What we mean when we say we're "soft"

[Mello Yello]

I've been thinking about whether I want the Dolphins to retain Wilkins and I started wondering about something weird.

Ever notice how Grier does pretty well pulling in these high-character guys: Wilkins, Holland, Baker, Van Ginkel, etc? Offensively it's the same way: Tua, Waddle, Ajax, Hunt, etc. Everybody's a nice guy.

And listen, I'm not saying I want criminals, LOL, but who's the bully here? Who's the tone-setter? Who brings the mean and nasty mentality? Who's the elite, high intensity player around whom everyone rallies?

Elandon Roberts was that guy under Flores but he was a cheap outsider. Minkah probably was one of those types but we traded him. Jeff Wilson Jr runs that way but he's a guy off the SF scrap heap who's RB3 at best.

It feels like too often Miami is stuck. None of us really see these nice guys who are productive as the kind of tone-setters they'd need to be to earn those big deals. Wilkins is a strong player to be sure but a $25M player needs to be the focal point of the entire DL (and probably the entire D to be real). Part of being Ray Lewis or Aaron Donald is being those guys, mean and disruptive as they are.

Wilkins makes plays and to that end so do many of our productive guys but who brings the intensity to the level that it blocks out the shine of those around him?

Whose personality infuses this team?

I don't think it's fair to call Miami a "soft" team but too often their productive guys and their "dogs" aren't the same people. The guys earning the payday and the guys setting the tone aren't the same people.

What worries me is that this isn't just about Wilkins. It's going to be the case with almost anyone you look at: Holland, Baker, Van Ginkel and a million others. None really set the tone. Productive? Yes. Inspiring? Meh.


So I guess the question becomes whether this is a feature or a bug?

TBH, I think you can make the case that this team is more about the guys who produce on team-friendly deals: Deshaun Elliott, David Long Jr, Jerome Baker, Zach Seiler, Andrew Van Ginkel, etc. To me, those are the places where this team really "makes money" because there is no singular, tone-setting personality on the team.

To that end, Wilkins may be too expensive for his own good and perhaps we need to read the tea leaves there? Guys like Phillips, Holland and Waddle are fine, too, so long as they're on rookie deals. But when the time comes, they'll have to accept something at a friendly number or sign elsewhere because none look like tone-setters. Phillips may be the exception but that's only if this year's injuries are the exception--which his history leaves open to debate.

What the team does with Wilkins and Hunt will say a lot. I think there's a greater chance we see more mid-level contracts handed to Hunt/Williams than something epic to Wilkins. I'm anxious to see how it pans out.

 

[lurking]

Wilkins and Hunt are both bullies.

 

[Travis34]

Def needed its own thread

 

[ForksPhin]

David Long is a badass, too. He might have been cheap, but he didn’t play that way.

 

[Fan Since the 70s]

Whose personality infuses this team?

Mike McDaniel's.

The way "a team takes on the personality of its coach" as they say is by determining the kinds of players who are likely to become leaders and thereby shape the culture of the team via the effect of their leadership on their teammates. If your head coach is a goofball, players like Hill and Wilkins are likely to rise to the stature of leaders and will feel permitted to lead their teammates from that angle -- i.e., fun and games and elaborate and rehearsed end zone celebrations.

If on the other hand your head coach is the gruff and tough Bill Cowher for example, players like Joey Porter and Jerome Bettis are likely to become player leaders and lead with toughness and physicality. If your head coach is the serious and cerebral Bill Belichick, someone like Tom Brady is likely to become a key player leader and lead in that vein. The head coach's personality essentially "prescribes" the kind of player leader who's likely to rise to that stature among his teammates.

McDaniel has to start by being less of a goofball. Toughness and physicality (Cowher's Steelers), as well as a serious and cerebral approach (Belichick's Patriots), are consistent with winning in the game of football. What's not consistent with winning in the game of football is a goofball fun and games approach that can't become serious when the need arises, and the need arises very frequently in the NFL.

The team is soft because McDaniel is soft, and because the leaders among the players follow his lead.

Here is the opposite of that:



That Steelers team was the lowest-seeded AFC playoff team and won three playoff games on the road as an underdog before winning the Super Bowl as a decided underdog against the top-seeded team from the NFC. If you don't believe the kind of team culture and player leadership seen in the video above was the prime mover in that extremely rare accomplishment, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Mello Yello]

Mike McDaniel's.

The way "a team takes on the personality of its coach" as they say is by determining the kinds of players who are likely to become leaders and thereby shape the culture of the team via the effect of their leadership on their teammates. If your head coach is a goofball, players like Hill and Wilkins are likely to rise to the stature of leaders and will feel permitted to lead their teammates from that angle -- i.e., fun and games and elaborate and rehearsed end zone celebrations.

