How this whole mess was foreseeable and preventable

Taking the time to read the Wells report and other information, I can't help but feel that it was inevitable that this situation was going to blow up. Even without Jonathon Martin the situation was building up to a catastrophe of some kind.

1) Turner and "Judas"
OK I get the that Turner was trying to instill some espirit de corps by not having team mates rat on each other. The big problem now is that discipline (coaches chewing you out over failed assignments) now becomes random and arbitrary. People aren't being punished/rewarded on the basis of how well they performed their assignments, they get punished/rewarded based on what the coach sees even when he's plainly wrong. After getting blamed/not blamed a few times the players can only view getting chewed out as a bit of a joke.
The small problem is the putting players in a position where they feel they cannot approach the coach about problems they may have with other players. Not just the JMart thing, but no one was telling the coaches their concerns about Pouncey's drug use affecting on field performance [the whole Incognito telling Jmart in a text that he shouldn't be going to Pouncey's party during the season]. Who knows what other of the myriad of problems that could have been resolved with a quiet word in someone's ear were swept under the carpet because of this policy.

2) Ireland, Incognito, Philbin and the golf incidents.
These two incidents, which would have been put at car theft and sexual assault if they were just punks/rednecks not millionaire athletes, were well known by all the team. Basically the message sent to the team is
a) that the team will cover your asses no matter what you do if Ireland thinks you're valuable
b) Philbin can be defied without consequence
The team would have viewed that Incognito had gotten away with it. The fines cost Incognito far less than what it would have cost him if he'd been cut and the incident publicized.
Whilst this is the well known incident I do not believe that this is the only incident of its type that happened in Ireland's tenure, and it has the systematic effect of undermining the coach's ability to impose discipline on the team.

3) The Legacy of Saban
Not just little Nicky, but it started with him. Saban made a point of getting rid of any vocal leader on the team who didn't pony up to his world view. But in the revolving door of coaches since that time the first thing the new coach has done, with the possible exception of Cam Cameron, was to get rid of loud opinionated players. I have no problem with that provided stability follows. But what the end result of this has been is to remove all possible leaders from the team. We've ended up bringing in guys like Joey Porter, Brandon Marshall and Rishie Incognito to the team to provide leadership. Despite what some people think being a passionate loudmouth is not providing leadership
Basically this has turned the Miami locker room into a Lord of the Flies environment. If you take Mark Schlereth's article on this point, the difference between Mark's experience on championship teams and the lowly 'phins was that on championship teams someone stood up to be counted when lines were crossed.

4) No one starts their criminal career by robbing Fort Knox
I'll talk specifically about the rookie dinner with a tab of $30,000. That roughly breaks down to a $600 per head tab. Speaking as a chef I can say pretty confidently from experience that even NFL linemen would have trouble eating more that $200 worth of food at a restaurant. Even allowing for 2 bottles of wine/head at $100 per bottle that still leaves a massive amount of money on the tab. The only way that the tab gets even close to the amount is with a ridiculous amount of deliberately wasteful spending.
The point is that it isn't something that suddenly happened. What will have happened is that every year the tab would have gotten a bit larger as the limits were tested and the playing group found they could get away with more.
This is something very visible that the coaches/front office had to be aware of yet they did nothing to curb it. What it means is that because the little things weren't policed and let happen they grew until suddenly people outside the organization are shocked that it could happen.
What I'm getting at is that at some point someone should have said, "gee that bill is a bit excessive, let's make sure the rookie hazing isn't going too far".
From the rookie's perspective it cracks their faith that the senior players are going to be there to do the right thing by them.

Basically the Dolphins have created a situation where:
- Discipline from the coaches is not treated with respect
- There are no natural leaders on the team
- We have a group of individuals playing for the Miami Dolphins, we don't have a team

All of this stems from decisions made by people within the 'phins. In my mind all of the consequences were foreseeable, but because people making the decisions were looking at the short term they neglected the long term consequences.

In hindsight it seems a big mistake in hiring Ireland's replacement before the report became public, because the biggest responsibility for the person taking over from Ireland is to fix the mess that has been exposed by the Well's report. I pray Hickey is up to it, but since Ross was unaware of the contents of the report when hiring the new GM he may not have known what sort of person he really needed.