Don't Waste your Money- Dolphins expected to retain Ireland

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect.

 

When you say "alive", you mean like how people on life support with zero brain activity are "alive", right?

 

At the end of the season, and presuming Ireland is retained, I think ti will behoove Ross to let the fanbase know why he has made that decision and what he is thinking.

If he truly thinks Ireland has done a good job then he should come out and say so, and give some insight into what the plan is moving forward. We're not giving away state secrets here. Everybody knows what our biggest needs are.

 

Well, if you're blaming his lack of production on the weapons around him, then why are you upset that some might want the guy who assembled the team around him no longer calling the shots? Nothing wrong at all with being a "raging homer" as you call it, but you're going to have a conflict of interest in defending both Ireland and Tannehill should Tannehill continue to struggle and lack of weapons continuing to be a reason.

 

Yes, and the team was bad again, which Ross said he did not think would happen.

So I think we're owed another explanation as to why we weren't as good as Ross thought we were and why Ireland is the man to change things.

If Ireland is retained, I expect nothing less than a playoff team or he is fired.

 

This is exactly where I am. I'm completely numb. I watch because it's a routine and every one of my other friends does it. There really is very little enjoyment for me for quite some time.

 

Because all 8 can't be pro bowlers. Literally. That's the thing you're missing. The importance of getting a quarterback isn't an absolute game, it's a relative game. The better quarterbacks tend to beat the ones that are worse than them, especially in the playoffs and when it comes to winning championships. It's not possible to get an elite quarterback that ranks 20th in the league. That's a contradiction in terms.

Jon Martin has not been servicable nor has he really been better than Marc Colombo from a year ago.

All he currently is, is a pretty common player whose only uncommon skill is shown on special teams.

Perhaps this is more of a function of unnaturally low expectations.

 

To me, that's just what I don't want my owner to be talking about...Sure, if he wants to support Irish that's fine, but he should not be talking about how to plan the upcoming season/seasons...not his responsibility...not what you want the owner talking about...let the football people talk about the plan...

 

He has come out and said so in the past, so I don't think he'd avoid doing that in the future.

The interesting thing will be if the Dolphins finish 6-10 or 7-9 and someone bothers to ask him about his statements a year ago about Jeff Ireland assembling a team that was better than their record in 2011, and how he thinks of this team which has the same record and same results, relative to that.

 

Agreed. That game yesterday was nothing but positives but the tone here is still quite down. As crazy bad as this season has been, it actually hasn't been that bad. Those two overtime games are killing us now. I don't like Ireland either, but get why keeping him makes sense.

 

That's fair, but all too often this season we see this up and down sing song about Ireland. Everyone wants him gone after a loss and everyone thinks he should stay after a win.

My thought on this are the up and down fluctuations throughout this season are on coaching, good and bad. The piss poor roster that has underperformed, especially on offense is on Ireland.

So yeah, I wanted Ireland gone at the beginning of the season, after 4-3, after 5-8 and still now after a nearly meaningless win over a more terrible team.

 

Jeff Ireland could win Survivor All-Star blindfolded.

 

Only the Jets scored fewer points when beating the Jags.

If you evaluate how we looked against a garbage team, compared to how others looked, you see we are a below .500 caliber team. We just aren't a .150 team.

 

"we won, by 3 scores sure, but we didn't win good enough"

This is just searching for reasons to be a downer. Seriously, you had to have fact checked that just so you could regurgitate it back trying to discredit the team for the win. It's a win. It's a good win. This team gives you plenty of reasons to complain, why do you go looking for more when they play well?

 

And no team has given up less than 3 pts to the Jags, the only other team to give up as few was Chicago?

 

I think 99% of non-Dolfans ranking the two quarterbacks (Tannehill and Wilson) would put Wilson ahead of Tannehill. The other 1% would secretly dislike black quarterbacks.

If he's 4th in this class then it's not a great sign, because then you have to look at all the other talented QBs out there that aren't in this class. There's a rock solid top 6 that includes Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger. Then you've got guys like Cam Newton, Matt Ryan and Phil Rivers to contend with, not to mention Matt Schaub, Matt Stafford, Tony Romo and Jay Cutler. Hell if you're admitting he's 4th best in just this draft class then you're admitting he's at best 10th best and probably closer to 16th to 18th best.

That can be a tricky comparison because it involves different quarterbacks and different offensive systems. Last year for example our offense excluding Colombo allowed a "hit" once every 9.18 pass snaps. This year pretty much the same group, excluding Jon Martin, have allowed a "hit" once every 13.97 pass pro snaps. It seems kind of arbitrary and convenient to only count the sacks and hits while completely ignoring the 40 pressures he's allowed. He's allowed his pass pro responsibility to influence the passer once every 10.73 pass pro snaps. Marc Colombo allowed the same once every 10.74 pass pro snaps. By all appearances they're performing identically in pass protection.

Justified doesn't mean they weren't also unnaturally low. If you were a fan of the Bengals prior to Marvin Lewis' arrival, having expectations for a 4-12 season would be "justified" but that didn't mean the expectations weren't unnaturally low, nor did it mean the Bengals had a great draft if they got to 5-11 or 6-10.