If on the other hand your head coach is the gruff and tough Bill Cowher for example, players like Joey Porter and Jerome Bettis are likely to become player leaders and lead with toughness and physicality. If your head coach is the serious and cerebral Bill Belichick, someone like Tom Brady is likely to become a key player leader and lead in that vein. The head coach's personality essentially "prescribes" the kind of player leader who's likely to rise to that stature among his teammates.

McDaniel has to start by being less of a goofball. Toughness and physicality (Cowher's Steelers), as well as a serious and cerebral approach (Belichick's Patriots), are consistent with winning in the game of football. What's not consistent with winning in the game of football is a goofball fun and games approach that can't become serious when the need arises, and the need arises very frequently in the NFL.

The team is soft because McDaniel is soft, and because the leaders among the players follow his lead.

Here is the opposite of that:



That Steelers team was the lowest-seeded AFC playoff team and won three playoff games on the road as an underdog before winning the Super Bowl as a decided underdog against the top-seeded team from the NFC. If you don't believe the kind of team culture and player leadership seen in the video above was the prime mover in that extremely rare accomplishment, I don't know what to tell you.

Man, so true.

I think this is why we're good but still don't have the look/feel of an authentic competitor.

You can't add tough guys like Elandon Roberts, David Long, Jeff Wilson, Deshaun Elliott, etc. on cheap deals and feel content that you're doing enough to establish your physicality. Those aren't your core. They're the tangential pieces that flesh out the roster.

Our star players--our core--don't exude that. We're building a Mike McDaniel team. You're exactly right. On defense it's a patchwork team and that's what a Grier team is. This is a McDaniel-Grier team which is why I think both support each other.

X's and O's coaches have won but they've done it with supremely talented QBs (Reid & Mahomes) and otherwise strong rosters (Kyle Shannah in ATL, SF). Perhaps this group just isn't put together correctly at some very deep level?

I for one get the sense that the most experienced people (Fangio, Ramsey, etc.) don't necessarily feel bought-in. Maybe I'm projecting but this feels like a young team...in a bad way, like a team still figuring out what success looks like.

If Grier is on his 3rd HQ and the QB is going into year-5 and we're still asking questions about the core philosophy, that doesn't bode well.

 

[E30M3]

I'd love for any of you baby back b!tches to tell any of these 320+ lineman they are soft.

 

[Mello Yello]

I'd love for any of you baby back b!tches to tell any of these 320+ lineman they are soft.

Well, I don't recall lining up against the Dolphins so I won't get the chance but maybe the replacement of them will speak for me.

Maybe if I'm on the schedule next December things will go better?

The Dolphins played the Ravens, Bills, Eagles, Chiefs and yeah, those teams kind of exposed our architecture in places. Hard to ignore it.

If we're not soft in the traditional sense, what are we exactly? We're definitely something. And that something is making us inadequate. That something is holding us back, whatever it is.

How you put a label on that "something" also dictates what you think Miami ought to do to fix it, too.

 

[Fan Since the 70s]

You can't add tough guys like Elandon Roberts, David Long, Jeff Wilson, Deshaun Elliott, etc. on cheap deals and feel content that you're doing enough to establish your physicality. Those aren't your core. They're the tangential pieces that flesh out the roster.

The issue is that when you add tough players like those and they're playing under someone like McDaniel, those players aren't likely to become team leaders because their personalities aren't consistent with the head coach's personality. The players likely to become team leaders under someone like McDaniel are the goofballs like he is. And then you have a team culture of that nature, because the player leaders lead from that vein. They spend time orchestrating multi-player end zone celebrations instead of instilling toughness in the locker room like you see Porter and Bettis doing in the video above.

 

[utahphinsfan]

Def needed its own thread

You forgot the "/s"

All the lecturing & recalling the good ole days make me want to hurl.

p.s. Some of you (and you know who you are) need to set your WABAC for a 1 way trip to 1973

 

[Dolphin Mule]

The logo and uniforms are certainly soft. Go back to 72 logo and unis and keep it!!!!

 

[Mello Yello]

The issue is that when you add tough players like those and they're playing under someone like McDaniel, those players aren't likely to become team leaders because their personalities aren't consistent with the head coach's personality. The players likely to become team leaders under someone like McDaniel are the goofballs like he is. And then you have a team culture of that nature, because the player leaders lead from that vein. They spend time orchestrating multi-player end zone celebrations instead of instilling toughness in the locker room like you see Porter and Bettis doing in the video above.

