With the firing of Adam Gase, Miami will look to find a new team leader for the fourth time in the last ten years. Miami has tried numerous offensive minded guys but now it’s time to go defensive.
The Miami Dolphins fired head coach Adam Gase after Sunday’s blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills, Miami will look to bring in the new year with a brand new head coach. This seemed inevitable seeing how Miami has played the last two seasons. Not all of Miami’s struggles have been squarely on the shoulders of Gase, but to absolve him of completely would be a mistake.
His game planning was ineffective, his play calling uninspiring and his half-time adjustments got worse and worse as the season went on. It was absolutely time to move on from Gase.
With his firing, and Mike Tannenbaum’s “reassignment,” Miami is setting itself up to make a early splash by interviewing and hiring a new head coach to help build an identity for this team, something that has been missing for some time. According to multiple reports, Chris Grier will move into the head of football operations role and will be able to bring in “his” guy.
In the past, Miami has tried to bring in new head coaches with offensive backgrounds. Joe Philbin was the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers before he came to Miami. He was unable to duplicate the offensive success he had in Green Bay and was out after three and a quarter years. Miami replaced him with Adam Gase, another offensive minded guy hoping to build a team that could score quickly and often. Again, this was not the case as the team constantly struggled to do anything on the offensive side of the ball.
Now that Miami finally has the chance to do a full rebuild (which should have happened a long time ago), Grier and the Dolphins will need to change the script entirely. Instead of going out and finding an offensive wizard, Miami needs to bring in a guy with a defensive background.
Miami’s defense has been bad over the last few seasons, partially in part to Miami’s offensive minded coaches. While there have been attempts to fix the personnel of the defense over the years with the various free agent signings and draft picks, the players have never been put into a position to succeed by a coach that has a strong sense of the game defensively.
The old saying will always hold true: defenses win championships. Miami needs to go with a guy who can transform this defense from one of the worst in the league to one of the best. It might not transform overnight, but the team has a number of high quality players who the team could build around if the right guy was brought in to coach them.
Adam Schefter has reported that Miami has already requested to interview Bears Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio for their head coaching vacancy. This is the move Miami needs to make in order to right this ship and put the Dolphins in a position of success for years to come. The Dolphins have tried the alternative and now smash mouth football needs to be “the name of the game” in Miami for the next few seasons.