At the end of the day, what you want is what you want. Suh marches by his own drummer. And that would have been the first thing that the Detroit Lions and Suh's former teammates would have told his new team. As for the freelancing, let's put it this way: elite-level defensive players do some freelancing when they are at the top of their game. Some more than others. Houston Texans defensive tackle J.J. Watt has actually been encouraged by the defensive staff to freelance – with the caveat being that it has to produce positive results. And while the Dolphins will defend Suh and say he isn't freelancing to the team's detriment, to suggest that it's not part of his game is unbelievable.
Elite players often take certain portions of the game into their own hands. The very best quarterbacks want to call their own plays. The best cornerbacks jump routes. Linebackers lean on their instincts and fill holes before a play has fully developed. And defensive linemen like Suh look at an offensive alignment and jump in and out of gap assignments. So long as nobody is caught hurting the team, the best players get a pass for this.
They don't get those freebies when the team loses, their stats aren't visible and someone begins pointing the finger. That's what raises the eyebrow with what is happening in Miami right now. Someone planted the Suh freelancing seed with the Herald as a reason why the defense has been struggling. And that could be any number of individuals, from coaches who say the scheme is perfectly fine save for a stubborn player, to teammates whose own performances are sagging and want to put the blame on someone else.
But at least part of this is real, or Suh doesn't say something like this to the Herald: "At the end of the day, we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we want to run so guys can make plays and go from there."
That's a loaded quote. "Go back to the drawing board" and "figure out what we want to run" are not exactly ringing endorsements of a scheme. Quite the opposite. And saying that those changes are necessary "so guys can make plays," well, that's akin to saying it's not me … it's you.