 

Normally I'd be with you but...the Colts DID lose to the Jags this year, then scored 27 the next time they played them.

EDIT: And, only the Bears beat the Jags by more than the Dolphins did.

 

I pretty confident in saying this would be a mistake. We have the same issues on this team as we have since Ireland got here. Weak WR's, Weak secondary. Those areas have been consistently bad since he got here. That's a problem. We've talked about filling the same needs, over, and over and over each offseason. WR... CB... S... and pass rush. How many more times to we have to do it before it gets addressed, and fixed?

What looked like it could have been a good draft class last year, hasn't turned out all that great...
Tannehill... looks promising, but its still unknown.
Martin... looks average so far.
Egnew can't get off the bench
Miller seems to have that same problem.
Matthews... also seems to have that problem.
Kaddu... self explanatory.
Cunningham... was cut.

Not exactly stellar.

I just dont see why we have to carry on, with the same weaknesses, the same weak drafts, the same weak free agency signings, the same lack of playmakers on both sides of the ball, and the same mediocre play...

 

Why on earth would anyone assume Tannehill won't be better than Rivers, Cutler and Stafford? All those guys looked like garbage this year. And that's with much better options than what Tannehill was working with.

 

You go to far with Tannehill. His "awful" td to int is not that bad at all. He is completing 58% of his passes and will throw for over 3000 yards. He was a raw rookie. Dalton has AJ green and a actual TE. Not a fair comparison.

 

The curve doesn't matter to me though if we're talking about how these guys currently look. Either way the statement that Jon Martin is currently a "solid starter" seems a stretch when you consider how viciously we ran Colombo out of town and how both anecdotally and statistically we can't say that Martin has been any better and in fact has probably been worse. Like I said Martin has allowed pressures on the QB at the same rate as Colombo even though between the tendencies of the different QBs themselves and the new offensive system, the rest of the offense is allowing fewer pressures per snap. That suggests that Martin is allowing pressures at the same rate even though the offense and quarterbacks have switched to where it's harder to pressure the quarterback.

A 6-8 record (0.429) in a league that averages 7-7 to this point is underachievement. That's just a fact. Whether they're performing about as I expected isn't really that relevant because my expectations built in subjective judgments about the talent on the roster and the likelihood of acquiring new talent that significantly moves the needle.

I'm not sure how I could explain it better than I did already. If expect the team to be 3-13 or 4-12 and they get to 6-10, then it doesn't suggest they necessarily did an "above average" job during the off season. It could easily suggest they did an "average" job whereas your expectations built in sub-average expectations.

 

The first point is ridiculous to put it politely.

 

Ck, what are your thoughts on Tannehill's progress this season.

 

I hope he is gone after this year. But, if he is still here, let's hope he does a good job this offseason. It is what it is.

 

Does anyone think Egnew will play this year? I mean he suited up in the preseason. Would be nice to see him at least on the active roster.

 

I think he's a rookie and he's going through rookie problems. I think his numbers would look a lot better if he had play makers around him, which he currently does not. I think his pass protection has been no better than "average" throughout the season and the ground game to complement he and the passing game has been sub-average in more games than not. His receivers don't bail him out of any mistakes on ball placement, mistakes that many other quarterbacks also have but don't suffer criticism because their receivers make plays on the ball. For example in the first half of the Jags game Ryan threw a bullet back shoulder seam to Rishard Matthews who didn't adjust to the ball quickly enough and dropped it. The problem is with how open Rishard was if Ryan hadn't placed it on the back shoulder it may have been a touchdown. Other quarterbacks including some of the rookies out there can get away with this and still have it be a catch. In some cases (check RG3's highlights some time), it may even still be a touchdown despite the mistake on the ball placement. For Tannehill with the surrounding cast he has, it's an incomplete pass and it results in the drive kicking a long field goal instead of continuing to drive for the end zone.

But at the same time when you watch the decisions he's making and the throws he is throwing, he's not performing as well as Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin or Russell Wilson. They're getting better plays out of their surrounding players, but they're also playing better football. Tannehill is prone to lazy foot mechanics which can result in inaccuracy. He also can get predictable in his decision making.

 

I'd love to see him develop. I really would. To me he looks like a very smart technician that is being physically overwhelmed by players with much more physical talent than him. This hasn't been brought up before but I would consider moving him to left guard. I just don't know how much success we're going to have in re-molding his body to be harder, leaner, stronger, etc. I think on the inside he might get away with not being as physically talented, whereas on the outside he's more likely to get exposed.

I actually think the expectations SHOULD be placed above .500 or else what the hell are we doing here? But .500 is just the mathematical fact of the league. Below that is below average. If you expect below average and you get below average but maybe slightly less below average than you expected, that doesn't mean they did a "good" job. It means they did a slightly less bad of a job than you thought they'd do.

 

And finally say it is this year , not two years away? That it is this year we expect and demand to see substantial results ( 10 wins playoffs ) .

 

What exactly would be the benefit of backing himself into such a corner?