Fraudulent? Maybe. They were definitely pretenders, though. McDaniel went from wizard to magician, and not in a good sort of way like an Edgar Casey or whatever but more like the guy with bag full of trickery. No real magic. Very one-dimensional, actually.
That is what ultimately sealed his fate with me very early last season. He's not a man with a hundred answers. He's a man with the same answer to everything. When that answer gets defeated, he has nothing else to offer but quips and looks. The nerd facade has faded away. He's just a less athletic jock with probably a penchant for drug use. Would not doubt if everyone running this team is on drugs, frankly...
90% of the NFL has leadership exactly like the Dolphins with an Owner looking to press buttons and a Front Office looking to make moves fixing what didn't go right with the last rebuild.
Do a study on what kind of HCs have dominated hiring in the last decade and it'll be depressing. McDaniel types are the
norm and for that matter so is the Dolphins recent history.
The fans who act like the Dolphins are exceptional in their "failures" are fooling themselves. It's the fact they can't break out of the same cycle that's killing everyone around the NFL which is the real problem.
The Dolphins problem isn't that they fail...so does almost everyone. The problem is that they can't differentiate themselves.
So, the question is simple...
what does that take?
Failure and turnover is the
expectation around the NFL and the Dolphins are hardly exceptional in how they've struggled: inexperienced HCs not having all the answers, those same HCs routinely getting blamed and fired, a defense permanently under construction that sees a new DC every couple seasons thus killing any identity it might otherwise have, a QB who's under-delivering (in our case based on injury), a QB being asked to carry too much of the load because of a roster that needs help in other areas, FAs who aren't working out and who hold too much sway in team planning, a string of mid/late-round misses in the draft...
It's when you look at "success" that you begin to realize how ridiculous those stories are and how flukey every success story is.
Just as one example, the Chiefs start under Andy Reid was boring. People weren't sure of Reid's value coming off his time in Philly where he'd constantly been in contention but failed to win the biggest games.
The Chiefs under HC Andy Reid started 1-4 in the Playoffs between 2013 and 2017 along with a year when they didn't even qualify at all. That was the era of Alex Smith, Jamaal Charles, Kareem Hunt, Dwayne Bowe, Jeremy Maclin, Justin Houston and others. They weren't a bad team but they were constantly 2nd in their division (behind the Broncos) and weren't winning anything of note.
Sound familiar?
Then in came the Hall-of-Fame draft picks. On top of Travis Kelce, in came Pat Mahomes, Tyreek Hill and Chris Jones. Suddenly things caught fire and the rest is history. They also added SB-winning DC Steve Spagnuolo a year later as well who improve their defense. They went from what we are to what we'd be with Pat Mahomes and a few other HOF players scattered around the roster at critical positions.
Was that a change in leadership that did that? Nope. Most of those HOF picks were John Dorsey / Andy Reid picks from the '13-'16 era. Even when Dorsey was hired away in '17, he was replaced by an internal subordinate who continued the same Front Office.
In other words, they went from good to great on the back of a bunch of unforeseeable good luck. Trading up for Pat Mahomes was nice but few saw him being the best
ever. Finding Chris Jones in R2? Okay, good for you. That's solid drafting.
But c'mon....finding one of the most prolific TEs in NFL history R3 and then pairing that with finding Tyreek Hill in R5?!
That's a fluke and more often than not, that's what creates greatness in the NFL. Some fluke like Dan Marino falls into your lap at just the right time and changes the course of your franchise from
solid to
historically significant.
There are plenty of other examples, too.
Why was Jalen Hurts the 5th QB taken when he's so good? Is that not a great deal of luck, especially when that same Eagles team drafted a bust of a WR in front of him in R1? Pretty sure they didn't see that coming. They were in the midst of the Carson Wentz era anyhow.
Coaches are the same way. Where's the next John Harbaugh?
For that matter, who's the next Lamar Jackson? Is it Jayden Daniels or one of the guys drafted before him who failed like Justin Fields? To that end, where's Caleb Williams? Wasn't he Mahomes 2.0?
Can we even say that Lamar Jackson would've been successful just anywhere? He was a bad a passer at Louisville who needed tons of development and had it not been for where he went (an already good team) he probably wouldn't have had the time to develop. Most QBs aren't given 6-7 years to show their best stuff.
If you go back to years 4-5 you see that Lamar Jackson was a struggling QB who played 12 games a season and couldn't break 3,000 passing yards in a season. There was plenty of concern about giving him a 2nd contract. Yes, the talent was there but the Ravens were taking a risk and needed some good breaks.
I'll say this...the NFL is about risk. If you think it's all part of some master plan and that there's a recipe for success that isn't 50% luck, you're crazy.
The NFL is not a place for people who think they know everything. Fans sound entirely out of touch when they try to act like they saw it all coming.
NOBODY is even close.
