when Phailbin came to us and we had a top 7, 3-4 defense, and he fires Mike Nolan to bring in the Schlump Kevin Coyle, Bungals LBer coach and ripped apart a formidable defense!
He switched to the 4-3 after we were a 3-4 D for what 7 or 8 years, stripping our core apart. We waisted draft picks to do that which could've been used for WR's and Oline talent, remember the slowest and most unathletic #1and #2 maybe in history in Hartline and Bess?
So when Flores completely stripped this team down, we had little to no core group.
After 4 years, we do have a good core of drafted guys here now. There have been bad misses, we all know the cast of characters.
As long as we continue adding to the core group and not stripping it down, we will have the foundation set. We've got several bad contracts for underperformers, but once we rid ourselves from those, we "should" start to see real sustainable success.
Coaching matters as much as the GM and players. Many offensive guys developed and produced. I really believe with Fangio, our defense will improve drastically. The 1 issue this year though, is the lack of draft capital to bring in the requisite pieces for VF's D.
In his 1st season with Chicago, the results were not good, but that started to change by year 2 (thanks to Waddle Waddle in a topic on VF in the Main). I do believe we have much better core pieces available than that Bears team.
I don't believe we will shoot up to top 10 in Fangio's 1st season here, but I'd expect top 16 or so which would be a drastic improvement from the buffoon known as Boyer, although he did have a few good games defensively, but overall the unit was soft, out of place and made mind-numbingly stupid defensive calls,for example, the Chargers game before half time.
Grier is a yes man to his coaches, that's obvious. I thought the additions of Marvin Allen and Reggie McKenzie would have improved the odd decisions like Iggy, Eich, and others.
Grier will need to show his mettle this offseason with limited draft capital.
If it were me, I'd make some trade downs with the 3rd rounders to gain more selection opportunities to fill out roster with better than UDFA's. We shall see.
The 2nd round pick should be used for best available for one of our positions of need at CB, RT, S, ILB TE, LG and Edge depth is an issue as well depending on what we do with Ogbah and Ingram.
Seeing where we are from 0-7 to now,it's obvious there's been free agent hits, draft hits, and UDFA hits, but like we all know, there's been some big misses in free agency and the draft.
Sorry for the long a5s post, I just started typing away, didn't mean too lol.