Why We Need to Have Expectations

[eMCee85]

You are a quick learner emcee

Lol. Product of a public school system!! Haha

 

[MiaFins31]

If that happens after this season, the new HC will be Weaver. Same GM, same QB1. Now, would Weaver make changes? I would think he would want his own identity on this team, so I think Mia would be looking for their next QB1 if this happens, but unless McD suddenly becomes a really good HC this season, I think we are 2, or 3 years away. IF McD can fix some of his issues this season and Tua stays healthy, then I stand by my 9-10 win prediction. Understand that is not that far above .500 AND that is 2 BIG IF's!

And if they were to hire Anthony Weaver as HC we’ll be in the same exact position we’re in now except our defense would be decent to good and our offense would fall off a cliff.

Stop taking chances on guys like that with zero HC experience. Open the checkbook and go hire a proven winner. I don’t care if the guy even came from the college level. Get a big name with a proven track record in here and let him go to work.

This is no personal shot at Weaver. I’m just tired of taking that route. Go hire a proven name.

I don’t like Jim Harbaugh as I think he’s a total douche but that dude can flat out coach. He should have been the guy. We need a guy like that. I don’t care about scheme or what he specializes in. The only speciality I care about is winning period.

I’m 35 and I’d be willing to go 0-17 the rest of my lifetime for just one Super Bowl. I would make that deal in a heartbeat if given the chance. Just one SB victory in my lifetime… please… with a cherry on top.

 

[stillhardcore]

And if they were to hire Anthony Weaver as HC we’ll be in the same exact position we’re in now except our defense would be decent to good and our offense would fall off a cliff.

Stop taking chances on guys like that with zero HC experience. Open the checkbook and go hire a proven winner. I don’t care if the guy even came from the college level. Get a big name with a proven track record in here and let him go to work.

This is no personal shot at Weaver. I’m just tired of taking that route. Go hire a proven name.

I don’t like Jim Harbaugh as I think he’s a total douche but that dude can flat out coach. He should have been the guy. We need a guy like that. I don’t care about scheme or what he specializes in. The only speciality I care about is winning period.

I’m 35 and I’d be willing to go 0-17 the rest of my lifetime for just one Super Bowl. I would make that deal in a heartbeat if given the chance. Just one SB victory in my lifetime… please… with a cherry on top.

Preaching to the choir. If McD fails this season, a total house-cleaning would be ideal. New GM, HC and culture in that order. A plan for an identity for the club and build it in that vision. Right now, we have what we have. Some good players have been drafted along with a couple of promising FA's. I hope it works and if it doesn't, I hope Ross sees it like me and many others on here as to having a plan. If McD fails this season to get us in the playoffs at minimum, what I described above is what I think will happen with Weaver.

(ps) I like the club Harbaugh is building too.

 

[RichmondWeb]

Let’s be clear about something…2024 was the down year for the Dolphins.

I said it going in and it’s worth reminding people that having just lost two $100M trench players, having lost our two premiere edge players to IR, having replaced our experienced DC with a younger coach (someone who was bringing an entirely new scheme), having entered the season with a host of short-term stop-gap players all across the roster…2024 was not a season to get your hopes up about.

2024 was a season for low expectations, time away and discussions about the long-term potential of this team and where it ought to go based on the failure(s) of ’22 and ‘23.

So here we are.

We’ve had our moment to breathe and self-assess.

Since our last Playoff failure, we’ve seen 2 offseasons in which the team signed a slew of players to various mid-tier deals including Zach Sieler, Austin Jackson, Jaylen Waddle, Jordyn Brooks, Aaron Brewer, Jonnu Smith, James Daniels and others. Nobody’s complaining. These aren’t bad players.

We’ve also seen 2 drafts in which the team has invested in DL, Edge, LT, IOL, RB, WR and other important positions. At this point—fingers crossed—we aren’t expecting any of those prominent picks to be busts.

Meanwhile, the team has tied itself to a QB who (when healthy) is above average and whose availability ought to be largely controllable with a little bit of good decision-making.

Regardless of where your expectations are at given the youth on this team, this is a season worth monitoring. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you’re making a run come Playoff time. I’m saying this season means everything about your future.

If this roster were being led by any one of the NFL’s prolific HCs like Tomlin or Harbaugh we wouldn’t be questioning whether we were going to get the most out of these units. We wouldn’t be questioning the preparation being put in or the overall focus of the team as a whole.

For instance, the OL features 3 veterans on team-friendly deals paired with 2 high picks, at least 1 of whom spent all of last year getting himself ready and ought to be able to step in and contribute at a respectable level. We shouldn’t really be worrying about the OL…

…or what the expectation is for these players.
…or whether they’re going to grow and develop over the course of the season.
…or whether this newly revamped unit will help rejuvenate our lack of a run game.

