Miami Dolphins Brian Flores is failing in these areas

The Miami Dolphins are 1-4 and the season is looking like to be a huge disappointment and Brian Flores is as responsible as anyone for the product.

We can blame Chris Grier for the talent that has been put on this team. Even if Brian Flores has a lot of say in who is drafted, Grier has to be responsible because he is the one who supposed to call the shots. We can also place blame on the players themselves. Execution hasn’t been good and highly paid athletes are not performing up to those contracts.

With Flores, however, there are areas that he has and is failing at and if he sticks around at the end of the season or through next year, he needs to fix these problems.

Dual offensive coordinators

Flores couldn’t make up his mind and after a search outside of the team didn’t produce a Chan Gailey replacement, Flores opted to interview both George Godsey and Eric Studesville but it seems he didn’t want to have any bad feelings left in the building so he hired both to run the offense. It hasn’t exactly gone as he had imagined.

Flores failed when he brought Gailey to Miami but honestly, his biggest failure may have come after his first season when he fired Chad O’Shea. O’Shea reportedly had a rather in depth playbook that some saw as being too complicated. While the Dolphins didn’t play well in Flores’ first year, they got better as the season progressed. O’Shea should have been given another year, instead, Flores went with Gailey, and now the two OC’s. This is a big problem for him.

In fact, we don’t have to just look at the OC either. His offensive line coaching carousel has been laughable as well.

An ego to rival Adam Gase

Adam Gase’s ego led him out of Miami even with the support of Stephen Ross. Gase not only thought he was better than everyone else, he made sure they knew it. Brian Flores has an ego as well but we haven’t seen it out in the open like we did with Gase. What we are seeing is that his approach to create the “Patriot Way” is not working as he thought it would.

Consider that no Bill Belichick disciple has found success, or much success after leaving the Patriots. Recreating what has been done in New England relies on having a quarterback and taking risks on defense. Flores doesn’t have a quarterback and has run his veterans off the field.

Last year the Dolphins were 10-6 and it looked like they would repeat or do better this year. Instead, Flores got rid of Kyle Van Noy and others because they couldn’t see eye to eye but in reality, he lost veteran leaders who knew the system that Flores was running. Now the team looks lost on defense and non-existent on offense.

Developing the players

Player development is important and it is also the job of the head coach to find coaches on his staff that can do exactly that. Defensively, Josh Boyer seems to be doing a good job. The defense hasn’t looked great at times this year but they are head and shoulders above the offense.

At some point we have to wonder why the musical chairs on the offensive line is being played out the way it is. Five weeks into the season and there should be a better structure, there is not and Sunday marked the 5th week with a different lineup on the line.

The fact that Myles Gaskin was only featured as the starting back on Sunday is also a problem. Gaskin had a career day against the Buccaneers but has been pretty non-existent the previous four weeks. Why? Malcolm Brown has shown to be nothing incredibly special whereas Gaskin continues to prove why he should be the featured back.

All of that could also be said about the use of Mike Gesicki. Gesicki is every bit as good as Travis Kelce if he were used right. There is no reason to see Gesicki on the sidelines and he should be a focal point of the offense in the passing game. There is so much Miami could do with his talent but they simply haven’t found the right way to use him until late in the game.

These are issues with coaching and game planning and at 1-4, it is apparent that this area needs to be a lot better and that falls and fails on Brian Flores.