Vic Fangio on what went wrong in Miami

[Dolfanalyst]

Philly has a lot of great young talent who bought into Fangio and played disciplined football. Miami has guys who think they are the stars and didn't care for him. It was known that Ramsey and others would freelance. The results speak for themselves.

"Disciplined football" is not something Mike McDaniel engenders.

[masterfins]

One has to think Fangio's experience of the Dolphins' team culture was analogous to his being a restaurant manager who tried to get his employees (i.e., the defensive players) to be dedicated to the job and give high effort, only to be undermined by the restaurant owner (i.e., McDaniel) who frequented the establishment as a silly drunk who permitted the employees to behave similarly.  Nobody would want to persist in that capacity under those circumstances.  All he needed to do was make a move to a team with a better leader and a better culture and the struggle to get players to be serious and dedicated disappeared.

+1

When players complain about a coach because he doesn't want them partying during the season, then you know they don't have the determination to be the best at their jobs.

[Dolfanalyst]

It’s also fair to ask: Why do Fangio’s old-school methods work better on the hardscrabble Eagles than the country-club Dolphins?

That’s the kind of questions the Dolphins general manager Chris Grier and McDaniel should be dissecting over the coming weeks as they try to right this franchise.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/dave-hyde-philadelphia-won-super-bowl-on-back-of-dolphins-other-team-s-mistakes/ar-AA1yKpBC?ocid=BingNewsSerp

[Spider-Dan]

Another question that should be asked:

Given that Fangio signed an agreement to become a temporary defensive consultant for the Eagles after having agreed in principle to become the highest-paid defensive coordinator in the league with the Dolphins, how committed was Fangio to Miami in the first place?

Should the Dolphins' front office have been more concerned from the very start about Fangio's level of commitment?

[Downunder Dolphan]

There is no evidence that McDaniel interfered with how Fangio ran the defense in Miami.
Also, Fangio had to start caring, which he didn't do in Miami.
Having superior defensive talent (that remained healthy) didn't hurt.

I seem to remember that PHI made the Super Bowl two years ago, before Fangio was the DC.

The Eagles defense was decent in 2022 (top ten), but was horrible in 2023, ranking 26th overall and 31st against the pass:
https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/2023-nfl-defense-rankings-team-pass-and-rush-stats

Fangio was brought in specifically to clean that up, and with an excellent draft netting both Mitchell and DeJean, this season they're ranked 1st in both total defense and pass defense.

A decent run with injuries certainly helped (that said, Nakobe Dean would have been a very handy addition) but Fangio deserves a lot of credit. Plus, if you want to drag out the injury card, as previously mentioned the Dolphins defense under Fangio was in the top 5 of all defensive categories up to the start of all those injuries to our starters the last few games.

[Spider-Dan]

A head coach will inherently interfere with a coordinator if the coordinator needs a serious, dedicated approach from his players to run his unit, and the head coach, who has more organizational power than a coordinator, establishes a lax, silly team culture in which the players in general aren't sufficiently serious and dedicated and accountable.

None of this prevents Fangio from holding his defensive players accountable to his (Fangio's) own standard.

Fangio had the power to run his defense as he saw fit, including the "culture" for the players on the defensive side of the ball.  If he chose not to exercise that power - possibly because he was checked out and never wanted to be in Miami in the first place - he is responsible for that failure.

When you are in charge of the defense, you do not get to blame "culture issues" on someone else.  It was Fangio's job to establish a culture of accountability for the defense, and (according to you) he utterly failed to do so.

[Dolfanalyst]

None of this prevents Fangio from holding his defensive players accountable to his (Fangio's) own standard.

Fangio had the power to run his defense as he saw fit, including the "culture" for the players on the defensive side of the ball.  If he chose not to exercise that power - possibly because he was checked out and never wanted to be in Miami in the first place - he is responsible for that failure.

When you are in charge of the defense, you do not get to blame "culture issues" on someone else.  It was Fangio's job to establish a culture of accountability for the defense, and (according to you) he utterly failed to do so.

Why would he want to continue doing the additional work of attempting to correct in his defensive players McDaniel's mismanagement of the team culture when he could just as easily go where there's a better head coach and a better culture and offload that additional work?

[Spider-Dan]

It is inaccurate to use the term "additional work" if you never did the work to begin with.

