Miami Dolphins All-Decade team has good but not great talent
By Brian Miller
UPDATE: After having posted this and seeing how the rest of the 2019 season played out, I would have to say that Brian Flores has shown more ability to get the most of his players than any coach the last decade and therefore should be the coach of the decade.
Head coach: Our candidates for this is small. Our choices come down to Brian Flores, Adam Gase, Joe Philbin, and Tony Sparano. For some NFL teams, there is one coach, maybe two in that time frame but the Dolphins have turned over coaches more times than anyone cares to think about.
Who would you want to lead an all-decade team?
Let’s start with Brian Flores. While things are looking really good and frankly, I might seriously consider him to coach my all-decade team, I can’t just yet. I need to see more and know that what I am seeing on the field is real. So because of experience and experience alone, I remove him from consideration.
That leaves me with Adam Gase, Joe Philbin, two interim head coaches and Tony Sparano.
As we all learned, Adam Gase should not be coaching in the NFL at any coaching position. Maybe he needs to simply go back to coaching quarterbacks and eventually he probably will. He is not an HC let alone an OC. I think we all saw enough of Joe Philbin as well to know that he is far from the coach we would want anywhere near the team. Great guy, but not HC quality.
Our two interim entries belong to Dan Campbell and Todd Bowles. Bowles would be an interesting choice and Cambell had all the energy you would want and had the respect of his players, but we can’t hand this to interim guys.
That leaves Tony Sparano and while he did not have a great career with the Dolphibs, he was saddled by internal executive problems and a general manager that did little to help him on the field. The same could be said about the assistance from Bill Parcells who left him out in the wind.
Sparano was well-respected by his players, he simply lacked the talent and coaching assistants to make it all work, most of whom were not even chosen by him but by Bill Parcells. He isn’t the perfect candidate by any means and even as I write this, I seriously think that Brian Flores may be the best choice given what we have seen so far, but I’ll stand by my decision to not count him.