Which Miami Dolphins head coach not named Shula would you take back?

The Miami Dolphins have had some great coaches, well one great coach in Don Shula, and some others that never should have been coaches.

The question is given the roster the way it is right now today, what coach from the past would you want to bring back to coach the youth is currently the Miami Dolphins?

Obviously, the first choice would be Shula but we are going to rule him out. So that leaves Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wannstedt, George Wilson, Sr. Tony Sparano, Nick Saban, Cam Cameron, Joe Philbin, and Tony Sparano.

We are leaving the interim head coaches out because they were set up to fail from the start given the teams they inherited midway through the respective seasons. We can also rule out Cam Cameron because, well, it’s Cam Cameron.

You could easily make a case for Jimmy Johnson who knew how to get the most of the players on his team but then again, did he really in Miami? For all of the accomplishments Johnson had in Dallas, he couldn’t replicate that in Miami and when he realized that, he left the NFL coaching ranks for good.

Dave Wannstedt has the best winning percentage of all the coaches not named Shula so naturally one may lean that way but Wannstedt also squandered some of the best defenses the Dolphins have ever had and couldn’t get the offense to work outside of running Ricky Williams almost 400 times a season. His inability to shape and find a quarterback didn’t help the team either and we can all agree that his personnel decisions were not that great.

Tony Sparano is one of those coaches that I think could have been really good for the Dolphins if it wasn’t for the power struggle above him with Bill Parcells and Jeff Ireland and of course the ownership change that drove a wedge between Sparano and Ireland later in his time with the team. Sparano was tough but the players liked him.

Nick Saban is another tough choice because he appeared to have the team moving forward when he decided to quit and go back to college. To me, Saban was never about the game but instead simply couldn’t pass up the guaranteed money that I am sure his wife pushed for.

I can dismiss Wilson simply because I never saw him coach and I will take a hard pass on Joe Philbin because I did get to see him coach and was not impressed. We can throw Adam Gase out the window here as well because he did have some of this roster and couldn’t do anything with it.

That leaves Brian Flores who is a complete unknown. That is a good thing and a bad thing but he just very well may be the right person with the right mindset to get the best out of what is here. Flores seems to have a vision and is standing by it. There is no ego that gets in the way and he has surrounded himself with coaches who know what he wants to do and experience to help him along the way.

Maybe Flores is the best choice after all.