The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/dave-hyde-in-biggest-games-dolphins-keep-lacking-dna-to-handle-adversity/ar-AA1v2umf?ocid=BingNewsSerp

If it's true that a team takes on the personality of its coach, and it's coach's personality is only slightly different from Pee Wee Herman's, how can the team possibly be tough?

The team will be the opposite of tough, and again I sounded that alarm about McDaniel way back when he was hired.  The lack of toughness has permeated his tenure with the team, and that isn't consistent with winning in the game of professional football.

Hyde's article (linked above) highlights that, and the evidence regarding the issue has mounted from various sources.

Hard disagree.

McDaniel is the best thing about the team.

I was shocked at this grab in the Hyde article:

“McDaniel is 1-14 against teams with a winning record in his 3 seasons,” former Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This tells me they have a bit of a front runner mentality and when things get tough they don’t have it in their DNA to handle adversity as well as some of the top tier teams."

I don't think this is entirely accurate - we've beaten Baltimore, Buffalo and Dallas who all had winning records at the time, so that's at least 3 wins in that period. That said, we haven't done it yet this season (and Houston is likely to be the last chance). It does go to show that we had extremely soft fixtures the last three seasons.

You’re a fascist dude and if being a fascist is what it takes to win at football then I am out

After 42 years of supporting the Dolphins, I think I'm more of a masochist.

There are a certain group of fans that just love tough head coaches like Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia, or even Brian Flores.  These soft players need a Strong Head Coach to install some discipline!  This is why Belichick's assistants keep getting hired over and over: this fetish about a professional football team somehow being soft.

There are three active coaches in the league who have won a title in the last decade: Andy Reid, Sean McVay, and Doug Pederson.  Ask yourself if the primary trait you associate with these coaches is "toughness."

If tough coaches like Brian Flores or Nick Saban can't even make the playoffs but a "Pee Wee Herman" coach like McDaniel can make it in his first two years, what does that say about your notion of toughness?

The big thing about these three SB winning coaches are that they are creative and adaptive - they work around the personnel they have, and address problems (I also think Reid in particular is a lot tougher than you admit to). John Harbaugh is another one just outside that timeframe who I think is of a similar nature.

McDaniel was rightly seen as a breath of fresh air early on, but what we are seeing now is the same stubborness to adapt that Flores had. The NFL has adjusted, and he hasn't. All of his plans are dependent on a few select players, and everything fails when they fail or are not there. He needs to change this for us to move forward.

The other thing may well be true is that Miami is a special case compared to a lot of other NFL teams. It's a warm weather destination, it has a lot of off-field distractions, we have a clueless owner. McDaniel may not need the macho toughness of Mike Ditka, but it's looking like he needs to find a harder edge.

Players are talking big, talking tough and not backing it up. It's looking more like a group of mercenaries than a team as time goes on, and that's not a good thing. A coach can either address it or ignore it - we saw how that turned out when Philbin chose the latter path.

Reid would be Dan Reeves if Mahomes didn’t fall in his lap

lol same but not you mate you’re cool

Lot's of people have been saying it for years but this team just isn't built to beat good physical teams. They work great against weaker teams but the biggest problem on this team has always been running when the other team knows we are running.

Our Center is giving up almost 50 lbs to nose-guards and gets blown backwards just like our guards. They work great in space as they are quick but when it gets physical they get clobbered.

We also need to shore up the DTs, LBs and safety position. Might not hurt to pick up one big physical back for short yardage.

My first move would be to fire Chris "you guys are more worried about it (offensive line) than we are" Grier. I would keep Mike as he keeps getting better IMO.

I know many people do not like Omar but he makes a really good point IMO.

"The bottom line is Miami's entire line of scrimmage needs to be rebuilt.

Despite the NFL's growing obsession with fantasy football, and gambling on prop bets, football games are won and lost in the trenches, especially in December games and the postseason. That happens to be the time when the Dolphins flop around like a porpoise out of water. "

Two issues with the above:

1) If toughness as a team is necessary but not sufficient to win, then there will be lots of head coaches whose personalities inspire toughness who don't win.  By the same token there will be zero head coaches whose personalities don't inspire toughness who win.  Toughness as a team is necessary but not sufficient for winning.  If you have it, it doesn't guarantee winning in itself, but if you don't have it, you're guaranteed not to win.

2) Toughness exists on a continuum.  If you quantified toughness on a 0 to 100 scale and (hypothetically) winning in the NFL required that a head coach's toughness rate at 70 or higher on that scale, then Brian Flores's score of let's say 95 might be too high and therefore counterproductive, whereas Mike McDaniel's score of 5 would be far too low to win.

