The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

https://twitter.com/seankjensen/status/234021477119320064

Chicago Sun Times columnist Sean Jensen is reporting David Garrard recently had minor knee surgery. No word if he is out or anything. Don't know why a Chicago Sun Times guy has the story and nobody in Miami does but.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Weird, and I hope it's not true.  I'd love a chance to see Garrard play.

As flashbacks of Culpepper start to swim around in my head...

Jesse Alger of MiamiDolphins.com reporting Garrard practiced Wed night at Sun Life stadium in front of the fans. Thurs Practice was closed to Fans/Media.

So, story might be true and just leaking now with that timetable.

Story is now confirmed. Adam Schefter reporting that its a "mysterious knee injury" that even some players on the Dolphins team don't even know about yet. Surgery is said to be minor but will keep Gararrd down for a bit.


This is a huge opportunity for Tannehill to now take this job and run with it. He will get every chance in the world to win this job from this point forward.

If Miami cuts Garrard before Week 1 they save $2.25 mill with his salary according to Ben Volin

https://twitter.com/JeffDarlington/status/234031551120293891

Jeff Darlington reporting Garrard will undergo Arthroscopic surgery on a knee, no timetable for a return

Jay Glazer also talked to Garrard. Said 2-4 weeks he is out
https://twitter.com/JayGlazer/status/234032588791095296

I think if I was an extra LB,WR,DB etc,etc trying to make the team...This news would worry me more,might keep the extra QB,and I'd be gone...

The QB battle is a lot more interesting now IMO

May the best QB win. I'm pulling for Moore. But if Tannehill wins, so be it.

Aren't there some sort of restrictions on cutting players due to injury?

I thought so too but if Garrard is "back" some point before Week 1 technically I guess the Fins have an out. They are saying 2-4 weeks.

If Tannehill wins the job it makes little sense to keep Garrard around. I mean does it matter who holds the clip board, he or Moore? Moore in final year of his deal. Garrard on a 1 year deal. Neither will be back next year. Doesn't matter who holds the clip board IF Tannehill wins the job. Might as well go with Moore at that point since he is 100%

I agree with you on that point. Its going to be an interesting three weeks.

If Philbin has the balls, then Tannehill starts against Houston

Not totally about "having balls" its also about having  "brains" as well...lol. Yes it would be easy to start Tannehill Week 1 vs Houston and say he is our future lets go! But it also comes down to what is the best thing to do long-term for Tannehill and the organization.

I really hope Philbin lets Tannehill start next week vs Carolina. Let's see how that plays out and take it from there. Houston is a month away still.

I agree, I want to see Tannehill working with the 1's vs the opponent's 1's. We all pretty much know what Matt Moore brings to the table as we saw it last year. It's a different offense, but I don't really see him being a different QB because of that. I'd much rather see Tannehill get as much "live" work in the preseason as possible and see how he holds up there. If he doesn't hold up that well, then go with Moore or Garrard if he's healthy in week 1, but if he does hold up well in preseason games, I say start him week one and lets see where it takes us. So if it were me, I'd start Tannehill and play him the 1st half and let Moore have a quarter and Devlin a quarter. In week 3, I would give Tannehill the start and play him into the 2nd half no matter what, good or bad. If he's bad you could still give Garrard or Moore the start week 4 and have that be the warm up to the season rather than the customary week 3 of the preseason. It's unusual, but not unheard of especially if Garrard is just coming back from surgery and needs the work.

You want to give the Dolphins the best chance at winning, but I'd rather be winning games in December with Tannehill than winning games in September with Moore.

Big Picture is I want to be going into next year with the dead weight gone, Tannehill as our guy, and a revamped offense. With a realistic shot at making the playoffs and being "contenders. " This is a Honeymoon year for Philbin as nobody expects much and with 20+ guys in the final year of their deals with only a few or a half at most coming back.

Fins schedule plays out nice so if they decide against starting Tannehill Week 1. You got Week 4 AT Arizona. HOME vs Rams Week 6. BYE week Week 7 (2 weeks to prepare for next opponent) . Indy Week 9. And a 10 days heading into Week 12 after the Thurs night game. Multiple places to insert Tannehill into the lineup in a "favorable" situation.

Garrard had his surgery today and "tweeted" that it went well (not that I expected him to tweet it went poorly).

What is the rush? If Tannehill was #1 on the depth chart, then I would see no problem in starting him next week. If it's truly a process, then let it play out. He'll be starting some time in the second half anyways.

Last couple years ROOKIE QB's who started from Day 1 and had no issues. Dalton, Cam, Flacco, Ryan, Sanchez. History is actually on the side of starting Tannehill here if he wins the job.

I would still like to not have him start week 1, but if he beats out Moore its tough to sit him.

How far back is recent? You left out Joey Harrington, Alex Smith (good now, but 1TD and 11 INTs his rookie year), JP Losman, Matt Leinart, JeMarcus Russell, Blaine Gabbert, and Christian Ponder all in the past ten years. If anything, history may be split, but leaning toward rookies being busts. -EK

I've always been on the side of keeping the rookie on the bench for a year, but it's deceptively difficult to make sense of the data. On one hand, quarterbacks who start as rookies tend to be busts, but on the other hand, teams that start rookie quarterbacks are often BAD teams, desperate teams.

