Only in America, and especially only in the NFL, would we be talking about the imminent demise of one head coach for having players admit that some among them are unprepared and compare that coach to another who physically laid his hands on a player. Alas, the cardinal sin in this war simulation game is almost never violence. We should understand that now. The sin is appearing not to respect what it takes to get ready.
After the Dolphins narrowly lost, 29–27 to the Chargers on Sunday, Tua Tagovailoa—who may have been frustrated after throwing perhaps the most egregious-looking interception of the season thus far, by attempting to throw a shallow pass in a Hail Mary situation with seconds remaining—lit a pile of dry tinder by saying the following about the team’s predicament:
“Well, I think it starts with the leadership and helping articulate that for the guys. And then what we’re expecting out of the guys, right? We’re expecting this, are we getting that, are we not getting that? We have guys showing up to player-only meetings late, guys not showing up to player-only meetings. Like, there’s a lot that goes into that. Do we have to make this mandatory, do we not have to make this mandatory? So it’s a lot of things of that nature, that we gotta get cleaned up, and it starts with the little things like that.”
Within that paragraph are a handful of lines that open up further avenues of questioning. The Dolphins called a players-only meeting after getting demolished by the Colts in the season opener. It seems that was not the end of players feeling the need to assemble outside of the normally structured workday (in fairness to Mike McDaniel, lots of players have private study sessions, which is perhaps what Tagovailoa was referring to).
Adding to the issue, of course, is that Tagovailoa found the situation to be desperate enough that the nuclear option—letting the world know that some of these players don’t care enough and that, by association, coaches don’t feel that lack of concern is important enough to make these study sessions mandatory—was the only one remaining in his holster. Again, the timing of Tagovailoa’s last interception (possibly one of those miscues that a meeting could have solved), and the limited space between that play and his postgame interview, might have prevented him from properly cooling down.
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No matter how one tries to spin this, the moment created a point of no return. The Dolphins are 1–5 with a pair of upward-leaning or stalwart franchises at the top of the division in the Bills and Patriots. It’s highly unlikely that a spirited revival is on tap. The question now is of how one sorts out the wreckage.
It would seem that Miami’s only remaining option is clear. A week ago, McDaniel mentioned that both he and owner Stephen Ross voiced unhappiness over the team’s current situation. And while pressing aside the actual work and lifestyle of a billionaire in order to get granular with a football team isn’t always an attractive option for an NFL owner, it’s the only path back to sanity and a more respectable existence.
When Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie fired Chip Kelly in 2015, he did so with a week remaining in the season, in order to use the final week to conduct in-depth exit interviews with the players. A large number of those players went on to make up the core of a Super Bowl–winning team coached by Kelly’s replacement, Doug Pederson. I’m not saying that McDaniel needs to be fired, but I am saying that Ross needs to be in the building, finding out why this is happening and why players feel the need to treat integral work with all the seriousness of your one-credit college songwriting class.
Ross is now standing at a kind of crossroad. He can either save what is good about the McDaniel era by finding out if the issue is the head coach and his fraternal vibes, a glaring lack of talent (my guess) or a few remaining rotten apples that are sucking out the team’s energy like the Dementors in Prisoner of Azkaban, or he can allow the entire thing to collapse even more violently and fantastically than it already has. Clearly, one of McDaniel’s strengths is not parsing this out himself, or else what happened at the podium Sunday would never have taken place.
Regardless of intent, Tagovailoa has now elevated this beyond a coaching decision. This is now a crisis in management, a crisis in personnel and a crisis in identity as a franchise. Whatever was said between Ross and McDaniel before Tagovailoa went public has been kept behind closed doors. But now that we’re all airing grievances, those who care about the future of the Dolphins deserve to know what the owner thinks at a podium as well.
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