I love your passion and analysis
@illscriptures and you're a great poster I always enjoy reading.
Just a bit of perspective, if we widen our gaze we may not have the same outlook. I grew up knowing the Dolphins as nothing but winners … as THE Winningest Percentage Sports Team in US Sports History. It simply didn't get more winning than that. I grew up knowing that the only undefeated season ever was done by the Dolphins. The winningest coach ever, Don Shula, was with the Dolphins. And IMHO, the greatest QB ever was a career Miami Dolphin. So, while you may have endured nothing but the dark years of despair and mediocrity--and I have much sympathy and respect for your loyalty--my experiences make me crave returning to glory.
See, we're on a treadmill of mediocrity. Always good enough to not truly suck (most of the time), but never good enough to really challenge for a Super Bowl. Never good enough to even win the AFC East on anything other than a fluke of circumstances. Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. My experiences tell me we need to do something drastic to break this vicious cycle. Like Einstein would suggest, this constant patchwork approach has conclusively proven to not work for us. We need to try something different, and there have been examples of successful tanking, many of them.
Again, widening our scope outside of football to Basketball, the reason the Orlando Magic were ever any good, was because they were bad enough to get top draft picks Shaq and Penny Hardaway. The players may not have stayed, but they did get them and they most definitely were successful. If they had been able to keep them in Orlando, they might had a lot more success. There are many other examples in the NBA as well, where teams live and die by where they're drafting. In the NFL, the Dolphins suckitude pre-Shula enabled them to build a roster of very talented players who formed the backbone of our 1972 undefeated team. Jimmy Johnson was the prototype tank-rebuild, and he pulled it off flawlessly. Had he remained coach of the Cowboys a bit longer they might have won a couple more Super Bowls. As for the Browns … yes, they've failed many times at it, but failed less than we have since Don Shula retired. We've been trying to patchwork this shiz for two decades now … maybe its time for a different approach?
Ultimately, I have always been convinced that it is finding a great coach that fixes us and breaks the vicious cycle of mediocrity. Tanking doesn't really effect a great coach either way. We've seen Jimmy Johnson and Don Shula benefit from tanking, and we've seen Don Shula go years on end proving that he can do it without tanking. But coaches like him are exceedingly rare. Until we find one of those guys, we need to try to win now, and patchwork attempts to leverage our mediocre talent doesn't work for us. Investing in free agency doesn't work for us. Let's try stockpiling the roster with better talent, nuke the locker room and start fresh, and give Coach Flores the best possible canvas on which to paint. Ultimately, either Flores is a good coach or not, but at least maximizing his roster gives him a big head-start in building a good team.
It is rare that an owner will agree to tanking … they're content to fire the GM and HC and just find someone else. It's painful and kills ticket sales and media coverage when you tank. It's even rarer that a GM will agree to tanking, they fear the owner will change his mind and fire them for not bringing in enough talent, or recommending the coach, or creating disharmony, or not being in control of the situation, or just trying to cover up their ineptitude for a year or so. It's extremely rare that a HC will agree to tanking, since they know they're the necks on the chopping block when the losses start to pile up. If the plan changes, the owner will still be there, and quite possibly the GM too, but that Head Coach and his coaching staff are going to be fired, and probably not ever be offered another Head Coaching job again. So even if the HC agrees, there's always an incentive to break from the plan and try to start winning. It inevitably leads to the coach getting fired, but at least they have a slim chance of becoming a Head Coach again later in their career. So _IF_ you can get all three to align with the program, and _IF_ you can keep that united front to follow through with the tanking and allow that HC to rebuild, you stand a chance to do what Jimmy Johnson did with the Cowboys, and what the Colts did when they drafted Luck--completely reset the roster with top talent at key positions.
Let's be honest, there are a LOT more attempts at patchwork jobs in the NFL than there are attempts at tanking. The reason the success of tanking seems so low is because you're not looking at the rate of success, just the isolated times it succeeded. The rate of success for tanking is significantly higher than the rate of success for patching. Hell, we've tried to patch for 20+ years now … with 0 successes rebuilding the team and only a couple of fluke seasons to break the misery.
If 3 years from now we are still mediocre with no signs of improvement, we will declare this a failure. But honestly, if those were the conditions 3 years after a patchjob, we would make the same assessment. What we need to find is a great Head Coach. Tanking or not tanking is not going to change that. But, it may help this particular coach get the most out of his chances to develop a contending team during these 3 years.
