Obviously Ross can do as he pleases because he is the individual who put up over a billion dollars to purchase the team. Yet Ross in his time as owner of the Dolphins has clearly proved that no matter how much money he might have, he has no idea what he is doing with it comes to hiring individuals who know how to build a successful football team.
I understand the need to to rebuild this team after years of mediocrity. Unfortunately I just have zero confidence in Ross and his selection of Grier to be the GM responsible for this rebuild. I think that with Grier selecting the players, the Dolphins will be no more than mediocre at best in the coming years.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: IMO, every personnel decision that Ross has made has been terrible. Ross took over a team that was average, but upon closer inspection they were actually close to being a playoff team. Here's my take on that team:
Defense - Mike Nolan's defense was Top 5 against the run. They were one of the few defenses that could actually get after Brady and slow down the Pats offense. However, they probably needed another good CB, and Nolan had a bad habit of losing games late by playing prevent defense. (The prevent might have been okay if the offense had been able to score more points!)
Offense - While I didn't hate Henne (he occasionally made some great throws), "Checkdown Chad" needed to be replaced. On the o-line, for some weird reason, they always ended up with a turnstile at RT. They could run the ball, and usually had no problem moving between the twenties. But, once they entered the red zone it was a different story. Because of their lack of talent at the offensive skill positions, they normally had to settle for FGs instead of scoring TDs. Dan Henning and Brian Daboll both ran what appeared to be vanilla offenses (many times the defense knew what they were going to run), but I don't know whether this was by design or forced upon them due to the lack of talent.
Adding some talent to the offense (QB, RT, #1 WR, and seam-threat TE), along with better playcalling, probably would have been enough to turn those FGs into TDs and possibly wrest the Division Title away from New England. But, from 2000 until Ross took over, the Front Office used nearly all of their early draft picks (rounds 1, 2, and 3) on OL and Defense. During this time, only 3 offensive skill position players were drafted in the first round (Ted Ginn Jr, Ronnie Brown, and Tannehill), and only about 8 or 9 total were drafted in the first 3 rounds. Clearly, this refusal to use top picks on offensive skill position players hurt the team's ability to score points.
What was the solution? At the least, Ireland needed to be replaced with someone who could recognize and evaluate both defensive AND offensive talent. I have no opinion concerning if Ross should have kept or fired Sparano, but they definitely needed a new OC with better playcalling. And, on defense, either keep Nolan or replace him with someone who runs a similar defense (why change what was working).
Unfortunately, Ross kept Ireland. And, if that wasn't bad enough, he replaced Tony with Philbin, an inexperienced nobody who wanted to turn the team into the complete opposite of what they already had (they were fairly physical, but Philbin wanted finesse). This first decision by Ross started the downward spiral into the toilet. Philbin got rid of physical o-linemen in favor of guys like Martin and Dallas Thomas. He neutered the running game. He hired Coyle, and they ruined the defense. Then, Ross finally fired Ireland and hired Tannenbaum. When Philbin was fired, instead of finally cleaning house completely, Ross promoted Tannenbaum and brought in Gase, another inexperienced nobody. And now, when a complete housecleaning, tear-down, and rebuilding was in order, Ross kept and promoted Grier (who may or may not have been part of the problem) to run the show. The Dolphins were very close to being a competitive playoff team, but the decisions made by Ross sent this team in the opposite direction and wasted the past 8 years!