The 2024 season will be remembered as a wasted year for the Miami Dolphins, but as every fan knows, it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.
For whatever reason, the narration of Behind the Music keeps playing, those short documentary films about what ended the career of a band or musician. It's fitting, actually, considering this year was supposed to see Miami take a big step forward but didn't.
Most will point their fingers at Tua Tagovailoa and say his concussion derailed the team or the fact he couldn't beat Green Bay when it mattered. Yet, that isn't why Miami lost so many games this year, including contests against teams they should have easily beaten. No, this is a deeper issue than the guy throwing the ball.
Dolphins' failures start with owner Stephen Ross
We can't forget that under Ross' ownership, the Dolphins have gone through a bully-gate scandal, a coach doing cocaine in his office, and a tampering scandal that cost them first- and third-round draft picks. We also can't summarily dismiss his penchant for hiring first-time head coaches with no former HC experience at any level. Ross' biggest error, however, is putting too much trust in the wrong people.
For all of his own personal failures, none may be as egregious as hiring and still employing Chris Grier. Grier has run the team with little to no interference from Ross, and normally, that is a good thing, but when your GM is average at best, you can't expect your team to be any different.
Ross' involvment in this mess is he puts too much trust in the wrong people. He hired Mike Tannenbaum to be a Bill Parcells-type czar. This came after Ross tried to bring Carl Peterson into that role. It didn't work, so when Tannebaum was eventually fired, Ross' right-hand man became Tom Garfinkel, the Dolphins CEO.
The problem with Garfinkel is that he is a great businessman and runs the business side nearly perfectly, but he isn't a football guy and never really has been. That leaves Grier with a lot more power than he should have.
Chris Grier has made a lot of good moves, but bad decisions have put the Dolphins where they are today
There is a saying that stuff runs downhill, and that is entirely true for the Dolphins. If it starts with Ross and runs through Garfinkel, then the next stop is Grier. Grier has been given a blank canvas to work with in Miami but uses the wrong kind of paint. With all the draft picks and cap space the Dolphins have had over the last five years, you would think Grier would have a team more than capable of competing for the AFC East or a Super Bowl.
Instead, the Dolphins are, once again, hoping they can get enough help to make the playoffs. Grier's personnel decisions have been bad. His contract spending has been worse, and his draft selections are nothing short of head-scratching. Add to the cauldron of mistakes the offensive line woes, and the only recipe he has is one for disaster.
That disaster came in 2024. When Tua Tagovailoa goes down, there is no quality backup. The offensive line can't consistently block because the guards are not good enough against better defensive tackles. Miami spends money to make its wide receivers happy, but other teams, like the Bills, are winning with receivers that most fans had never heard of. So are the Chiefs, Steelers, and Ravens.
Grier's approach to building the Dolphins hasn't worked, but what is worse is that he isn't changing his approach.
Mike McDaniel is still not learning from his own mistakes
You can't expect an inexperienced head coach to learn from his own mistakes when he is working for a general manager who isn't learning from his, and the GM can't be expected to learn when the owner does the same thing.
It's the only consistency in the Miami Dolphins organization, and until that changes, it doesn't matter who the coach is. McDaniel gets into his head far too often. He comes across as that smart guy who thinks he is still playing Madden.
In his first season as head coach, the team was undisciplined and committed many pre-snap penalties on offense. They lacked consistent play-calling and physical toughness. McDaniel couldn't get a challenged play to go his way, and the team couldn't get the play called in soon enough to avoid a game delay. Three seasons later, McDaniel's team is making the same mistakes.
Tua Tagovailoa is the easy person to blame for the Dolphins' mess
Naturally, Tua is the problem. He throws the passes and is the face of the organization. The common opinion is that McDaniel made Tua, but clearly, that isn't the case because when Tua wasn't on the field, four other quarterbacks couldn't run the offense, and one of them has been here for three seasons.
No, this isn't a quarterback problem. It's an ownership problem, a general manager problem, and a coaching problem. Only one person can change that. Stephen Ross needs to clean house, and instead of relying on a non-football guy to find someone new, he needs to go outside of the organization entirely. The problems the Dolphins deal with every year haven't changed because the owner hasn't been willing to change.