For most of them I think we can all agree, we have no clue. And I dont think Grier did either.
Id speculate an answer to the first question , which brings up another question that coincides with some of the other questions.
Yes, we were in a rebuild, but I think that the original plan in Griers mind was that Josh Rosen would be our next QB. We traded away a valuable pick for the kid, but then didnt build the team around him. Threw him to the wolves and Flores wrote the kid off as a flop (As we all know, Flores is the end all be all of QB evaluations)
We ended up tanking and drafting a QB. Ok, I see people saying Flores didnt want Tua. Im not buying that one bit. If Flo was pounding the table for another QB do you really think Grier would have told him to go to hell, live with the one Im getting you? I call bullshit there. Grier doesnt have those kind of balls. (If he has any at all)
Yes, this was the START of the rebuild. All of the other questions you pose are legit, and hell, we all wonder the same damn thing.
The answer to all of them is easy.
Grier has no vision, doesnt know what it takes to build a championship team, is horrible evaluating talent at Oline and linebackers (But admittedly great at finding RBs and decent on DBs)
We need a new GM that knows what he wants and makes it happen.
Good thoughts!
I actually think it's more grim than that. Grier isn't on the hook because he does what the Owner wants and in this case, we're an organization whose primary goal for the last 2.5 decades has been to find a QB. With the Dolphins organization having sat through the entire era of statue-esque pocket passers between the late '90s on into the early 2010s without anything like one of our own, Ross' #1 goal was to bring a Franchise QB to Miami.
I think Grier took a shot on Josh Rosen because...why the heck not?! If your Owner wants a QB, you turn over every stone. A R2 pick isn't worth as much as a look at someone with an elite arm who was taken Top-10 the year before.
The "tank" was one of the stupidest things ever. No franchise ever builds a winning culture by trying to hack the draft and purge their roster. It actually drove players
away rather than building the kind of winning culture they should've been looking to instill. That kind of strategy was antithetical to what the better teams actually do anyway.
The tank was always going to create as many problems as it did draft picks / dollars anyway. It was focused only on providing the necessary draft capital to go and get the QB they wanted (which itself turned out to fail when they couldn't pry the #1 pick away from the Bengals to select Burrow).
You only get excited about hacking the draft if you think you can take a quantity-over-quality approach. That's not a good strategy when critical decisions shape a franchise. It's those critical decisions that separate you, not having a few more draft picks.
You'd never want to put your young QB in such a bad situation anyway. You'd never saddle your HC with such limitation. It's fundamentally a bad idea and Miami's still living in its aftermath.
Still though, the only real goal Ross has (and has ever had) is to bring a QB to Miami. It's no surprise that they've moved heaven and Earth to try and build everything they can around Tua to support him. Problem is, they think WRs are the answer when in reality it's always been the other way around. You can't short-change the OL. This team was its best when it was a physical football team in the early-70s. Until they start playing strong defense and running the ball nothing much will really matter.
Adding Tua's strengths to
that kind of team would be incredible but they should've tried to build that first and add the QB second like so many of the great teams have.
Most all Super Bowl contenders in the last 15 years are good teams that added the QB later (Purdy, Mahomes, Stafford, Hurts, Wilson, etc.). It's an incredibly short list of teams who add a Joe Burrow after a terrible year and end up rebuilding into instant success. Even then, it usually falls apart quickly.
