Listening to Philbin speak in the press conference and in The Phinsiders interview, two words kept popping into my mind to describe him: Analytical and Intelligent. On The Phinsiders interview, he said right off the bat his first order of business is to evaluate the team from top to bottom, meeting with every coach and watching tape on every player. From there, he is going to make some strong decisions with our coaching staff and players as to who goes and who stays.
This got me to thinking. Much talk has been made about what defensive formation Philbin will run, and what style of offense he will have, but it appears the BIGGEST change on this team with Philbin taking over is going to be a completely new shift in his approach of evaluating talent on every part of his football team.
Tony Sparano was a player's coach. Many of the decisions he made were with his heart and feelings he had in his gut. He was always talking about trusting in players, defended them to his last breath as coach, and it became obvious that his personal ties to players could cloud his opinions of just who should be starting on a given day. Desire, will to win, heart...these were the most important things to Sparano, and he felt that the best players on the field were those who WANTED it the most.
Philbin, on the other hand, has already spoken about intrinsic talent, an ability to fully grasp the playbook (he told the Packers players that if you could count to 4, you could learn the Packers playbook), character, and actively studying a player's success rate of execution in a given gameplan. A player can WANT to win all they want, but if they aren't the most talented or the most mentally prepared player, they are not going to be the best option. This adds an additional focus on statistics and other forms of tangible data, to supplement a team member's given desire.
I have a feeling we are going to see some pretty large changes on the coaching staff and in player personnel with this shift in thinking, all of them good and long overdue. The Dolphins now have a smart, thorough coach, who will use an analysis of results to support his everyday decisions.
I, for one, could not be more excited.
This got me to thinking. Much talk has been made about what defensive formation Philbin will run, and what style of offense he will have, but it appears the BIGGEST change on this team with Philbin taking over is going to be a completely new shift in his approach of evaluating talent on every part of his football team.
Tony Sparano was a player's coach. Many of the decisions he made were with his heart and feelings he had in his gut. He was always talking about trusting in players, defended them to his last breath as coach, and it became obvious that his personal ties to players could cloud his opinions of just who should be starting on a given day. Desire, will to win, heart...these were the most important things to Sparano, and he felt that the best players on the field were those who WANTED it the most.
Philbin, on the other hand, has already spoken about intrinsic talent, an ability to fully grasp the playbook (he told the Packers players that if you could count to 4, you could learn the Packers playbook), character, and actively studying a player's success rate of execution in a given gameplan. A player can WANT to win all they want, but if they aren't the most talented or the most mentally prepared player, they are not going to be the best option. This adds an additional focus on statistics and other forms of tangible data, to supplement a team member's given desire.
I have a feeling we are going to see some pretty large changes on the coaching staff and in player personnel with this shift in thinking, all of them good and long overdue. The Dolphins now have a smart, thorough coach, who will use an analysis of results to support his everyday decisions.
I, for one, could not be more excited.
