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Dolphins Tanking? Is This A 1st?

FanMarino

FanMarino

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Ive been a Dolphins fan since 1985. I know about the terminology 'tanking' but only recently by the Colts when they got Luck. Tanking is alien to me with my team. I'm not comfortable with it. That's me talking as a Dolphin fan. I do get the bigger picture but does anybody else think it's a huge risk if true? Browns have tanked for 3 decades and where has that got them? No Free Agents players apparently being hired the best Phin players like Howard leaving. I'm struggling to see how losing your best players can make the Phins a solid , playoff bound team for the next decade.
 
It might be a huge risk but if it doesn't workout in the sense that should we not draft well with our high draft picks what's the worse case scenario? We've already wasted decades with nothing to show for it ie a Super Bowl. If it doesn't work we're in the same position we've been in since I've been a fan. We have nothing to lose.
 
I know its tanking but it feels like an unwitting yet correct move away from pretending that you
are just one draft, one big FA, one QB whisperer away from a home playoff game

time for the chaff to **** off, take what little wheat is left and go forward. now I am not saying that
Grier/Flores/Ross have what it takes nor that they know what they are doing but this is a change
of direction if nothing else
 
What since 2007, has Davie done right?

The Wildcat?

Beating sub .500 teams for a winning record?

Going 0-2 in WC PO games?

Having nationally televised games moved to other "competitive" games?

Davie needs to be burned down, rebuilt and disinfected. BLEACH IT.
 
We used to be a great franchise … but those days are long gone. Now we're just another franchise with a storied history and a recent history of misery, dysfunction and no real success. We need to go back to the Jason Taylor/Zach Thomas teams to find us being competitive. Sure, one fluke year we tied the Brady-less Patriots and "won" the division, but that's the only division crown we've had in ages. We have never been a playoff team anyone feared, and rarely even made the playoffs. Reloading doesn't seem to be something we can do. We have had two HoF QB's, but in this era where the QB is more important than it has ever been, we don't have one.

Tanking, because we need a QB. We don't have great coaching anymore (fingers crossed on our incoming rookie HC Flores), we don't have an awesome GM, and we're more associated with dysfunction than we are with contending. IMHO, this simply needs to change. Tanking is a means to an end, and we need that end to be a top QB.
 
Tom Brady is nearing the end. This should be understood as an ideal time to tank.

It's like match play golf where one hole doesn't really matter. Take a 27 on a par 3 and you lose only that hole...nothing else.

At my age the one thing I can't afford is another 10-15 years of this franchise making one dullard cautious choice after another. That would be an extended tank of a different sort, and IMO it is what we undertook with Ryan Tannehill.

But no, the Dolphins have never tanked previously. The 1969 season was a major downer with some similarities in that the false hope was gone and the end of the season played out with not much interest level and a great deal of uncertainty. But even as a kid I understood that we had many very talented players on that team. That aspect distinguishes then from now. Many of those Hall of Famers were already on the roster -- Griese, Csonka, Little, Buoniconti.
 
FanMarino said:
Ive been a Dolphins fan since 1985. I know about the terminology 'tanking' but only recently by the Colts when they got Luck. Tanking is alien to me with my team. I'm not comfortable with it. That's me talking as a Dolphin fan. I do get the bigger picture but does anybody else think it's a huge risk if true? Browns have tanked for 3 decades and where has that got them? No Free Agents players apparently being hired the best Phin players like Howard leaving. I'm struggling to see how losing your best players can make the Phins a solid , playoff bound team for the next decade.
Click to expand...

Tanking is rare in the NFL, 'true' tanking is more prevalent in other sports, it's just lazily and sloppily used in the NFL as either an excuse for sucking or for a team who are perceived not to have tried as hard or spent as much as they could to put the best team out (usually when there's a decent QB option/class coming up and the media want a narrative to lean on). "Why are they going into the season with Josh McCown starting? Oh, they must be tanking for X".

