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“Do you want to be safe and good, or
do you want to take a chance and be great?” – Jimmy Johnson
Mike Pouncey
is a very good football player. In the opinion of most, he’s the best interior
lineman in this year’s rookie crop. He is projected to start right away,
probably at center, a “need” position for the Miami Dolphins. Some are
comparing him to all-time great Dwight Stephenson, even before the guy has put
on an aqua and orange jockstrap or hit a blocking sled.
Daniel
Thomas, a running back, is also a good player. He’s ranked by many as one of
the top 5 in this year’s draft class. To get him, the Dolphins traded away
three lesser picks for a second rounder, a steep price for a team in need of
fresh talent. Some compare him to Larry Johnson. Wow!
Jeff Ireland,
the Dolphins GM, is a happy man today. He let the draft “come to him”, he
proudly boasted. He didn’t take any big chances and, by his own account, made
“safe” picks at need positions.
Some in media
actually think his work deserves an “A”.
Not me. Not
for a second.
Ireland
deserves an “F”, not because he picked a batch of stiffs but because he didn’t
do the right thing. Instead of making the hard decisions needed to set the
franchise firmly on the road to the Super Bowl, he stuck to the same old plan
that has netted a 25-23 record in three seasons.
He had two
jobs: find a quarterback and improve team speed. He failed miserably at both.
His first and
most important job in this draft was to fix the team’s sorry QB situation. Nothing
else was more important. Nothing. He had to find and draft their QB of the
future, a championship caliber guy to compete with incumbent Chad Henne. Ireland
thought he had this issue solved when he drafted Henne in the second round in
2008. We’ve since learned, painfully, that this is probably not the case.
Last season,
a 7-9 debacle left coach Tony Sparano within a whisker of being fired. A lot of
it had to do with an inept offense, due to mostly inept QB play. Yet Ireland
had the gall to tell us that he “didn’t feel like we were desperate” for a QB,
so he did nothing.
Pardon me?
What’s truly
exasperating (and sad) here is that this was a deep draft of talented QBs.
Getting a conviction about one, or more, shouldn’t have been an issue. All that
was required of Ireland was the courage to move into position to net that one man.
Instead, Ireland
moved into position to net a running back that, right now, we’re having a hard
time distinguishing from Lex Hilliard or Ronnie Brown. In other words, a guy
the Dolphins didn’t need.
In the wake
of outrage from Dolfans, the Dolphin spin machine is working overtime. Some are
reporting that Ireland really meant well, with “an inside source” coming out
after the draft to confess that the Dolphins really wanted Ryan Mallett but
couldn’t find a way to trade up in the third round to get him.
If you
believe that Fish story, I’ve got some land west of Krome Avenue I’d like to
interest you in.
So now
Ireland and Sparano get their wish. The Robot remains your starting QB. And you
know what’s coming next, don’t know? That’s right; a trade for someone else’s
cast off QB. How about it, Jeff? Planning to send a second rounder to the
Eagles for Kevin Kolb? Don’t mind that Kolb was promptly beaten out by a guy
who spent almost two years in prison, or that his passer stats were very
Henne-like prior to his losing his job on merit. You make that trade!
Not sure how?
Just call Randy Mueller or Rick Spielman. No desperation here, remember?
Pardon me for
the thick sarcasm, but we’ve seen this movie before. Over and over and over
again during this post-Marino era. And it always ends the same.
OK, moving on.
The other job Ireland was supposed to do, but didn’t, was improve overall team
speed. At season’s end, he and Sparano lamented how slow their offense was and
how urgent it was that they improve that situation.
Remember?
So what was
Ireland’s answer in this draft? An offensive lineman, a running back who runs a
4.6 40 yard dash, and a fullback. Only a fourth rounder receiver (Edmond Gates)
shows any promise of making the offense faster, but he’s about as unpolished as
Ted Ginn was when he arrived in Miami in 2007.
Where does
all this leave your Miami Dolphins today? Back where they were when the season
ended, I’m afraid.
Yes, Pouncey
should help solidify the interior of the line. But Thomas may not prove better
than what they had in Brown and Ricky Williams. And there’s no assurance that
the other picks will contribute much in 2011 beyond special teams.
Sadly, the
Dolphins remain a slow, plodding team with an inconsistent QB. That combination
usually ends up 8-8 or worse.
In fact it
wouldn’t surprise me if the Dolphins finish dead last in the AFC East in 2011.
The Pats are stronger, the Jets have been in the last two AFC Championship
games, and the Bills are improving faster than the Dolphins are.
What is the
common denominator here? All of them have a good QB. The Dolphins do not. Yet
Ireland said he felt “no desperation” to get a QB while the Patriots were more
than happy to start grooming a potential heir to Tom Brady (yes, Mallett).
I know;
Ireland still has free agency to come. But given his shaky track record in the
past in free agency with guys like Gibril Wilson, Jake Grove, and Ernest
Wilford, how confident can we be that he will get it right this time?
Is there a
free agent QB out there who anyone feels like is the long term answer for this
team? If Carson Palmer can’t win in Cincinnati with better offensive weapons
around him, what makes us think he’ll be any better in Miami? Is tossing a mega
contract at a DeAngelo Williams the right thing to do? If it is, why did
Ireland waste picks on Thomas?
While it will
take three years for us to judge the quality of the players taken in this
draft, it is not too soon to judge the path Ireland chose for the Dolphins this
past weekend.
He’d rather
be good than great.