Miami Dolphins OC Bill Lazor Calls Out Joe Philbin?

The Miami Dolphins have had some issues so far in this young season. Let’s recap for you know, grins and such about what’s happened since January to today. Philbin teamed up with Dawn Aponte and got Jeff Ireland fired then Stephen Ross couldn’t get a higher profiled GM because they couldn’t fire Philbin. The day before Ireland got fired Philbin fired his long time mentor Mike Sherman and almost quit the team because of it but Sherman talked him out of it. The season starts with Bill Lazor as the teams offensive coordinator but in pre-season Philbin tells the media he expected more from the offense. Back-handed-slap?

Three weeks ago Joe Philbin refused to tell the media who he was starting at quarterback and that alienated Dawn Aponte and set into motion a series of management level hairline fractures including a not-so-happy owner, Stephen Ross. A week prior to that we hear about friction in the locker room on the defensive side of the ball over play calling by DC Kevin Coyle. With me so far?

Now we hear that players are questioning what is going on, i.e. the use of a defensive timeout with six seconds left in the game, wasted timeouts the series before, and of course the running of the ball on 3rd and nine thus punting back to Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers. Then last night we learn that Joe Philbin is queasy and antsy about turning the ball over late and therefore opted to take over the play calling from Bill Lazor which makes us wonder how often this actually happens because let’s face it there are a lot of questionable calls on that field throughout a game and I get the feeling Lazor isn’t the one making the mistakes.

Today arrives with news that Bill Lazor not only didn’t call the plays on that final drive but also wasn’t thrilled or on board with them as quoted by David Hyde in the Sun-Sentinel.

"“My irst thought was I wish we had made more first downs,” he said. “I thought when we stand up in front of the offense, and we tell them we want to play to win, play aggressive, play loose, and I think it’s our job to coach that way too. When coach makes certain decisions on how we are going to play the game, then I think the players appreciate giving them a chance to go win the game. We could have started taking a knee two drives earlier and run the clock earlier, but that’s not how you play.”"

Was that a backhanded shot at Joe Philbin? Is Bill Lazor calling out his head coach? At some point if this trend continues Lazor will have to find something other than a backhanded swat as his career is on the line here. Lazor is an up and coming offensive coordinator and someday a head coach prospect but he is losing a lot of credibility in Miami under Joe Philbin who seems to continually revert back to the Mike Sherman book of how to lose football games. That’s not to say Lazor doesn’t shoulder responsibility, he does but it is becoming clearer and clearer that we simply do not know enough regarding Philbin’s input into the play calling.

What we do know is it appears that we can direct our attention to Philbin on a lot of questionable half-ending and game-ending decisions that made no sense whatsoever. Especially when the offense had been playing well up to that point.