I think that is the old NFL way though. The new NFL way is start rookies day 1 and they will succeed. I gave 4 or 5 names above. And let's be honest Baltimore did it with Flacco and they have been to the playoffs alot. Jets same. Atlanta same. Dalton was a 2nd round pick and turned around a bad team had them in the playoffs and he was a 2nd round pick. This is the recent trend. I ain't going back to the late 90's or 2004 or some 10 years ago, but the last couple years you start a rookie draft pick from day 1 more times than not it works. Blaine Gabbert is the only real bust I would say. Ponder/Locker didn't start from day 1 so they don't count. I'm talking about the Day 1 starters.

Its situational for sure.  A rookie QB needs to have a good staff to prevent himself from being a bust.  Sadly, I don't think the Dolphins have the surroundings for Tannehill to be successful.

For this reason, I want Tannehill to sit.  I think you people who can't wait for him to start are just being impatient.  Its the right move.

This year should be Garrard and Moore.  The team's not going to make any waves this year.  There's realistically 1 playoff spot for 11 teams to grab (assuming Pitt/Baltimore will be a WC team).  I don't see the Dolphins being that team.  Have patience, take the pressure off, let the kid learn and rebuild some more next offseason.  Then hand him the reins when Moore's and Garrard's contracts are both expired.

Easy for fans to say that. Coaches don't think that way of, well we suck lets give up in August and save him till next year. That's not how coaches think or the league works. That's unrealistic.

^^ yes, I agree, and the coaches are always trying to win games.  But in reality, if he's not ready (and based on what I saw, he's not) then why feed him to the wolves?  I don't see the rush.

I read this the other day,from Ben Volin through twitter,on sulia..2 days ago...
Twitter link,to the Sulia page]https://twitter.com/BenVolinPBP/status/234301645234769920]Twitter link,to the Sulia page (https://twitter.com/BenVolinPBP/status/234301645234769920)

Source close to the #Dolphins QB competition shed an interesting light on David Garrard, who had been leading the battle after 2 weeks.

While Garrard looked the best of the three QBs, he also had some trouble grasping the playbook. When the Dolphins run their no-huddle, up-tempo offense in practice, Garrard would sometimes need QB coach Zac Taylor to call in the play two or three times, or have a teammate explain the play to him, before recalling the play and everyone's responsibility.

Then the Chad Johnson stuff broke,I took it with a grain of salt,unnamed source thing...But it made me think about Garrarrd's comments about Tannehill,knows this stuff beter than anyone comment...when asked about Tannehill holding out...

It's situational for sure, but I think it has more to do with the QB than anything else. Some QB's fold under pressure and others strive to get better. Look at Peyton and Eli Manning and Troy Aikman, they all struggled in their 1st years, didn't seem to hurt their progress at all. Yes for every success story, there's a Ryan Leaf, but that's why I think it just depends on the QB. Perhaps if Ryan Leaf wasn't thrust into the starter role from the beginning things would have turned out differently for him, but do we know that for sure? Maybe the only thing that would have changed is that it would have taken 2 or 3 years to find out what they did in 1 year?

I'm all for being patient if the situation dictates that you are. GB didn't rush Aaron Rogers, San Francisco didn't rush Steve Young, but in my opinion that was because GB had Brett Favre and San Fran had Joe Montana. In those cases it made sense to wait and have them learn from the vet, but how much can Ryan Tannehill really learn from watching Matt Moore play? I was prepared to let Tannehill sit and watch behind David Garrard because he seemed to have a command of the west coast offense and was playing at higher level then Tannehill. Matt Moore on the other hand has NOT displayed that command as of yet, in fact if anything Tannehill has looked more comfortable running the offense than Moore has. So what is the point of having Tannehill sit and wait? To protect him from being Ryan Leaf and crumbling when the chips are down? Well let's examine that for a second shall we?

What evidence is there that Tannehill doesn't deal with adversity well? In college Tannehill was told that he wasn't good enough to play QB, so instead Tannehill switched to WR and became possibly the best WR on the team, all the while he continued to sit it on all the QB sessions just waiting for his chance. When that chance came he played very well, so it wouldn't appear that Tannehill really has a problem with adversity at least not that I'm aware of.

I'm not being impatient, I'm just being realistic. With Garrard seemingly out of the picture, I see no reason to have Tannehill on the bench behind a QB that he really can't learn much from. Perhaps struggling a bit will help him work that much harder at his craft and perhaps, just perhaps he won't struggle at least not any more than Matt Moore might have.

Disagree that Garrard is out of the picture.  He's injured.  He may be back for opening day.  No one from the team has written him off, not once.

He's not out of the picture and he may very well be back for game 1, but you can't deny that Philbin has already said that he would like to name his starter before the 3rd preseason game and give that guy the most reps in that game and it doesn't appear that Garrard will be healthy enough for him to be the starter for the 3rd preseason game. Now Philbin didn't rule anything out either, so of course Garrard could be back in time for week 1 and he could be named the starter of game 1, but I think the odds are against him right now.

^^ you're right about that.  But the question is - has Philbin seen enough of Garrard already to see that he's better (or worse) than the other guys.

I'm hoping Garrard is back in time for the last preseason game, but I think that's optimistic.

Kim Boakamper reported last night he thinks Garrard's time in Miami may be over.

Boakamper reporting that so take it for what its worth.

I have no problem with them starting Tannehill week 1.  If he's playing well enough, there's no reason he shouldn't.  If not, I say leave Matt Moore in and give Tannehill all the mop up time he can get.  He should play as much as possible even if he's not starting.