It’s time for the Dolphins to rebuild once more. The fleeting success of Mike McDaniel has given way to utter despair, as Miami’s window in the AFC never really opened. Now they’re stuck in the cellar with the Jets, and seemingly need to build the entire roster and coaching staff from the ground up starting this offseason.
Typically it’s a waste of energy to look backwards at past eras. It makes for good conversation at the bar, but football is generally a sport where looking forward and progressing is more important than dwelling in the past. However, in the case of the Miami Dolphins it’s critical to look back at past mistakes in an effort to learn from them, correct them, and ensure they don’t happen again — especially when you’re rolling on with the same GM in Chris Grier who has had his job since 2016.
The Dolphins’ big mistake this time: Firing Brian Flores.
This decision was more organizational than monolithic by the GM. It came about because owner Stephen Ross tried to engineer a back-room deal to bring Tom Brady and Sean Payton to Miami, which backfired spectacularly. The Dolphins lost draft picks, the team had to scramble, but at the time it looked like they did a pretty good job in finding a coach under the circumstances in Mike McDaniel. That doesn’t change the fact that firing Flores set all the dominoes in motion that led to this collapse.
Flores was still getting his feet under him in Miami when he was fired after three years. The offense really wasn’t coming together after having four offensive coordinators in three years, but it was clear that the new head coach was working wonders on the defense. When Flores took over in 2019 he inherited a team from Adam Gase that was 27th in points allowed, 21st in pass defense, and 31st in run defense. The first year was transition, largely retooling the roster and evaluating players who could fit Flores’ system — but in 2020 they became a truly great defensive football team. The Dolphins were 6th in the league in points allowed, and critically 1st in the league in turnovers.
Even without the right guys in place quite yet, Flores’ defensive creativity and unique player usage had amazing results. Guys like Emmanuel Ogbah and Jaelen Phillips saw incredible boosts to their production in Flores’ free-flowing, open defense that put an emphasis on giving quarterbacks confusing fronts and unpredictable blitzes. Defensively there was a small backslide in 2021 as the league adjusted, but Flores righted the ship as the Dolphins won eight of the final nine games to close out the season — ultimately finishing with a winning record of 9-8 for the second year in a row. This happened in spite of Flores being asked to tank, but refusing.
It wasn’t always pretty, and results didn’t come immediately, but it was clear to everyone that Flores was building a football team in his image.Players were buying in, particularly on defense, and it felt like a matter of time before Flores had this team breaking through. It’s for this reason it was so shocking when he Flores fired, especially to chase Sean Payton.
There is one element of Flores that wasn’t quite so rosy, and that’s his demeanor. The coach was widely regarded as being very acerbic, demanding excellence of everyone around him, while being uncompromising. This is true of everyone from the Bill Belichick coaching tree, but it didn’t stop Flores from rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.
In hindsight though, was Flores really wrong? Sure, players complained about him being too tough — but the second he left everything collapsed. The Miami roster has no discipline, no accountability, and it’s become a total mess under Mike McDaniel, whose relaxed attitude coddled the worse elements of the roster to the point of ridicule.
The point isn’t to say that Flores was the perfect coach, because he was definitely flawed — but in hindsight he was infinitely better than either Adam Gase who preceded him, or McDaniel who came after. It was a case where he just hit the job too hard too soon, likely because he was too young, and needed some more established voices in the room to edit his personality a little to find a good balance. Still, he had the team on the right trajectory and demanded excellence.
Now Flores will move on. It’s likely he’ll get another shot at becoming a head coach following a stint in Minnesota as defensive coordinator, and if he doesn’t it will be because of his ongoing lawsuit over his dismissal — not his ability. Meanwhile the Dolphins are left to rebuild once more, a punishment for chasing two birds in the bush when they already had one in the hand.
