Discipline Problem in Miami

There is right now, in front of your face, a discipline problem in Miami.  How does that make you feel?

Like a BLACK EYE.

Under Don Shula, it was clear as day and understood by all that discipline problems with players would not be tolerated.
Coach Shula even went on to have year after year of teams with the lowest penalty rate in the NFL and all the while becoming chairman on the Rules committee of the NFL and moving the league toward a new era; ushering in such things as the dynamic passing game and the faster-paced games we have now inherited in this generation. Back in the 1970’s there were long waits while a team was in the huddle and the game clock ticked slowly by with no action – totally different watching a game now. A man of integrity and ethics, Shula believed in winning outright by following the rules. And he deeply frowned on players getting drunk and beating their girlfriends or driving home from bars late at night or walking away after early-morning car crashes.

Bill Parcells, aka Big Tuna, we all know came out publicly and stated that he would not tolerate such behavior on day 1 of his tenure here. And yet it is not only happening and continuing it is possibly even worsening.  Feel proud of this team and it’s commitment to becoming a Champion?  Clearly the players do not fear or respect this man at this time.

Here is the real question now: which Miami Dolphin will be the next one to break the law and cause a flap for the team?

Not to mention this: what message do you think it conveys to the rookie players coming to the NFL for the first time and after having attended the recent NFL Rookie meet 6 1/2 weeks ago?

Teams that break rules and coddle and permit players to get in to trouble are losers. The very best case in point on this is the Oakland Raiders who lost the 2005 Super Bowl while having their Pro Bowl Center penalized because he was absent from team meetings on Super Bowl week and was found to be spending his time across the border in Tijuana getting drunk. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won by a large margin and you better believe the Raiders could have used their star center in the game.

So, when will action finally be taken and a “head on a pike” by the Miami Dolphins organization to stop this?

I’ll tell you that the NY Jets organization has to be laughing themselves silly and surely the Jets blogs are eating this up. Discipline problems tear teams apart and are an indication that players and management don’t care about standards and are not professional. And there is just too much now to sweep under the rug.  This is disgusting and is what I might have expected from the Oakland Raiders or perhaps the NY Jets.  But not the Miami Dolphins under Bill Parcells and Tony Sparano.

A public apology and a major change is what is needed now to recover from the building shame that is continuing.

The only real ray of sunshine is that it is happening right before training camp when Sparano and the Miami coaching staff will have the opportunity to thoroughly put the team through workouts and discipline programs.  That was the first thing that Don Shula did when he took over the team in 1970 and several painful workouts later they became molded into an actual valuable organization that can be properly called by the overused moniker, “team”.

This stinks of multi-millionaire elite players who flaunt the law because they think they are above it. It is not, not, not in keeping with the heritage and traditions that we know of the once-proud Miami Dolphins.

Think penalties will be coming down from Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner now?