Does Sparano and Henning have the guts?

[ethurst22]

During the first four games of 1983, the Dolphins offense was dead. Don Shula made a historic decision.

He benched David Woodley for some guy named Dan Marino. Made Duriel Harris, Nat Moore and Jimmy Cefalo backups to a sixth round rookie named Mark Clayton and a second year guy who spent his rookie season on IR that ran worse pass patterns than Ted Ginn Jr. His name is Mark Duper.

Presto! With a little innovation and courage, Air Marino was born.

Shula changed the offense 1/4 into the season from a run/option based offense to a pass oriented offense. Miami made the playoffs but lost to Seattle but the seeds of a powerful offense had been planted. He made the starters accountable and gave Marino the keys to the offense.

Which brings me to Tony Sparano and Dan Henning.

Are they willing to break the Wannstedtian theory of it's no sin to punt or kick field goals, especially in the red zone? I give Miami credit for being re-innovators with the Wildcat but it would be three times more effective if they could get the ball at least 30 yards down field.

And you don't have to be fast to get seperation (see Chrebet, Wayne, Largent, Steve or Welker, Wes).

If Hennes' best attribute is throwing the long ball, do they have faith in Chad Henne to get it done? Do they have faith to tell Patrick Turner that he is the man whether he likes it or not? Do they shake up the defensive backfield and tell them to really go after people?

The running game is our strength but shouldn't Miami put more downfield aerial fireworks in Henne's hand and tell the receivers to go get it at any cost?

Ted Ginn reminds me a lot of Duper who I watched when the Dolphins were still practicing at Biscayne College. Duper was a track man with deadly speed but when he got to Miami, he could only run two patterns...straight down the field and comeback patterns on the sidelines. Duper even had problems getting off the line of scrimmage. Later on he mastered the deep in because Marino could throw those kind of passes effortlessly.

I think that coaches and GM's put too much emphasis on what a guy cannot do instead of what a guy can really do. Ginn is not a person that goes over the middle but neither is Randy Moss. You can sneak a certain type of pattern that they don't run all the time in the game but that's about it.

If you never saw the Dolphins play and somebody gave you a roster, you would say that it's a playoff team. You've got two potential HOF (Porter and JT), a Heisman Trophy Winner that still has pop in his legs (Ricky Williams) and a brusing back that's tough to bring down (Ronnie Brown). There are leaders on the team to get the job done.

We are 0-3 and we need the same spark that we got last year (2009) and back in 1983. Henne is no Marino but would it be asking too much if they were to shake up the lineup on offense and defense and start throwing the ball down the field.

Do they have the guts to alter the offense at this point. What do U think?