Rebuilding the Phins: Makeup

This is the first in a 5 part look at how to rebuild the Miami Dolphins.  It is a simple task if you set a plan into motion, stick to the plan, and expect improvement while accepting the fact that you stand to fail more than succeed in the early stages.  It is a matter of team makeup vs. what you have on the team vs. what you need vs. what’s available. 

Over the next 5 parts, I will explore how this team is made up now, what type of players are needed to fit into that makeup, how to get them, how to put the plan into motion to make the team successful, and explore what is available potentially.  This is not necessarily random thoughts, and I am sure that you and many others will disagree.  It is how I would do it.  Given what we have now instead of what we don’t have.

Follow along and you will see how this team can be rebuilt and done so in a manner that sees results quicker than later.

In order to understand how to rebuild it, you first must understand how it got to this point.  Most of us already know that this team is the end result of bad cap management, bad draft picks, trading draft picks, over payed veteran contracts, and lack of coaching continuity since 2004.  There really is no need to go into each and every mistake the Dolphins have made, that would be a long laundry list, but consider one glaring problem the Phins have had, at least on offense…coaching continuity.  Since 2003, the Dolphins have had 5 different offensive co-coordinators.  Sure they say that the system doesn’t change, but the way the game is called and the philosophy of how to execute does.  No offense can be productive when each year they change OC’s.

MAKEUP:

The first part of this series is the “makeup” of this team.  That is not what players are where, it is how they mesh together.  Are they designed for a quick strike offensive power or a hard nose brutal defense.  Finesse or in your face?

On offense, the Dolphins resemble nothing of what they did only last year, let alone 2, 3, or 4 years ago.  Even Vernon Carey has stepped out of the shadows of his former self.  The Dolphins have evolved.  For now, it is hard to see if those changes will produce better results or worse.  Either way, change is taking place.

Consider that this team is no longer a ball control, wear them down offense, that was used last year under Saban, and in the entire regime of Dave Wannstedt.  Nor is this team the open field air it out system that was being installed under Scott Linehan.

It is not a hybrid of the team.  It is a system designed to score points, and keep the opposition off the field.  If nothing else, Cam Cameron is lauded in league circles as an offensive genius…to some extent of course.  He uses a mix of the grind it out flavor of Marty Schottenheimer and the open game of Norv Turner.

The makeup of the offense is not a matter of what we have now, but the direction that the team is heading in, in terms of the system being installed combined with the players brought in to accomplish it.

In this system the QB is a guy who plays smart.  He is not a gunslinger nor is he a caretaker.  He is the leader, he drives the team, he smartly manages the game.  Long sustained drives with an air and ground attack.  An orchestra leader.  The QB in this system does not need to be Hall of Fame material, he needs to be an intelligent field general.  The guy everyone looks up to and fights with not for.   The QB needs to be closer to a Steve Young or a Joe Theismann rather than a Dan Marino or a Peyton Manning.

The Running backs need to be fast and powerful.  They need to be able to move upfield, driving forward fast.  Able to hit the holes quickly before they close.  Good hand guys that can hit the flats or slide in behind a LB or in front of soft coverage.  They must be able to protect the QB and bulldoze the defense when the holes collapse.  In the open field, they need to be fast and nimble while moving the chains and eating up clock.  Smart with how they too control the speed of the game and the management of time.

On the outside, the wide outs need to be fast but more importantly need to be able to get solid separation and play smart.  They need to be on the same page as the QB in reading the defensive schemes thrown at them.  They can not freelance it like an Owens or a Moss, but control it like a Rod Smith or a Herman Moore.  Control the speed, drive off the line, push the defense back and open up the game.  The WR’s must have the feel for the tempo of the game.

The offensive line must be a unit of finesse.  They are not pancake blockers they are deliberate, they are one.  Each member of the offensive line must work with each other to form a one unit wall.  One guy moves forward they all do, if the pocket collapses on one side, it holds up on another.  The line must function as a single cell not a single unit.  Each man must elevate himself to the next.  The line play dictates the outcome of all the other pieces.  In Indy, the line does not need to block well because Manning can sling it, his release and his WR’s’ open up the running game, in this Miami system, the offensive line dictates the outcome of the rest of the team.  It all starts up front, it all ends up front as well.

If the offense is a little easier to understand, then the defense is an enigma.  Ask the question last year as to the makeup of the unit and they would say it was a hybrid team build around a complicated system that utilized speed and quickness in it’s front 7 and a system of schemes in the secondary.  Ask that question now and you couldn’t tell if it was a 4-3 or a 3-4 or a hybrid of the two.

The makeup of the defense is hard to understand because realistically, right now, there isn’t one.  Injuries have depleted depth, and age has depleted production.  The secondary is a mixed bag of unproven and unproductive youth and cheap free agents. 

But what is the makeup of the team?  Considering that we are seeing the final years, maybe even the final games for Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor, the makeup of the unit is probably the biggest part of the rebuild process.  Unlike the offense, it has no identity.  It is not comprised of pure speed, it is not an in your face hard nose team either.  It falls somewhere in between.  Perhaps only for the fact that it has no identity.  It is neither here nor there, it just is.

The start of this “Rebuild” starts and ends with the questions surrounding DC Dom Capers.  Will he or won’t he be here next year, the year after that.  Where a new offensive coach or a new head coach would inherit an offensive unit that has the ground work for what was outlined above, the defensive side of the ball is wide open for Capers or a replacement.

To illustrate that point better, we can start with the defensive line.  Traylor is old and should be replaced this year.  The youth of the team is inexperienced and none of them fit a particular mold for a system.  There is not big bodied young NT, no upfield pounding DT with the size and quickness to run a 4-3 or the mass to run a 3-4.  Jason Taylor will need to be replaced at end and Matt Roth is still a question.

Move back to the LB positions and ask yourself what it there?  Channing Crowder is emerging as the teams vocal leader, but his play needs to be elevated as well.  Will he be the replacement for Zach Thomas or will he be moved back to the outside?  Again, no identity to build around.  If the front 7 is bad, the secondary is worse.  Decimated by injuries, the secondary not only lacks talent, but lacks youth as well.

Where there is youth, there are questions.  Enough questions that the team as a whole can not count on them to step up.  Enough questions to not build your team around them.  In terms of the team itself, there is no makeup to the defensive unit.  It will start with coaching on that side of the ball.  Not coaching the fundamentals to the players, but literally coaching.  Who will lead this unit and where will they lead them to?  Will this team become a pure 3-4 or a 4-3 or will this team move on to say a Tampa II?  Right now, it could go anywhere, there are no players on this unit that dictate which direction this team goes from here on out.  Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas a few years ago of course, but not now.

The Makeup of this entire team revolves around one thing.  Continuity.  As changes are made to each position, they must be made with the knowledge that those changes are being made in a direction.  A player may be the best at his position but if he does not fit the system, then he isn’t worth the money.

For the first time in almost 5 years, the Dolphins will enter the off-season with money to spend, without actually having to cut salary to make money to spend.  The offensive makeup of the team is established in its infancy, but it has a direction, a personality developing like all small children.  The defense however, has yet to be conceived.  It needs to be.  Whether by coaching addition or subtraction.

On Monday, I will begin looking at the next stage of rebuilding, recognizing “what the team has” compared to what it needs.