In the end you'd have a condition necessary (but not sufficient) for winning in the NFL that just isn't present with McDaniel.

The big thing about those coaches is that there is a lot about winning in the NFL that has nothing to do with scheming and creativity -- it has everything to do with your team culture and whether it consists of the grit and mettle necessary to overcome adversity.  And those coaches' personalities inspire that in their players and thereby create an effective team culture in that area.  McDaniel's does not.

So while McDaniel may be a brilliant technician, that would equal success only if the technical aspects of the game are what wins.  But they aren't the only thing that wins -- there are other aspects of the game necessary for winning, and McDaniel comes up woefully short on those.

In the end he would make a great offensive coordinator, but a central leader of men on an NFL football team -- a head coach -- he is not.

Pretty strange how the "culture" under Andy Reid in KC suddenly got a lot better when Mahomes arrived, and at almost the same time, the "culture" under Belichick in NE suddenly got a lot worse when Brady left.

Once again, understand the concept of "necessary but not sufficient."  The culture is necessary but not sufficient for winning.  If you have it, it doesn't guarantee winning, but if you don't have it, it guarantees not winning.

There is no way to determine "good culture" except as a hindsight evaluation of teams that are performing well.

If you're losing, your team has bad culture.
If you're winning, your team has good culture.
There is no exception to this rule.

It's a meaningless, tautological metric.

And as another example of the absolute irrelevance of any measurable value of "culture":

(https://i.redd.it/u5k3e7174ylc1.jpeg)

Ranked #1?  Your very own Miami Dolphins.
Ranked #31?  The defending back-to-back champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Doesn't matter.  Winning is winning, so KC has "a great culture" and MIA has "a terrible culture."

Wrong -- again, understand the concept "necessary but not sufficient."  It's possible to lose with a good culture.  What's not possible is to win with a bad one.

Please provide examples of a losing team with a "good culture."
I look forward to seeing how one may determine the culture is good when the results are bad.

There's no such thing as "good culture" without good results.  It's impossible; the results are the only mechanism for validating "culture."

This is literally the same thing as "If you're winning, your team has good culture."

So what you're arguing here is that nothing can be determined, so there's no use in providing for you examples of anything.  You'll simply say they're conclusive of nothing.

Ryan Fitzpatrick, who graduated from Harvard University and played on 11 different NFL teams over a 17-year professional career, believes this about the current Dolphins' culture:

“McDaniel is 1-14 against teams with a winning record in his 3 seasons,” former Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This tells me they have a bit of a front runner mentality and when things get tough they don’t have it in their DNA to handle adversity as well as some of the top tier teams."

I'll go with that when determining the Dolphins' culture, over musings on a message board.

Likewise you have these folks' ringing in in a similar manner -- current and former players and a former coach:

Over in the losing locker room, linebacker Jordyn Brooks said too many players around him weren’t tough-minded in a way that keeps echoing around this team. Pittsburgh Steeler DeSean Elliott, who played for the Dolphins last year, said the same recently. Dolphins safety Jordan Poyer said it when he arrived last summer. Former defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said it when he left last winter.

But by all means, let's hear what "Spider-Dan" thinks.

You're the one arguing that "good culture" can exist without good results.  So give some examples of teams that you believe demonstrate this.
You can't, because it's impossible.

But to recap:  Ryan Fitzpatrick, Harvard graduate, played 17 years in the NFL (starting just over half those games) and made the playoffs exactly zero times, while being famous for attending press conferences dressed like this:

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/23/sports/23nflmatchups-bucs/merlin_143845284_64fa36cb-8ea6-4b59-9402-cee26465b21b-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)

These qualifications apparently earn him enough of your respect to cite him approvingly as an authority on "toughness."

Meanwhile, Mike McDaniel, Yale graduate, has coached his team to the playoffs in both of his first two full seasons as a head coach, while orchestrating the #1 offense in the league in only his second year.  And these accomplishments, in contrast, earn him so little of your respect that you repeatedly refer to him as "Pee Wee Herman."

Vic Fangio didn't think the team was "tough"?  Then Vic Fangio is publicly airing his own shortcomings as a coordinator who was the primary person responsible for setting the tone on the defense.  If you think the defense is soft, and you're the defensive coordinator, look inward. DeSean Elliott agreeing that Fangio's defense was soft is an indictment of Fangio, not McDaniel.  Unless your argument is that McDaniel should have been tougher... on Fangio, for fielding a soft defense?

The play of Jord*ns Poyer and Brooks does not even remotely warrant commentary from them on how everyone else is falling short.  Again, look inward.

