What we mean when we say we're "soft" | Page 2 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

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

Just a few observations on all this tough guy talk..

Cowher was head coach of the Steelers for 14 years before he won a SB with his tough guy persona.

Belichick was a head coach for 7 years before he won a SB with his tough guy persona and we know what that SB appearance record is without Brady, 0.000.

Tomlin hasn't won a SB in 15 years with his tough guy persona. They are ready to toss him into one of the rivers up there.

Parcells went 11 more years after his last SB win with that tough guy persona.

Notorious tough guy Coughlin went 12 years before winning a SB.

Tons more but some of you can do your own homework for once. I tire of it and have other fun **** to do.

Oh, and if I make another list, it will be all the tough guy coaches who never won a SB.

How long you think THAT one will be ;)
 
Stoobz said:
Just a few observations on all this tough guy talk..

Cowher was head coach of the Steelers for 14 years before he won a SB with his tough guy persona.

Belichick was a head coach for 7 years before he won a SB with his tough guy persona and we know what that SB appearance record is without Brady, 0.000.

Tomlin hasn't won a SB in 15 years with his tough guy persona. They are ready to toss him into one of the rivers up there.

Parcells went 11 more years after his last SB win with that tough guy persona.

Notorious tough guy Coughlin went 12 years before winning a SB.

Tons more but some of you can do your own homework for once. I tire of it and have other fun **** to do.

Oh, and if I make another list, it will be all the tough guy coaches who never won a SB.

How long you think THAT one will be ;)
Click to expand...

I guess the difficult question guys like you have to live with is whether the lack of execution seen in KC is a mark against Mike McDaniel.

His route combinations and the quality of the routes run were not up to par. We can't blame this on Tua or a lack of arm strength.

This is an offense that is not well coordinated right now. Plays are late getting in. We throw it too much. We abandon the run. The WR depth doesn't appear to help in the way it should leading to questions about in-week preparation and involvement.

I think we all have to go into this offseason wondering just what kind of HC Mike McDaniel is. Yeah, Tua and Tyreek work great but those are good players. Those are hard workers. Those are guys who will execute any system put in front of them. Those are the 2 players who will earn more $$$ than anyone else on the team.

What does McDaniel do to elevate the other pieces? That's the unconformable question.
 
Mello Yello said:
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.
Click to expand...
This team is not much different than it was when Philbin was HC... they have more talent now, but they're just as weak and choke in the big games. Philbin's offense was based on having the QB throw the ball quickly to a WR running a short route and hopefully gaining yards after the catch, which is eerily similar to what McDaniel is doing. The one exception is that now, speedy WRs means that the QB can throw the ball a little further.

Philbin's offense was easily defended because it was mostly short passes, so defenses could move up and not only cut down on the yards after the catch, but also be in position to stop the occasional run. It's the same with McDaniel's offense; he keeps throwing the ball over the middle on timing routes, and good defenses know all they have to do is to bump the WRs to disrupt the timing, and to flood the area where Tua usually throws the ball with defenders.

Philbin loved finesse (read as weak) so much that he preferred guys like Dallas Thomas and Jonathan Martin over a tough guy like Richie Incognito. Today's team is basically just as weak as Philbin's team was.
 
Mello Yello said:
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.
Click to expand...

I totally see where youre coming from. Those are the type of guys will step up when needed
 
Fan Since the 70s said:
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.
Click to expand...

Preeeeeeeach!
 
There are many ways to build a team... And many ways to win a SB. Fins weren't built though, they were built fast, at least on offense, the whole scheme is built around that. There are pros and cons to every way you go about it. The pros of the Fins the way they were operating was home dominance and a real good shot at beating mediocre teams on the road also... The con has always been though teams on the road.

This is why 1st or 2nd seed was so important, it was the actual reasonable road to a SB for this team. The Fins didn't **** up in KC, not even against the Bills at home where they were decimated. They ****ed up vs the Titans. That's the game everyone should be pissed about, not a ****ing once every 200 games -15 degrees outlier game vs KC in the playoffs. Once the Fins road to the SB meant 3 consecutive road wins, they were ****ed.

And lets not act like they failed miserably, they fell 14 points in 3 minutes short of not playing starters in the final week and getting 2 home playoff games. The outlook would've been completely different. It's disappointing as **** to be eliminated right now but they were much closer to achieving big things than people want to admit. All that despite playing a ridiculous amount of OL combos and getting a schedule that had them face pretty much every good team on the road outside of the Bills and the Cowboys.