The Colts didn't really tank, and the Browns haven't been tanking for three decades - over the last three years they've been working to a plan to make short-term decisions that eschewed instant success in order to stockpile as many draft picks as possible, the other 27 years they were just badly managed, badly coached and drafted badly. And where has the last three years got them? In a position where they have a good core of young skill players on cheap rookie contracts and a lot of cap space. I assume this is what Stephen Ross is aiming towards.

Is it a risk? Yes, because it still relies on the front office drafting and keeping the right players on the right contracts. Will it give us or the Browns a base to succeed as a solid playoff-bound team for the next decade? Who knows, but what we've been doing for the last 15 years hasn't achieved that either.
 
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I don't like the word Tanking or what it implies. Let's say we're done spending big money in FA just to be a 500% team. Let's say we need to fix the cap, move on from Ryan Tannehill and get a new QB. We are trying to get younger, cheaper and maybe hungrier. To continue the way of the last decade is stupid. We're all sick of being 7-9 with a middle of the pack draft pick. With a new coach and new coordinators we can't usher out the Gase era fast enough. Gase, Tannehill, Burke and Tannenbaum= FAILURE and Ross doesn't get a pass, his hires stink, so far. I hope that Flores is the right guy and the fortunes of our franchise change quickly and for the better.
 
Digital said:
We used to be a great franchise … but those days are long gone. Now we're just another franchise with a storied history and a recent history of misery, dysfunction and no real success. We need to go back to the Jason Taylor/Zach Thomas teams to find us being competitive. Sure, one fluke year we tied the Brady-less Patriots and "won" the division, but that's the only division crown we've had in ages. We have never been a playoff team anyone feared, and rarely even made the playoffs. Reloading doesn't seem to be something we can do. We have had two HoF QB's, but in this era where the QB is more important than it has ever been, we don't have one.

Tanking, because we need a QB. We don't have great coaching anymore (fingers crossed on our incoming rookie HC Flores), we don't have an awesome GM, and we're more associated with dysfunction than we are with contending. IMHO, this simply needs to change. Tanking is a means to an end, and we need that end to be a top QB.
Click to expand...

Even those JT/ZT teams got killed if they made the playoffs. Sure they had a little regular season success but the end result was always the same.
 
Suppose we sign someone like Mike Glennon to QB and we win two of our first three games, do they bench him? Suppose Flores is a really good coach (like we hope) and he squeezes 5-6 wins out of a lousy squad?

Just as in the past we have pinned our hopes on too many things going right, this time we may be counting on too many things going wrong...
 
meatpardle said:
Tanking is rare in the NFL, 'true' tanking is more prevalent in other sports, it's just lazily and sloppily used in the NFL as either an excuse for sucking or for a team who are perceived not to have tried as hard or spent as much as they could to put the best team out (usually when there's a decent QB option/class coming up and the media want a narrative to lean on). "Why are they going into the season with Josh McCown starting? Oh, they must be tanking for X".

The Colts didn't really tank, and the Browns haven't been tanking for three decades - over the last three years they've been working to a plan to make short-term decisions that eschewed instant success in order to stockpile as many draft picks as possible, the other 27 years they were just badly managed, badly coached and drafted badly. And where has the last three years got them? In a position where they have a good core of young skill players on cheap rookie contracts and a lot of cap space. I assume this is what Stephen Ross is aiming towards.

Is it a risk? Yes, because it still relies on the front office drafting and keeping the right players on the right contracts. Will it give us or the Browns a base to succeed as a solid playoff-bound team for the next decade? Who knows, but what we've been doing for the last 15 years hasn't achieved that either.
Click to expand...
LOL@ the Colts not tanking. All you need for a bad record is poor QB play.

That year, they had Painter...Painter = Poor QB play.
 
What I find comical is the organization actually thinks their “splash” signings made the team better and they think that discontinuing those “splash” signings will lead to a managed decline. I actually think the opposite will happen. By not participating in the big name portion of free agency these idiots will protect themselves from themselves. It’s been the youth that has won games the last two years.
 
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