So there is commentary about the Dolphins' culture from various sources, all of them with NFL experience as players and coaches, some of them on the Dolphins' team itself, all converging toward the same conclusion, yet it's the perspective on the Dolphins' culture of one "Spider-Dan" that prevails in his mind, despite that he has zero experience with the team.  He overrules all of them.

YOU - not Fitzpatrick, not Fangio, not Elliott, Poyer, or Brooks - are the one arguing that it is specifically Mike McDaniel whose personal "lack of toughness" is to blame for the team's woes.  It is not any of these professional players or coaches saying, "If it's true that a team takes on the personality of its coach, and it's coach's personality is only slightly different from Pee Wee Herman's, how can the team possibly be tough?"

Don't try to pretend that your own personal grudge against McDaniel is The Opinion Of Professionals.  You have spent exactly as much time in the NFL as I have.

If there's a better explanation, let's hear it.

OK: Mike McDaniel has easily accomplished more in the league than any of the other professionals that are criticizing him.

Fangio was an abject failure as a head coach, with 0 playoff appearances, 0 winning seasons, and a record that was 11 games under .500.
Fitzpatrick was a mediocre journeyman QB who didn't make the playoffs once in almost two decades of play.
Elliott and Brooks are replacement-level players (with a combined 0 Pro Bowls) whose previous teams cheerfully let walk.
If we are to weight opinions by expertise, these people are all dramatically worse at their jobs than McDaniel is at his, and their opinions of his performance should be weighted accordingly.

The one person with a reasonable claim to competence is (the ghost of) Jordan Poyer, who said "opponents believed the Dolphins would fold under pressure."  This seems entirely believable coming from a player who was on a team that regularly beat the Dolphins, but at no point did Poyer indicate that this was specifically McDaniel (your sole point of focus).  Poyer was in Buffalo for 7 years and 3 coaches' worth of Miami collapses, so I'm sure his opinion of the Dolphins' toughness was not too far removed from, say, Tom Brady, Travis Kelce, or Joe Burrow's opinion of the toughness of Poyer's Bills.

Still waiting for you to give an example of a team that YOU believe had "good culture" without good results, BTW.

+1

I agree it's not one or the other, it's both to a degree.

IMO the central problem is Tua, I don't think he has shown the ability to lead this team when it is against a tough opponent or when they need to come from behind in the 4th quarter.  Yes he had a good game against Dallas in 2023 and a good game against Baltimore in 2022, but that's not enough.  When a Brady, Mahomes, Rodgers, Marino, Allen, Montana, or a long list of other QB's came in needing to score late in the 4th quarter there was/is a belief that they could do it by their teammates. THAT'S CULTURE!  I've really been hoping to see this from Tua.  I was hoping his great play against lesser, or equal, teams would carry over but it just hasn't.  Secondarily, the problem becomes McDaniel; he really needs to get on Tua and the other players when they don't get it done.  This isn't Pee Wee football, if their feelings get hurt they don't belong in an NFL uniform.

First, McDaniel isn't great at his job -- the Dolphins are 1-14 against teams with a winning record in his three seasons.  You might say "well he made the playoffs two years though."  However, making the playoffs alone isn't a reliable measure of success in the NFL -- 44% of NFL teams make the playoffs every year, making the accomplishment only slightly more improbable than a coin flip.

Second, these folks aren't criticizing McDaniel directly -- they're criticizing the performance of the team, i.e., the following:

“McDaniel is 1-14 against teams with a winning record in his 3 seasons,” former Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This tells me they have a bit of a front runner mentality and when things get tough they don’t have it in their DNA to handle adversity as well as some of the top tier teams."

It's by extension -- and rather easily at that -- that we can identify McDaniel's personality as responsible for a "fun and games" culture that limits the team from switching gears and becoming dominant when it needs to be -- it simply isn't their culture.  Their performance against good teams and their performance in second halves of games is entirely consistent with that.

Again, if a team takes on the personality of its coach, and its coach's personality is only slightly different from Pee Wee Herman's, don't expect that team to exemplify toughness and resilience.  Expect it to be pretty much a clown show, and when other teams bear down with their own toughness and resilience in critical game situations, expect the team to fold rather easily.

And this is exactly what we've seen over three years now, and what multiple players and coaches associated with the team have attested to themselves.

McDaniel has babied Tua throughout his tenure here.  He may have helped pull Tua out of the hole he was in from Flores's mishandling of him, but he's incapable of getting him over the hump from that to a player who exhibits grit and mettle because he exhibits very little of that himself.