This fire everyone non-sense is flat out incoherent.
 
Here is why we are considered soft:

1) Our QB Tua and our “star” tackle who just signed an extension, Jonathan Martin, I mean Austin Jackson, both let Brian Flores “break” them (per Ryan Fitzgerald) by the way he talked to them. How soft can you be that you let a head coach hurt your feelings based on how he talked to you? Cmon

2) Our defense tried arm tackles all the time and missed and anytime there is a rugby pile we get pushed backwards.

3) We call screen passes and passes to the flat on 3rd and 4th and short

4) When we do run it, we love to run outside the tackles instead of up the middle. We love the negative 7 yard toss. And we rely on confusion (Tua play actions left while the running back runs right) to get yardage instead of pounding it.

5) We treat our players with kid gloves and have an overly cautious approach to holding out players despite being able to play through their injuries, ie Skylar Thompson in Buffalo last playoffs when Tua could’ve played, ie holding waddle out last week vs Buffalo when he clearly was practicing fine and was dancing around the sidelines in the game (look at Laporta playing in the playoffs in a brace no way MM would let him play).

6) Our soft QB, after getting smoked by Mahomes, goes and asks him for his jersey after the game? The only context I’d ask him for his jersey after he just whooped me like that is if I ran out of toilet paper and needed something to wipe with.

So yeah, that’s why we say we are soft. Because we are.

Ingold and Sieler are exempt from this post. Maybe a couple more, debatable, but Ingold and Sieler are non debatable.
 
adammac13 said:
Here is why we are considered soft:

1) Our QB Tua and our “star” tackle who just signed an extension, Jonathan Martin, I mean Austin Jackson, both let Brian Flores “break” them (per Ryan Fitzgerald) by the way he talked to them. How soft can you be that you let a head coach hurt your feelings based on how he talked to you? Cmon

2) Our defense tried arm tackles all the time and missed and anytime there is a rugby pile we get pushed backwards.

3) We call screen passes and passes to the flat on 3rd and 4th and short

4) When we do run it, we love to run outside the tackles instead of up the middle. We love the negative 7 yard toss. And we rely on confusion (Tua play actions left while the running back runs right) to get yardage instead of pounding it.

5) We treat our players with kid gloves and have an overly cautious approach to holding out players despite being able to play through their injuries, ie Skylar Thompson in Buffalo last playoffs when Tua could’ve played, ie holding waddle out last week vs Buffalo when he clearly was practicing fine and was dancing around the sidelines in the game (look at Laporta playing in the playoffs in a brace no way MM would let him play).

6) Our soft QB, after getting smoked by Mahomes, goes and asks him for his jersey after the game? The only context I’d ask him for his jersey after he just whooped me like that is if I ran out of toilet paper and needed something to wipe with.

So yeah, that’s why we say we are soft. Because we are.

Ingold and Sieler are exempt from this post. Maybe a couple more, debatable, but Ingold and Sieler are non debatable.
Click to expand...
What has Ingold done? Your favorite?
 
NBP81 said:
There are many ways to build a team... And many ways to win a SB. Fins weren't built though, they were built fast, at least on offense, the whole scheme is built around that. There are pros and cons to every way you go about it. The pros of the Fins the way they were operating was home dominance and a real good shot at beating mediocre teams on the road also... The con has always been though teams on the road.

This is why 1st or 2nd seed was so important, it was the actual reasonable road to a SB for this team. The Fins didn't **** up in KC, not even against the Bills at home where they were decimated. They ****ed up vs the Titans. That's the game everyone should be pissed about, not a ****ing once every 200 games -15 degrees outlier game vs KC in the playoffs. Once the Fins road to the SB meant 3 consecutive road wins, they were ****ed.

And lets not act like they failed miserably, they fell 14 points in 3 minutes short of not playing starters in the final week and getting 2 home playoff games. The outlook would've been completely different. It's disappointing as **** to be eliminated right now but they were much closer to achieving big things than people want to admit. All that despite playing a ridiculous amount of OL combos and getting a schedule that had them face pretty much every good team on the road outside of the Bills and the Cowboys.

This fire everyone non-sense is flat out incoherent.
Click to expand...

bingo GIF
 
Mello Yello said:
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.
Click to expand...
This thread is soft
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom