When did the tide turn on Tony Sparano? | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

When did the tide turn on Tony Sparano?

Fin_Of_Steal

Fin_Of_Steal

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I'm starting this thread for two reasons: One, there's only so much I can say about tonight's matchup. It's all been said and I'm ready for the game. Second, someone asked me how Dan Campbell is any different than Tony Sparano. His argument was that Sparano was a tough guy who preached physical football, he was a position coach, and he came from the Parcells tree, and he had us all excited with early success. That might be true, but I don't see Sparano when I see Campbell. In fact, despite Sparano's tough exterior and no-nonsense attitude, I saw more of him in Philbin.

So I guess I want to convince myself that what I said is correct, and that there is no risk of Campbell being Sparano. We haven't seen anything to suggest Campbell isn't a good coach. When did we first see that with Sparano? From what I remember, the first time I knew he wasn't a good coach was in year two against Indianapolis on Monday Night Football. While the Dolphins crafted a nearly flawless offensive strategy to keep Manning and co. off the field (they had 45 minutes of time of possession) they kept settling for field goals against a quarterback who kept leading his team to touchdowns. Were there moments like this in year one? I honestly don't remember.
 
Sparano & Philbin have absolutely nothing in common.

I thought Tony was trying to hard to BE Bill Parcells instead of just being himself.

I was born in Queens, I watched those Giant Teams under Parcells. Sparano seemed to almost always be paraphrasing something that Bill said before.

He loved to run the ball and was definitely a tough guy who wanted tough players on his team.

Philbin wasn't so much into running the ball. He was so limp about everything.

He should have stood up for Incognito, instead he shafted the players and coaches and then ran and hid under Ross' skirts.

I always felt he would have ditched Incognito before the season even started because of that golfing benefit incident if he wasn't over-ruled.

I think when Ross entered the scene the team was polluted due to it's power structure. The Ireland and Sparano dynamic was already going bad when Parcells was still here I think.

Campbell is a very different coach than Sparano though. They share the same mentality and toughness but Campbell was a player and has an imposing presence about him, that it seems he has had going back to his college playing days.
 
I think Philbin and Sparano have more in common than you think. Both often had a "play not to lose" mentality in games by settling for field goals. They both accepted mediocrity. Philbin would clap for his players, and we all remember Sparano's field goal fist pump.

They both also seemed to get flustered and scared of the opposition's offense and would call timeouts during inappropriate times. Philbin did this like a million times last year, and remember when Sparano called timeout against the Saints with one second left on the clock before halftime, allowing them to score and steal Miami's momentum?
 
Sparano lost his QB Pennington. I think if Pennington had been younger and less fragile, we would have seen more playoff births. Henne just couldn't get it done.
 
Sparano couldn't see when something no longer worked and move on. He kept using the wildcat over and over even though the league had figured out how to play it. His coordinators were mediocre, and the talent acquisition by Ireland was awful...that probably hurt him more than anything. Once he lost the locker room he was done.

We don't know enough about Campbell to know if he can change when things that previously worked no longer work. So far after two games I've seen the offense throw in a lot of wrinkles on offensive plays that were successful the previous week...again only two weeks to go off of but that's encouraging...how much of that is Campbell and how much of it is Lazor/Saunders I don't know. We've seen the defense change and get more aggressive up front but we also see some of the same issues on the backend...mainly Jamar Taylor/Brice McCain. That's not on Anarumo or Campbell that's a player acquisition thing where I think we placed a little to much trust in Tannenbaum's metrics and not enough in our own eyes and previous performance.

Tonight is a pretty good measuring stick to Campbell's ability...although there's a lot of on the job training going on...playing Bill Belichick is the ultimate chess match. He makes great in game adjustments and his half time adjustments are even better. Can Campbell counter? So far we haven't had a coach who could.
 
Remember the last game of the 2010 season? The players quit on Sparano, which led Ross to court Harbaugh, which led to Sparano getting an extension, the rift with Ireland and the players knew he was dead man walking, which led to the 0-7 start and his dismissal.
Of course Ireland survived which was the wrong decision, he hires Philbin, who lost the team at the end of the 2013 season.
Now 2 years later, maybe, we're moving away from years of mediocre coaching
 
the conservatism is what killed these guys. Philbin was supposed to eb this super aggressive coach from GB, turns out he was just like all the prior coaches
 
Personality-wise of course they're very similar. But I've said it many times, personality doesn't matter at all. What matters is doing well what head coaches need to do well: surrounding themselves with good capable people, being leaders, earning the respect of their players, running practices, making game-day decisions, etc. But not personality because it's not a popularity contest. I guess it's like actresses, being pretty doesn't mean they can act, but apparently that's the only thing most folks pay attention to.
 
Sparano was nothing like Campbell. First off he wasn't tough - he was a play not to lose guy. Second he couldn't game manage - often calling time outs for no apparent reason other than to collect his thoughts. Third, his fist pumps on FGs probably hurt his credibility - meaning, he celebrated mediocrity.
 
Dan Campbell doesn't celebrate field goals. He hates them as a matter of fact.
 
We've seen so little, so far, but they do appear to be very similar. The biggest difference that I can discern, so far, is that DC is allowing his OC to be more aggressive. Of course, it didn't help Sparano that he was stuck with Henne and, what? Cleo Lemon? Not the best on-the-field decision makers there.
 
315DolphinsFan said:
Remember the last game of the 2010 season? The players quit on Sparano, which led Ross to court Harbaugh, which led to Sparano getting an extension, the rift with Ireland and the players knew he was dead man walking, which led to the 0-7 start and his dismissal.
Of course Ireland survived which was the wrong decision, he hires Philbin, who lost the team at the end of the 2013 season.
Now 2 years later, maybe, we're moving away from years of mediocre coaching
Click to expand...

Oh yeah I remember that. The effort in that game was, in my mind, even worse than Buffalo and New York earlier this season. The fact that Sparano survived that (even if it was only because we couldn't get Harbaugh) was insane.
 
Haha! The exact three things that popped into my head about Sparano when I read this thread.

Sparano had a field goal fetish. I think he actually molested Campbell on his way out, and that's why Dan kicked so poorly in subsequent years. ...Now Dan has Rex up there looking at his feet.
 
Sparano was never that impressive to me. He was way too conservative and even though he was somewhat successful most of that can be attributed to competition. I remember that year we won a ton of really close games against some pretty bad teams.
 
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