First of all, it was a logical rebound season, after not coming close to matching expectation in 2015. I believe heavily in situational factors. IMO, virtually any coach would have exceeded expectations with the 2016 Dolphins.
Maybe once every 3-4 seasons, if not slightly less likely, is the direction positive as opposed to negative or neutral.
That being said, I give Gase a tremendous amount of credit. phintim asked me about this via PM earlier today, whether I thought Gase was responsible for all the close fortunate wins. Since I'm lazy I'll merely paste my response to him:
"I give plenty of credit to Gase. There may have been some unusually fortunate wins but you have to make a string of good decisions to be in place to take advantage of the opportunities. The Dolphins after the first 5 games were competitive in 9 of the next 10 games, with Baltimore the only exception. Normally there would be several games in which the team is simply unprepared or too many things go wrong. Also, when you fall behind early in the game as frequently as we do, it's even more impressive to forge a record like 10-6.
I thought our play calling improved as the season progressed and as the games progressed. That's partially why I thought we could win some games with Matt Moore. The red zone balance and route schemes are impressive. Bill Lazor had nice spacing and big play creation at midfield but didn't do much with the formations in the red zone. Frustrating. Now we have some nice subtle pick routes that aren't in jeopardy of being flagged because the receiver pivots and reverses just before making contact. He effectively stops the defender's progress but then gets out of the way himself. Sometimes the move to get out of the way is actually a continued pick, but in the path of the defenders altered course. It's really quite creative and borderline brilliant. I found myself stopping the tape to look at it again. Maybe a decade ago I would have started a thread spotlighting those plays but now I don't like to hang around and post back and forth.
Now we need better players. Only once every 3-4 seasons or so is a rebound logical, like it was in 2016. Now Gase has to earn it."