Philbin's o-lines (which include 3 first round picks of Albert, Pouncey, and James) have consistently been dominated and pushed around by the tough, physical d-lines of the AFC East. The culmination of 4 years of Joe Philbin building his o-line resulted in Miami going 1-5 in their Division and being swept by both the Bills and the Jets (it must have been dumb luck that they actually won one against the Pats).
Sparano's o-lines weren't man-handled by those d-lines. Sure, they gave up some sacks, but Tony's teams didn't lose as often to the Bills and Jets as Philbin's teams did. How about the other year when Philbin needed one win against either the Bills or the Jets to earn a playoff berth; how did they do? Miami scored a total of 10 points in both games and missed the post-season. Why did this happen? Philbin turned a physical team into a finesse team (on both offense and defense) not just with his personnel decisions, but also with the style of offense and defense that he wanted to run. Philbin's (and Lazor's) style of offense was ineffective against tough physical defenses, and his o-line couldn't protect the QB or sustain a running game. Coyle's style of defense consistently made rookie Jets and Bills QBs look like Pro Bowlers.
So, why don't I think that Miami can win the Division? Simple. Gase will be running a short pass based offense somewhat similar to what Philbin/Lazor ran. (I do think that Gase will open up the passing game a little more than Lazor did.) However, the o-line that Gase inherited was ineffective against AFC East d-lines. Philbin built a weak o-line, and Gase will be using the majority of that o-line. This suggests to me that the QB will again be under pressure. And, the failure to replace Philbin's "finesse" o-linemen with big, nasty, physically dominating road-graders means that Miami will once again have no effective running game. To make matters worse, Miami's defense just plain sucks. Coyle did to the defense what Philbin/Lazor did to the offense. If Miami wants to regain the Division title, they need to go back to being an old-school smash-mouth tough football team (combined with a vertical passing game) but Gase and his staff are almost as finesse-oriented as the previous regime.
