The Miami Dolphins Hall of Shame: 5 initial inductees
#1 Daunte Culpepper (over Drew Brees)
We all knew this was coming, but let’s get through it together. In Nick Saban’s first season with the team (2005) they finished with a 9-7 record with Gus Frerotte as their starting quarterback. The team wrapped up that 2005 season with a six-game winning streak, so there was understandably some excitement around the Dolphins.
With an upgrade at quarterback, the Miami Dolphins could become a playoff football team again. Randy Mueller and Nick Saban had narrowed it down to two options, Daunte Culpepper and Drew Brees. Culpepper had some really impressive seasons under his belt in Minnesota but was coming off an injury-shortened 2005 where he looked like a shell of himself. Brees had performed well the last two years in San Diego, but just had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder.
What did he do?
Well, Miami initially was interested in Drew Brees and reportedly offered him a contract first, but when there was a problem with his physical, they moved on.
"“I felt like when I was here in New Orleans, I was embraced. I was given confidence that, ‘You’re our guy, and we know the situation you’re in but we know you’re going to come back and lead this team and this community. The impression I got when I was (in Miami) was, ‘Hey, we like you, but we’re not sure.’ I got the sense I was being evaluated every second I was there.” -Drew Brees via The Advocate"
They instead elected to trade a second-round pick for Daunte Culpepper who was disgruntled with the Minnesota Vikings and looking for a way out. This move was also scrutinized as it seemed the Vikings were likely to just release Culpepper soon which would have saved Miami that draft capital.
In an unfortunate twist of fate, it would turn out that Culpepper’s knee injury would be the one to linger and hinder his ability to perform. He played a total of four regular-season games with the Dolphins and would be sent to IR in December of his first season in Miami, never to suit up in aqua and orange again.
I won’t list all of Brees’ accomplishments, but he went on to win a super bowl and have fifteen successful seasons with the New Orleans Saints.
Where is he now?
Culpepper would bounce from Oakland to Detroit after his single season in Miami. He never was able to reclaim his former glory and has been out of football since 2009. On the other hand, Drew Brees just recently retired from the NFL and spent the remainder of his successful career as a Saint.
What lesson can be learned?
This is the same lesson that Dolphins fans have been dealing with since Dan Marino’s departure, you need to have the right guy quarterbacking your team if you want to have sustained success in the NFL. The occasional ten or eleven win season is always possible, but the Dolphins have never been able to follow that up because they haven’t had a top signal-caller.
You can build a winning team around the non-elite quarterbacks, but everything else has to be in place around them. With injuries and a salary cap, that is a difficult thing to do each season.
We watched Miami make the wrong choice and it altered the next fifteen years for the Saints and Dolphins. You have to be absolutely certain that you have the right guy in place.
Conclusions
It takes numerous poor decisions to flounder as a franchise for this long, and the Dolphins have made plenty of them. The hope is that we can learn from those mistakes and avoid them in the future. It seems this current regime in Miami is headed in a great direction, but time will be the ultimate judge.
A piece like this is extremely out of character for me, which is partly why I did it. It’s light, fluffy, filler content-perfect for the mid-July news cycle. I do want to hear who you would add to this list or who you don’t agree with, so make sure to share in the comments section.