Dolphins Mortgaging Future to Win Now

There is a lot of debate as to what makes an NFL team great. Some say you need an elite quarterback. Others say you need a great coach. The old school thinks that physical defense and hard running can still get your team a ring.

If you think back to all the great dynasties of the NFL, they succeeded in a myriad of different ways. Don Shula's Dolphins pummeled opponents with big running backs and a stiff defense. Bill Walsh's 49ers spread the field and threw over the competition. Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys won with balance.

There's not a secret schematic formula to win a Superbowl. There is only one thing that every NFL dynasty has in common, stability. Every great organization was either built around one coach, or one group of players. These teams slowly added the right pieces around their talent over several years, following a singular blueprint, and producing consistent success.

Right now, the Miami Dolphins have a pile of blueprints all drawn on top of each other. The reason why the Dolphins haven't been successful in over a decade is because they keep changing the plan every few years.

When Dan Marino retired, the Dolphins and Dave Wannstedt tried to build a team around Ricky Williams and a stellar defense. It almost worked, getting them to the playoffs every year, but never advancing very far.

When the team introduced Nick Saban, he brought in a bunch of veterans at the end of their primes, for big money. By the time he bolted for Alabama, the team was full of washed up and over priced albatrosses. The once vaunted Miami defense was hardly recognizable.

Cam Cameron was going to “fail forward fast” with his mix of spread and vertical passing concepts. Unfortunately, all Cameron did was fail fast and was gone within a year. The only relic from his era that's still around is Paul Soliai.

Bill Parcells and his unholy triumvirate of Jeff Ireland and Tony Sparano laid another blueprint on the stack and tore up the previous foundation. Parcells traded away long time linebacker Jason Taylor, and drafted tackle Jake Long. Parcells wanted to smash the ball down the middle, and win with defense.

After a few years of middling success, only Ireland is left. The most recent coach to be brought to the slaughter is Joe Philbin. Philbin runs a west coast offense! He's trying to sling the ball around with players that Parcells brought in to run the ball between the tackles!

This lack of a singular vision for the team, leads Miami to turn over its roster every few years. Any time a team lays a new foundation, they take a hit in talent. The best players for the old system leave town, and the new regime needs a few drafts to bring in talent to fit the new scheme.

That's why consistency is so important. If a team has an unchanging set of attributes that they value at each position, they can develop stars in their system and build depth through multiple drafts and free agency periods. If a team changes their values every offseason, they end up with a bunch of mismatched puzzle pieces that they try to plug into a new system. In other words, a mess. That's the Miami Dolphins.

The teams that do it the best, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots understand this concept. The Steelers have only had three coaches since 1969! Three! The Dolphins have gone through three coaches in three years before. The New England Patriots have been hand crafted by Bill Belichick. Every piece has been thoroughly inspected to see if it fits, before he inserts it into the starting line up.

I do not think Jeff Ireland is a great general manager, or even a good one. However, the Dolphins have stumbled into some consistency with him. His recent actions lead me to realize that even he knows this is his last chance to get things right. That's why he went out and won the off season. Ireland threw money at Mike Wallace and severely overpaid for some low impact linebackers and an above average tight end.

Have you looked at the money on those deals? Ireland back loaded them. The big money doesn't kick in until next year. Mike Wallace signed a $60 million deal. His salary this year is $1 million. Next year, it's $15 million. Ireland set up all the contracts this way, so he could bring in a bunch of talent under the cap this year and worry about the problems next year. This is irrational. It will leave the Dolphins strapped for cash for the next few off seasons.

This is a symptom of the lack of consistency in the Miami Dolphins organization. The brass has to constantly mortgage the future in a desperate attempt to keep his job. This leaves a mess for the next guy to clean up, and by the time he has finally cleaned it up, he gets fired.

I'm not arguing that Jeff Ireland is the man that we need to build around, but the Dolphins need to identify a guy they believe in and hand him the keys to the organization. They need to find someone they trust and let him build a team, through multiple drafts, and multiple off seasons. Miami needs one vision and one system that they can follow and build a consistent winner. Overhauling the team every few years is not the way to do it. If the Dolphins want to win a Superbowl, they need to create some stability.