Commentary: These Dullphins have no flavor

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/dolphins/content/sports/epaper/2008/07/27/a1c_george_0728.html

Commentary: These Dullphins have no flavor

By DAVE GEORGE
Palm Beach Post Staff Columnist

Sunday, July 27, 2008

DAVIE — The Miami Dolphins' logo is the same, displaying good ol' Flipper with a too-tight football helmet and, by his expression, a migraine to go with it.

The July heat is the same, pressing down on the crowded public grandstands like a George Foreman grill on a greasy burger.

Something else about training camp, however, is seriously strange.

The Dolphins themselves have vanished. The Dullphins, truly recognizable to friends and family members alone, have taken their place, the greatest invasion of outsiders since the replacement roster of the 1987 strike season.

This franchise is a blank canvas by design, in other words, or as close as Bill Parcells and his extreme makeover staff can get it.

"When you get to training camp," says head coach Tony Sparano, "you want as few distractions as possible. And what is good in this situation is that there are no distractions."

No Brett Favre comeback confusion. No Peyton Manning injury talk. No Devin Hester contract tension at the start of training camp.

Wouldn't want any of that foolishness, would we? That's the problem with gamebreaking stars. They get people talking about one guy when they should be thinking about the team. They've got no place in the new Dullphins' locker room.

In there, it's quiet, except for the sound of mental gears grinding hard.

Sort of like the grandstands were, actually, at Sunday's training-camp practice session. Unless Ricky Williams or Ronnie Brown got loose on an occasional running play, most fans just sat there, not knowing whose name to scream.

Suppose a guy like wide receiver David Kircus stretched out to make a diving grab on a deep ball, a Kircus catch, you might call it, like the overthrown John Beck pass he hauled in on Sunday? All anybody could do at that moment was bark out a generic celebration, "YEAH!" or something like that, followed by the rustling of handout roster sheets to find No. 85, Mark Duper's old number, Nick Buoniconti's old number, and match it to the name of Kircus, whose 80 career touchdown catches at Div. II Grand Valley State were an NCAA record.

Now don't even pretend you knew that last part, or that it was a special goal to get Kircus' autograph as players worked their way down the chain-link fence in front of the grandstand at the end of practice.

There he was, though, the last player to scrawl his name, still introducing himself to fans, long after other newcomers like first-round draft pick Jake Long, rookie quarterback Chad Henne and even Sparano himself had broken off and headed for the air conditioning.

"Nobody knows who I am," said Kircus, "but I like it that way. I like to earn my stripes. It's been that way everywhere I've been, Detroit, Denver, and now the Dolphins. I was drafted late (sixth round in 2003). I wasn't one of those guys who signed for a lot of money. If you're here, you've got that attitude."

That same attitude, with stripes to be earned and season tickets to be savored as investment property, must be shared by Dullfans in 2008. A clean break with the franchise's past this truly is, right down to the fact that no one has been assigned the numbers of departed stars Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas, 99 and 54, respectively.

With that clean break, of course, comes the dirty work of turning the Dullphins into Dolphins again, respected, even revered. Parcells, Sparano and General Manager Tim Ireland have determined that restarting the team from virtual scratch is the best way to do that, and the timing really couldn't be better.

After all, anything is going to look like a step up after 1-15.

There's nothing in that kind of disaster worthy of keeping as a foundation, or a cornerstone, or even an as-is carpet remnant.

"I'm not going to lie," said linebacker Channing Crowder. "Taylor and Zach, it's wild to look over and not see either one of them. ... It's part of the league. I knew when they cut Junior Seau. When Junior Seau got cut twice, anybody can get cut. Junior Seau was God to me when I was growing up."

There's not so much as a minor deity around here anymore, at least not in uniform.

All the same, Sparano, offensive coordinator Dan Henning and defensive coordinator Paul Pasqualoni, newcomers all, will know just enough about this group to field a team for an exhibition game two Saturday's from now.

Tampa Bay is the opponent on that night of Aug. 9. Who knows? Maybe the Bucs will have signed Favre by then.

What a dreaded, dreaded distraction that would be, though Jon Gruden would try to fight through it somehow.

Sparano, he's all for keeping it simple.

Vanilla.

The only flavor that should be served at Dolphin Stadium ice-cream stands this season.