You have a clear need to take pressure off the QB.
You’ve drafted OL highly in the last 2 drafts.
You’ve made a point to pull in RBs in each of the last 3 drafts.
You’ve also reached out in FA to strengthen those positions each year.

I’m not waiting to see what develops. I’m not stupid. There’s clearly need for expectation here.

If this unit doesn’t succeed and the offense doesn’t thrive with all its weaponry, that’s on Mike McDaniel. While Anthony Weaver is barely getting by with his patchwork roster, McDaniel’s cupboards are full.


Whatever the explanation might be if/when things fail, I don’t care. This season is on Mike McDaniel and for that matter, it’s the 3rd attempt at finding a HC in the Chris Grier era, the last two attempts having both ended in the firing of HCs who had issues with players. If McDaniel cannot motivate and lead this roster (which on paper looks very solid outside of the secondary) there are no meaningful excuses.

2025 is not supposed to be a “down” season.

It’ll only become a down season if we take what should by all accounts be a strong team filled with reasonable FA acquisitions and high-upside rookie-contract assets and do nothing with it. It’s only a down season if the team loses faith in its leadership and the veterans do nothing to act as a bulwark against that skepticism taking hold.

2025 is a year in which this team must take steps forward. At season’s end, we must conclude with the belief that the foundation we’ve establish through the last 2 offseasons is enough to blossom into something special.



If this regime (with its QB and its rebuilt roster) are to win Playoff games in ’26 and ’27 we cannot reach the end of this year making excuses. We must be seeing good things at that point…

…which means this season should be a gradual, upward trend towards highly-competitive games in Nov & Dec. Regardless of whether we make a Playoff run, we must be a transformed football team by the 2nd half of the ’25 season.

If by the end of the season we’re not confident in this new OL, if the offense isn’t embracing the run, if we’re not impressed with the new-found physicality of the team, if we’re still bad on special teams, if we’re still losing in-game challenges like they mean nothing and we’re still giving our opponents great field position because of our bad decisions, then this experiment is over.

Every complaint we’re hearing now—every pessimistic doubt—is something that people starting bringing up back in ’23.

We’ve now had 2 full offseasons to get this back on track and to evolve. ’22 was great and ’23 was a chance to run it back. But that’s now ancient history.

Our darkest hour was yesterday. 2024 was the moment to make difficult decisions, suffer through unfair injuries and slog through a schedule you knew wasn’t leading anywhere but to the couch in January.

You got through 2024 so you could get to 2025…and now we’ve been through FA and the Draft.

There’s either an answer among this group or there isn’t...just don't tell me 2025 is a "down year." No, sir. You don't get to call this a lost season. It means everything.

Gotta hand it to you, this was a lot of work typing all of that. Do you have a secretary? I appreciate this huge contribution of content to the website. It's the perfect post to attract both the "Realists" and the "People of Faith" to an All-out Debate!

We all want Miami to win, but some feel The Dolphins can't win, and they want us to "Prepare for that Reality". What it all boils down to is FEAR. The "Realists" have their lists and charts of past mistakes and they hypothesize over dotted i's and uncrossed l's (plus Capitalization lessons for @phinsforlife) that the Dolphins are cursed, doomed, and incapable of success. They believe that the current management group are stupid and unteachable. Their evidence is convincing to a point, but it is all based on what has happened in the past. They ignore the fact that the past is no longer exists, and that change is possible both in the present and also in the future. They also believe that the best solution is to "raze and replant", a theory that has been proven to be detrimental and ineffective by most teams that have tried it, including the Dolphins who have used it unsucessfully since 1995. They believe in "Imaginary replacements" who are walking down the street who can perfom magic.

Meanwhile, others amongst us, come out in the light of day. We wear tinted eye-protection to prevent damage from the sun; but the "glasses" also protect us from FEAR! We see instead, that the next Miami Dolphins Dynasty is (finally) nearing fruition! Under the current mangement group!! We are people of "FAITH"! Our FAITH removes the FEARS that the Realists continue to perpetrate even though the ancient curses and repeated mistakes from the past, have already been Exorcized and corrected!!! They refuse to BELIEVE. Using our extraordinary eye-wear we can see visible progress. We see that the team's new business model, is to forego the egos of individuals and make decisions as a team... Managers can be removed if necessary, but the replacement will continue to work for the benefit of the team! Just looking at this year's draft as an example, it's obvious that the team picked the players with heavy defensive feedback, and not one guy. I don't think the Team is counting wins and playoff wins etc. per se. Like the OP said, they are looking for more growth. MM is a 4th-year HC and Weaver is a 2nd-year DC. They don't even have all of their players yet, and the players they have barely know the system. Would it really make sense to take all of that investment in time and money and then just blow it up? Maybe the team has another tough year. If they truly value continuity, they should just keep making small adjustments and soon we all will see, a consistently competative Miami Dolphins Football Team on the horizon in 2-3 years. We can see it all coming with our special Glasses!

