Yes we agree on everything you just stated and if I were to blame Ireland for part of this mess it would be where you stated. " I just think if we had put professional level coaches and other talented players around him, it wouldn't be as much of a problem"
IMO That is Irelands job to match the players and coaches so that the chemistry works. Ireland badly underestimated Tony's Sporano and his staff and their ability to handle a Brandon Marshall ego. In this case drafting to farily good recievers probably would have worked out much better with Tony Sporano and his staff. Thats not saying that Brandon Marshall is not very talented and will never work out for any team but with the right staff he is probably a great effective player. Lets put is this way if we got robbed dealing Marshall for 2 3rd rounders then its getting to the point that many of the NFL managers agree that Marshall is a handful. Yes we have been a mess for 15 years and that IMO that has more to do with not finding the right coach than the right players. Don Shula was stable and they old saying he could beat your team with his team or beat his team with your team was pretty much true because we were stable at the coaching position. The new winningest coach was Dave W who most everybody hates on this forum but Dave W stuck around the longest too. The talent is not that far off and IMO even better than many of those Shula teams the last 10-12 years of his coaching career. Ireland is far from perfect but I keep bringing up he has done the best job of getting in talent since that period of time.
The talent level was way higher for Shula because he had a HoF quarterback. That covered up alot of mistakes by shula. He was a great coach but I think the game was starting to pass him by. Problem was we invested in Jimmy Johnson who was also in the midst of being passed up by the modern NFL and his ego prevented him from building around a HoF quaterback. Wandstat was horrible. he had a gift dropped in his lap from johnson and that was prob a top ten defense of all time and it was built on 3rd and 4th round draft picks. he married himself to fiedler and it ruined any chance of him having success.