Alternate Mount Rushmore Coaches

[dolphins4life]

Wannestedt
Saban
Cameron
Philbin

[Downunder Dolphan]

In order:

Phibin (by a country mile)
Cameron
Saban
Wilson (this may be seen as harsh, but Shula made him look really bad with a lot of the same players on the roster)

[Dave Gray]

Wannestedt
Saban
Cameron
Philbin

This is a pretty good list, I think.

It might have some recency bias in there.

I personally like Saban, but you gotta put him on a Mt. Rushmore for how it all went down and how he was vilified by the city.  Publicly lying about it was a bad look.  I understand why he did it, but it was the wrong call.

Philbin was lost.

Wanny represents the Peter Principle perfectly.  He's not terrible.  He's just bad enough to get promoted into ineptness, and then to sit in the job, slowly bleeding your resources for a decade.

The last spot is up for grabs.

...I think Cameron was probably not so terrible, but I can't think of someone better.  Gase had funny looking eyeballs, so that counts for something.

[Spider-Dan]

There are two coaches in the history of the Miami Dolphins to win the division outright (no tiebreakers).

One is Don Shula.
The other is Dave Wannstedt.

There are three coaches in the history of the Miami Dolphins to win a playoff game: Shula, Wannstedt, and Jimmy Johnson.

If we're going to talk about the worst coaches in the history of the franchise, every coach AFTER Dave Wannstedt is a better choice than Dave Wannstedt.  I mean, if you were to make a Mount Rushmore for the four BEST coaches in Dolphin history, how could you avoid putting Wannstedt on it?

My nomination for the mountain:

Saban
Wilson
Cameron
Philbin

If Tua continues his improvement and becomes an elite QB, Flores will replace Philbin on this list.

[Dave Gray]

Yeah, generally when I think of Mt. Rushmore, I'm trying to think of guys who represent four types of things.

So, Wanny had more success, no doubt.  But he would be representative of slow-bleed failure for me.
It doesn't mean that he was a worse coach than Gase, for example.  That's not how I'm interpreting it.

Saban either.  Saban was a decent coach.  But he was the villain.

[Spider-Dan]

So how do you avoid putting Wanny on the Mt. Rushmore of the 4 best Dolphin coaches?  Are you putting JJ, Sparano, and McDaniel up there?  It's insane to have Wanny on both the good and bad Mt. Rushmore.

[AQNOR]

In order:

Phibin (by a country mile)
Cameron
Saban
Wilson (this may be seen as harsh, but Shula made him look really bad with a lot of the same players on the roster)

That's because Wilson was a bit lax at enforcing discipline and was known to be a beer buddy with some of the older vets.   Shula came in and that all went away.   He whipped those guys into shape and they hated him for it... until they started winning and then they loved him for it.

[Dave Gray]

It's not THAT crazy to put Wanny on both.

It's not like it's a big sample size.
It's only like 11 guys.

Wanny has some accomplishments, yes, where these other guys don't.
But you can also argue that Wanny was a Barry Switzer -- given one of the best all-time defenses and squandered it.  If you look at his wins by season, he gets progressively worse until he's canned and then he left the cupboard pretty bare.  You can argue that it was him and the GM.

But you can definitely argue that Wanny's success was something that he fell into before the Pats got good.

[Spider-Dan]

But you can also argue that Wanny was a Barry Switzer -- given one of the best all-time defenses and squandered it.  If you look at his wins by season, he gets progressively worse until he's canned and then he left the cupboard pretty bare.  You can argue that it was him and the GM.

Wanny inherited a team in which their Hall of Fame QB had just retired after a humilating, franchise-worst playoff loss.
This team had just came off 9-, 10-, and 9-win seasons.
What did Wanny do with this inheritance?  Only 11 wins and a division title with a random journeyman at QB.

[Dave Gray]

I would definitely put Flores in my personal list.  I have always had a distaste for his style.

[Spider-Dan]

Just to point this out:

It's not THAT crazy to put Wanny on both.

If there are more than 7 total coaches, anyone who puts the same coach in their top 4 and bottom 4 is extremely bad at the most basic math.

[Dave Gray]

I think you and I are thinking that Mt. Rushmore are different things.

To, it isn't the straight 4 worst / 4 best of something.  In the spirit of the original Mt. Rushmore, usually this game is listing 4 of something and generally each item of the list represents something different.

So, you could do Saban because he was bad with optics.
Wanny because he bled the team.
Cameron because he was outright inept, etc.

They can be bad for different reasons.


And Wanny isn't necessarily on my bottom 4 guys, anyway.   I just can see how someone would make the case for him to be.

I probably would put Wanny in my top 4, but it would be close and there are a bunch of guys who are interchangeable.  I don't really distinguish a lot of them in that era where each guy got 4 years and pink slip.

[CF DolFan]

Philbin and Cameron only in my opinion. Everyone else was a step above those two.

[Dave Gray]

Who was the coach that would eat the grass from each field?  Was that Philbin?

[Spider-Dan]

Slightly OT, but I missed this one:

But you can also argue that Wanny was a Barry Switzer -- given one of the best all-time defenses and squandered it.

When you can say Barry Switzer "squandered his team" because he only won ONE Super Bowl, the expectations game has spiraled out of control.