Of course we're heading into the offseason, so one of the most popular things to do around here is speculate about how the team will change during it.
Although it's fun to float ideas about who will be here and who will be gone (I've started threads about it too), I think it may be better to maintain the status quo with this team by and large.
In my mind there are two very important reasons for doing this:
1) After the Cleveland game, Saban told the team he'd be using the rest of the season to evaluate players to determine who was Miami Dolphins material. The team responded by winning six games straight.
If, as a coach, you want your words to mean anything to the team in the future, you'd better reward the team by keeping most of the players who met Saban's challenge and were responsible for those six wins, and that appeared to me to be just about everybody.
2) The team is developing good leadership on both sides of the ball as we speak. Say what you want about Frerotte, but he showed good poise and leadership last year, and Randy McMichael and Chris Chambers seemed to me to become bigger leaders on offense than they had been previously (I think McMichael pretty much singlehandedly willed the team to win the second Buffalo game, for example). We already had our leaders on defense -- last year we started to develop some good leadership on offense.
As important as team leadership is IMO, we run the risk of disintegrating our developing leadership by bringing in too many players at a time, especially players who have had prominent roles on other teams (TO, for example).
So yeah, let's have our fun speculating about who will be here next year, but in the end I think it's wise to stick with what we have for the most part.
Although it's fun to float ideas about who will be here and who will be gone (I've started threads about it too), I think it may be better to maintain the status quo with this team by and large.
In my mind there are two very important reasons for doing this:
1) After the Cleveland game, Saban told the team he'd be using the rest of the season to evaluate players to determine who was Miami Dolphins material. The team responded by winning six games straight.
If, as a coach, you want your words to mean anything to the team in the future, you'd better reward the team by keeping most of the players who met Saban's challenge and were responsible for those six wins, and that appeared to me to be just about everybody.
2) The team is developing good leadership on both sides of the ball as we speak. Say what you want about Frerotte, but he showed good poise and leadership last year, and Randy McMichael and Chris Chambers seemed to me to become bigger leaders on offense than they had been previously (I think McMichael pretty much singlehandedly willed the team to win the second Buffalo game, for example). We already had our leaders on defense -- last year we started to develop some good leadership on offense.
As important as team leadership is IMO, we run the risk of disintegrating our developing leadership by bringing in too many players at a time, especially players who have had prominent roles on other teams (TO, for example).
So yeah, let's have our fun speculating about who will be here next year, but in the end I think it's wise to stick with what we have for the most part.
