I've defended the guy in the past, I've praised him even, I was essentially of the mind that Ireland was responsible for the hot garbage that we see week in and week out, but if you're intellectually honest, Philbin has to take a lot of the blame here. When you lose to a less-talented team, that's on the coach. When you lose to a more talented team, that's generally on the GM for not putting more talent on the team. Sometimes it's on both of them and this game was one of them. You have to look at a coach in his totality. His coordinators and assistants are his responsibility. You can't praise a few games where he did well and ignore many where he didn't. This regime is ruining Ryan Tannehill. They've put him in a position to fail by not giving him protection and by running what is essentially a college offense. They've not utilized Wallace correctly. The team plays undisciplined. They make too many rudimentary mistakes.
The offensive line is putrid, but the protection schemes are almost non-existent. Guys miss their assignments left and right, that's not so much a case of being physically outmatched as it is a mental or coaching breakdown. The defense isn't anywhere near as good as it should be. That unit should be dominant. Where is Jordan? We traded up to get this guy and blew a high pick on him and he's nowhere to be found. I questioned the pick to begin with, knowing our grave deficiencies at tackle, but it's alarming that a guy picked that high isn't considered good enough to get on the field. I doubt Philbin is so inept as to endanger his own job by not playing the guy for petty reasons, it's probably a case where the coaching staff feels his liabilities outweigh his potential contributions at this time and if that's so, Ireland had no business taking the guy with a pick that high. He should be playing like Von Miller did as a rookie to justify where he was taken. Unacceptable.
I had hope at the beginning of the season, but now it looks more and more like the Sparano era when you expect to lose. At this point, like during the Sparano years, I expect them to collapse, even if they're dominating the game. I've watched this team since I was a small child, and I can't remember the last time we put an embarrassing ass-whipping on a good team. I just can't. I've got to go back to the early Marino-era. It's depressing and some on here dared chastise the fans, many with limited economic means, from not coming to the games. I said then and I reiterate now, this organization will need to WIN a Super Bowl to get the fans back. WIN. Not just get there. WIN it. It's been too many decades, not years, decades of this type of inept organizational performance, from the ownership to the management to the coaching to the players.