Spot on with the coaching, which at the end of the day makes Ireland look better. Truly, he can defend himself pretty well in terms of players..."Hey Boss, it has been the coaching, not the players, check out Misi"
I don't think that is a matter worth discussing again...If the offer (which there was one) had been right, Fisher would have taken it. The facts are that, at that time, the Rams could offer a lot more of what Fisher wanted (autonomy, QB, overall D talent, etc) than what we did...it was a simple choice that fisher made. That may be looking a little precarious now, but would Fisher have taken the job without Tanny being here ?? I doubt it... I think that if he'd have really wanted the job here, Ross would have adjusted things to make it happen. He didn't...
I agree with this. I think the biggest impact Joe Philbin and this coaching staff has had is during the week before the game. This team is prepared to play. That doesn't mean they won't come out flat every once in a while, which they did against St. Louis. But the team knows the game plan going into the game. I think it was Nolan Carroll that said the team knows exactly what it wants to do on Saturday this year, while last year, the team was still unsure of exactly what they want to do. I think in the grand scheme of things, coaching doesn't make as much of an impact as we think it does, but that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between very good coaching and very bad coaching. I think we are seeing an example of this. The way Joe Philbin practices his players shows through in the games. The tempo is up in practice, and as a result, Miami is one of the better teams in the league when they push the tempo on the field. As far as Ryan Tannehill goes, IMO, what he has done as the quarterback has had more impact overall than what Joe Philbin has done as a head coach. This really just reinforces what we all knew. It is very hard to play well when you don't have good quarterback play. I think the coaching staff has had a hand in his production to this point, but I'm not sure how much they can be credited for here. Ryan Tannehill is a guy that many of the pundits considered to be a project quarterback. That was mostly because they couldn't overlook the fact that he played wide receiver for his first 2.5 years of college football and only started 19 games as a quarterback. Those that called him a project missed many of the natural quarterback abilities he exhibited at Texas A&M that we are now seeing and lauding him for in Miami. Abilities such as his ability to move around within the pocket and feel the pressure. Matt Waldman had a couple of excellent articles about this before the draft. He noticed it. CK noticed it. I noticed it. Those that are getting paid the big bucks to shape your opinion on TV ignored it and focused on the "he's a converted wide receiver" line of thinking. Ryan Tannehill was never a converted wide receiver. He's always been a quarterback, because the things he does on the field are things you cannot teach. He's 6 games into his rookie season, and he's already a far more advanced passer than Cam Newton. The quarterback can make a lot of difference. Look at the Rams. Brian Schottenheimer was a much maligned offensive coordinator with the Jets. When his name was being mentioned as a potential head coaching candidate, most of you freaked out. I told some people though that you can't judge Brian's ability as a coach on the performance of his Jets offense. It's going to be very difficult for any offensive coach to look good with Mark Sanchez as his quarterback. In fact, you can see just how bad Mark Sanchez is now that Brian is gone. Brian did a lot of things that went unnoticed by the media and fans that covered up many of the deficiencies Mark Sanchez has. In St. Louis, he now has a quarterback that can handle what he throws at them. Brian likes to run multiple formations, and this showed in the Rams/Dolphins game. What he also did was find a potential weak area in the Dolphins defense and exploited that with those perimeter runs with Daryl Richardson early on. I think when you look at a guy like Chad Henne, you see a quarterback that had a lot of arm talent but may not have had the instinct to play the game consistently at a high level. How much of that is coaching? I'm not sure. I do know that Chad Henne was a player that seemingly made the same mistakes over and over again. Was he developed properly? Probably not, but I'm not sure any coach could have built an offense around him. As an aside, I do think we are seeing that the brains of that 2008 team that went 11-5 was actually Chad Pennington and not the coaching staff the team had.