The new reality is that firing decision-makers has become obsolete for the Dolphins, who have researched firing coaches for 30 years. When they hired MM, they intended to stand behind him; to let him learn. He will be the first Dolphins' Coach to work more than 4 years since "The Don" retired in 1995. He has proved that he can do a good job. Having a players' coach, the team must find players who thrive in that environment. The Owner knows that this was his last rebuild, but he finally has learned, from experts, like Dan Marino, that the teams who are stablized and allowed to grow together are the teams that win consistently. There will be bumps but no more earthquakes.


I am extremely interested in seeing the 2025 schedule because it could have a sizeable effect on the Dolphins' season. We know who our opponents are, where we will play, and that we will "Host" a game against the "Commanders" in Barcelona which will be like a neutral site. We play the weak AFCE, the weak NFCS, and a mediocre AFCN. It's another exploitable year schedule-wise.

Last year the AFCE was a weak division. Buffalo had their usual WR problems, they were very old on the defense, and they turned over much of their roster. That is why I, and many others on this site, predicted that the Dolphins could win the AFCE. We had a young team with very good starting talent. Moreover, the Jets were very dysfunctional, as always, and the Patriots were beginning their first ground floor rebuild with a new coach and a skattershot roster. We got off to a strong start but then Buffalo took over the division easily after Tua's "Kamikize Run". We later lost our pass rushers but our defense still played well. I went to the Seattle game and our defense kept it close; Sieler recovered a fumble in the 4th quarter which could have given us the lead but the offense..... was not up to the task. The offense had no leader. The Bills easily won the AFCE. We needed more depth, better ST, and better coaching, yet we still had a team that won some games, and we still have that nucleus of players.

So here we are again. The Bills are still "retooling". The Jets are starting over, and the Patriots are starting over. Well the Pats have opened Kraft's checkbook to try to catch up, but we know how well that usually works:). Our offense is mostly veterans who already know the plays. Depth and more weapons have been added. Our defense played exceptionally well last year, mostly with players who were selected for Boyer's and Fangio's systems! As we add players to our defense who fit Weaver's job descriptions, and as the defensive players learn his system, our defense should dominate very soon!

We didn't have a lot of off-season FA resources and I don't think there were many guys worth signing. Overall, this draft class was not very good. I applaud trading our 4th for a 3rd next year because that pick might turn out to be a much better player. Fortunately, It was a great draft for us! We got three Huge, Stout, Athletic, DT Freaks who fit the new DL front. Plus, we were able to steal a Guard. There were few DB's who looked ready to play early this year. Fewer yet, who fit our new defensive system, so we passed on drafting developmental players. We upgraded our FBIQ and football leadership in this draft, too. Donte Trader is a ST guy and he and McMorris are great at diagnosing plays; maybe that's all we need back there is two guys who know what's going on. Marshall, like most of the CBs in this draft, had some issues. Supposedly he gets confused at times, but he seems to be a good physical fit and a reliable and talented player. We have a good group of CBs and S to compete and push each other which is how they built last year's DL after they decided not to pay Wilkins. It worked well enough at DT and hopefully it will work for the secondary until they find the right guys in the future.

And of course Ewers and Gordon were steals. LOVE that name for a RB "Ollie Gordon" ; kinda sounds like "Tyrone Wheatley". Mel Kiper and the rest can go eat mussels.... We got the players We wanted. We didn't mortgage the farm, and we scored another 3rd from Houston! But Do You Know What Else?????

Our Dolphins were working those PHONES BABY!!!! We acquired a top-rated UFA class! That's another 13 players we got without even spending a single draft pick!


HERE WE GO...........................

 

[BSQ]

It's tough to have a great culture when a few of your better players aren't on board. If Ramsay is the one strolling in late to meetings like he owns the place we should move him right off the team. We are better off without culture killers like Holland, Ramsay and maybe even Tyreek. McD need to ramp up the intensity and stop with his I'm so chill that I vape and wear pedal pushers, not impressed, everyone is cool on S Beach!! He needs a brand new persona where he talks alot less, raises the level of intensity down here and is focused on winning games. Stop the nonsense.
McD needs to have his team better prepared on game day. We have to come out of the gate with fire in our eyes. The team has to want it more than it's opponent. Desire is a huge thing, you gotta bleed, you gotta gang tackle and you gotta get turnovers! Run the damn ball, you got the horses to do it but you have to do it and stick to it. You want to shed the soft label? Start kicking the other team in the teeth from the opening bell, no mercy, beat the dog out of them. Make up tee shirts that say SOFT? I DON'T THINK SO PAL!!!!!!!! Use the soft label for motivation to turn into freaking tigers. That's some of the mind set this team lacks but we CAN turn it around. We need to play as a unit amd we'll be fine once everyone is on the same page and buying in.
Final thought, no matter how great a player is, the tail doesn't wag the dog!!