On the contrary, I think players like Jerome Bettis and Joey Porter will take over anywhere they go.

My problem is we lack those players. You can't expect a 1-yr contract guy who's the 7th most important guy on your defense getting paid $2M/yr to act like the most important guy on the field.

We lack that kind of voice among our most established players because none were drafted for that quality. I didn't advocate for Wilkins in the draft because I ever imagined him being that guy. He's not. He wasn't at Clemson and he isn't in the NFL. He's a "nice" guy. Always has been. He's smart. He's hard working. He makes the occasional play. I advocated for Wilkins because he was a low-risk pick and a solid prospect. I didn't expect Joey Porter-esque speeches.

But at some point you have to draft some Joey Porters too and they have to be just as good (if not better) so they become the #1 guy on their unit.

Wilkins wants a payday based on his play. I understand that. But the top contracts are only "worth it" when those guys improve the team around them and that happens when there's an element of (physical) leadership. Cam Wake was a great player--never a leader.

It doesn't make anyone bad. What I'm saying is that we--as a team--lack a player that's simultaneously great and a physical leader.

Christian Wilkins is problem the closest we have (among those we drafted) and to me, that says something.

The Dolphins have to go and buy those type of players: Long, Elliott, Ramsey, Chubb....it doesn't grow in Miami. We buy that stuff.

That's got to imply something bad.

 

[Golphindolphin]

The issue is that when you add tough players like those and they're playing under someone like McDaniel, those players aren't likely to become team leaders because their personalities aren't consistent with the head coach's personality. The players likely to become team leaders under someone like McDaniel are the goofballs like he is. And then you have a team culture of that nature, because the player leaders lead from that vein. They spend time orchestrating multi-player end zone celebrations instead of instilling toughness in the locker room like you see Porter and Bettis doing in the video above.

OK, I haven't been on a field with NFL players but I've been in the ocean with Raheem Mostert surfing in a place that is known as "The Shark Bite Capital of the World" (NSB). He was the only black dude in the water........ yeah, we have soft players.....

 

[utahphinsfan]

Mike McDaniel's.

The way "a team takes on the personality of its coach" as they say is by determining the kinds of players who are likely to become leaders and thereby shape the culture of the team via the effect of their leadership on their teammates. If your head coach is a goofball, players like Hill and Wilkins are likely to rise to the stature of leaders and will feel permitted to lead their teammates from that angle -- i.e., fun and games and elaborate and rehearsed end zone celebrations.

If on the other hand your head coach is the gruff and tough Bill Cowher for example, players like Joey Porter and Jerome Bettis are likely to become player leaders and lead with toughness and physicality. If your head coach is the serious and cerebral Bill Belichick, someone like Tom Brady is likely to become a key player leader and lead in that vein. The head coach's personality essentially "prescribes" the kind of player leader who's likely to rise to that stature among his teammates.

McDaniel has to start by being less of a goofball. Toughness and physicality (Cowher's Steelers), as well as a serious and cerebral approach (Belichick's Patriots), are consistent with winning in the game of football. What's not consistent with winning in the game of football is a goofball fun and games approach that can't become serious when the need arises, and the need arises very frequently in the NFL.

The team is soft because McDaniel is soft, and because the leaders among the players follow his lead.

Here is the opposite of that:



That Steelers team was the lowest-seeded AFC playoff team and won three playoff games on the road as an underdog before winning the Super Bowl as a decided underdog against the top-seeded team from the NFC. If you don't believe the kind of team culture and player leadership seen in the video above was the prime mover in that extremely rare accomplishment, I don't know what to tell you.

The only positives about your thoughts IMO were...

1) You didn't use the the phrase Alpha Males.
2) You did not cite Jon Gruden as an example.

 

[Mello Yello]

The only positives about your thoughts IMO were...

1) You didn't use the the phrase Alpha Males.
2) You did not cite Jon Gruden as an example.

It might benefit you to think a little bit about what "soft" means in the context of a team sport.

I don't think the Dolphins players have an issue with pain tolerance. That's pretty obviously not the point I was making in the thread.

However, complex systems--which an NFL team certain is--can have a greater number of fail points and that can lead to a team like the Dolphins being easily disrupted by opponents.

If your game-plans and your schemes are easily disrupted, what does that make you but soft from the opponents' perspective?

I think it's very important we discuss the ways in which the Miami Dolphins (as a team) are soft--the way their scheme(s) are inherently vulnerable. Put your macho stuff aside because that has nothing to do with this topic.

Complexity only wins if your execution is awesome and Miami's is not. For Miami to win with execution they have to be better and right now they're too unprepared to execute against more physical teams.