The defensive culture was always Fangio's responsibility.  That's why he was made the highest-paid DC in the league!

[CF DolFan]

Jevon Holland is suddenly a fan of Fangio. One of the first responses to his twee said "Vic back to you" and they posted a gif of Snoopy kicking rocks. hahaha


Jev
@quickdrawjev
Vic calling a HELL of a game!
8:20 PM · Feb 9, 2025
·
375.8K
 Views

[Dolfanalyst]

It is inaccurate to use the term "additional work" if you never did the work to begin with.

The defensive culture was always Fangio's responsibility.  That's why he was made the highest-paid DC in the league!

The defensive culture can be the DC's responsibility, but if the culture the DC is trying to establish is sharply at odds with the culture the head coach establishes for the team as a whole, the job will likely no longer be attractive.  The DC can simply get a new job where that isn't at issue, and the task of working at odds with his head coach no longer on the DC's plate.

Hence this passage in the following article:

It’s also fair to ask: Why do Fangio’s old-school methods work better on the hardscrabble Eagles than the country-club Dolphins?

That’s the kind of questions the Dolphins general manager Chris Grier and McDaniel should be dissecting over the coming weeks as they try to right this franchise.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/dave-hyde-philadelphia-won-super-bowl-on-back-of-dolphins-other-team-s-mistakes/ar-AA1yKpBC?ocid=BingNewsSerp

There's a reason why that's a legitimate question, and it's exactly because of what I'm saying here.

[Downunder Dolphan]

Jevon Holland is suddenly a fan of Fangio. One of the first responses to his twee said "Vic back to you" and they posted a gif of Snoopy kicking rocks. hahaha

Holland wants a gig in Philly next season?

Better harden up MF 

[Downunder Dolphan]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/dave-hyde-philadelphia-won-super-bowl-on-back-of-dolphins-other-team-s-mistakes/ar-AA1yKpBC?ocid=BingNewsSerp

That whole article questions the attitude of the players, the coaches, the GM and the owner. Basically the whole franchise under Ross.

Is this a serious team that wants to win a title, or a money making machine and a sideshow? Maybe it deserves a thread of its own?

[Dolfanalyst]

That whole article questions the attitude of the players, the coaches, the GM and the owner. Basically the whole franchise under Ross.

Is this a serious team that wants to win a title, or a money making machine and a sideshow? Maybe it deserves a thread of its own?

There's a reason why Dan Campbell emphasized the things he did in his introductory press conference with the Lions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLhlzaL82zY

That sets a tone for the entire franchise.  He's telling the world what the Lions' team culture is going to be.

[Spider-Dan]

Dan Campbell is the perfect example of what I'm talking about, and that press conference is exactly why.

You complain about McDaniel being a "goofball coach," but Campbell was compared to The Dude from The Big Lebowski (i.e. a comedy movie) when he started.  And he embraced this comparison, to the extent that he literally put it on the nameplate of his office:



And that "biting kneecaps" press conference you are praising today?  It was considered a joke across the league when it happened:

The clip was a head-scratcher and a headline-maker. Memes followed – the Detroit Lions were all about biting kneecaps – and went viral, some affectionate, but most incredulous and totally convinced that here, in the person of a coach who in truth looks like 10,000 auto workers in Detroit, only a bit bigger, was another reason to make the Lions the butt of a joke.

But the difference - the only difference that ever matters - is that Dan Campbell has won 27 games in the last 2 seasons, along with a conference championship appearance and a #1 seed.  So he can openly compare himself to the lead of a famous comedy film after a widely-ridiculed press conference about "biting kneecaps" and have people like you praise him for his no-nonsense toughness, while you simultaneously bash McDaniel for being an unserious jokester.

[Dolfanalyst]

But the difference - the only difference that ever matters - is that Dan Campbell has won 27 games in the last 2 seasons, along with a conference championship appearance and a #1 seed.

And that difference is largely because Campbell's personality -- what his team takes on -- is consistent with winning at a high level in pro football.  McDaniel's isn't.

Scan through a list of the most successful head coaches in the history of college and pro football and you'll find lots of "Dan Campbells."  You won't find a single Mike McDaniel.

And it ain't any more complicated than that, Spider-Dan.