Finsmob Unleashed

24 years now Dolphins fans, T-W-E-N-T-Y * F-O-U-R * Y-E-A-R-S !! That’s how long it will shortly be that the Miami Dolphins haven’t won a playoff game. This year, the touted Super Bowl bound Miami Dolphins will fail to make the playoffs altogether. I know I’m guilty of doing this all to often, and I apologize in advance for telling people how to “fan”, or how to root for their team. It’s wrong, and many times I can only value my own wretched point of view while castigating others for theirs. Again, I’m sorry. You know who you are, but you also know who I am, so today I’m as per usghe, just presenting my view, so you can just skip it if offends you in any way.

I don’t like the NY Jets, although I don’t despise them as much as many people on this forum do. When the Jets are playing even worse than us, which is really saying something, I hate them even less. Do you know what I hate more? I hate our own team and organization’s ineptitude and failures 100X more than any hate I can muster against the NY Jets, it’s not even close. Not a political statement, but in this past election on November 5, America voted for change. That’s exactly where I’m at right now. I’m voting for change, despite the fact that I hold no vote to do so, so I use my proxy here on this blog. In order to enact change, or at least have the hope to do so, we need failure here in Miami. This season is toast, we’re not a playoff team and our record will say so at the end of the season as well. I’m not talking “tanking” here, we’re more than capable of losing without trying to.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I want the Dolphins to lose this Sunday. Not just lose, I want embarrassment. I want this grounded NY Jets offense to fly high and I want this Dolphins offense to make believe it’s 30 degrees or colder or that we’re actually playing a playoff caliber NFL team and this game actually matters. Tua can throw for 400 yards and have a completion percentage of 80% as long as he doesn’t throw a TD, because some people enjoy that. Again, my remorse for telling you how to “fan”. I feel like a good old fashioned ass whooping by the visiting NY Jets would be a good wake up call to Steve Ross that this team simply cannot stay on the same path next season and beyond. The Aaron Rodgers led Jets just can’t take flight, and are averaging a paltry 18.8 PPG, good for 26th in the NFL. This, in lieu of having what is a top 3 NFL running back in Breece Hall. Hey, guess what team is remarkably close in both categories, points scored and points allowed? Right! Good guess! Yes, our Dolphins are scoring 19.2 PPG, good for 24th, and the Jets are 15th in the NFL on defense allowing 268 points or 22.3 PPG, while our Dolphins have allowed 266 points good for 14th in the NFL.

My plan is not about improving our draft position, no it’s far more than that. That would be a nice by product of losing, but again, this is about change. There are quite a few of us here on FMU who believe that Chris Grier can’t be the one shopping for the groceries any longer, and probably an equal amount of us feel HC Mike McDaniel is out of his league as an NFL Head Coach. His novel approach of befriending all the players has worn thin, and when it comes down to X’s and O’s, he’s failed miserably there too, especially when playing against better teams. We look woefully unprepared, and this roster is not physical enough anywhere, not anywhere on offense or defense are we able to match up against a physical team. Like I said, getting walloped by our division rival who come in at 3-9 would be a real good start to have the word change floating around in Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’s head. He’s been patient, but if this team finished under .500, after assembling a roster he was sold as being a team built to go to the Super Bowl, his patience may diminish enough to go ahead and enact said change.

I literally sit at my computer right now and cringe at the thought that Chris Grier and Mike McDaniel might be the duo crafting our 2025 draft, with10 picks, our own 1st and 2nd RD picks, potentially two 3rd RD compensatory picks, (we traded our own 3rd RD pick to draft RB Jaylen Wright to PHI), our own 4th RD pick, two 5th RD picks, our own, and a pick from DEN in the Bradley Chubb trade, Zero 6th RD pick (Traded to CHI for WR Chase Claypool), and finally, three 7th RD picks, our own, a compensatory pick for S DeShon Elliot and then (7th RD pick from the Chase Claypool trade). 10 very, very important picks, especially considering how many expired 1 year contracts we’ll have, and how awful this roster was constructed in general.

Let’s start with this mind numbing fact. Over $90M of our cap space for next season will be used by QB Tua Tagovailoa, WR Tyreek Hill, and WR Jaylen Waddle. Our amazing WR duo has contributed in this 2024 season 100 combined receptions for 1255 yards and 6 TD’s, and that’s with QB Tua Tagovailoa playing in 8 games. We’re paying in insane amount of money on 3 players which precludes us from spending on talent elsewhere on the roster. I don’t care how you “fan”, you can see that our QB needs a significant amount of talent to be successful, meaning we need a better O-line, and we’re going to need a much better defense as well, but how on earth can we accomplish this with the same two knuckleheads in charge of buying and scouting the groceries. Quick example before my next point. We trade our 2025 3rd RD pick to move into the 4th RD to get RB Jaylen Wright. In 12 games, Wright has 59 carries for 243 yards, zero TD’s. This reeks of “Mikey Tradey Pants Tannenbaum”. It’s not like we haven’t had injuries either. RB Raheem Mostert has been banged up and missed a couple of games and only has 7 more carries than Wright. De’Von Achane is logging in some workhorse RB numbers, while Wright and his 4th RD pick as well as next year’s 3rd RD pick languish on the bench. Achane has been overused, and Wright has been utterly under utilized.

I think the luster of Head Coach Mike McDaniel has worn off. I know this going to irk some here, apologies once again. He’s a Tua cheerleader. The problem is, he’s not a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. He’s done whatever he could to make Tua the best QB he can be. This dink and dunk offense we’re running now is a stark contrast to the high flying offense we ran last season. To be fair, that high flying offense didn’t play well against the better teams, and I think the dink and offense travels better and also keeps the QB out of harms way better too. We have struggled immensely though scoring TD’s, and part of that, no doubt, is the absence of those deep plays. Long drives keep the defense off the field and eat clock, but you have to get into the endzone. Offensive guard play has been an issue here with essentially 2 backups starting, Robert Jones at LG and Liam Eichenberg at RG. Losing RT Austin Jackson hurt as well, especially in the run game. RT Kendall Lamm may actually be equal or better in pass protection, but Jackson was a better run blocker, and we’ve struggled with him out. LG Isaiah Wynn is off IR and has been practicing, but word from MM is Robert Jones will remain the starter. OLB Bradley Chubb is off the PUP and his 21 day practice window is open. Whether either of these players will see any playing time remains to be seen.

I count 35 players under contract for ’25, but there are at least 8 that probably won’t play a game for us next season. LT Terron Armstead, CB Cam Smith, LB Channing Tindall, QB Skylar Thompson, TE Tanner Conner, TE Julian Hill, WR Tahj Washington, DE Grayson Murphy and WR Odell Beckham. Then there are the players who you simply can’t count on making it through any number of games, like OLB Jaelan Phillips, OLB Bradley Chubb, 33 year old RB Raheem Mostert, and of course, QB Tua Tagovailoa. So we lets say we have about 27-30 players assuming I’m wrong about a few, and then you have 3 players who are consistently injured, that means the majority of the roster will be new and counted on heavily next season. I feel it’s unacceptable to go forward with Grier and McDaniel and allow them to shape the majority of this roster, unconscionable actually. Drafting has not been Grier’s strong suit, and he’s overpaid heavily in the wrong areas of the roster. Find me one team that’s legitimately competing to get into the Superbowl that has two WR’s eating the 2 of the top 5 spots against the cap? What I can find very easily for you though is teams that doled out mega money contracts to their QB’s and regret it. NY Jets (Aaron Rodgers), Cleveland Browns (Deshaun Watson), Jacksonville Jaguars (Trevor Lawrence), Denver Broncos (Russell Wilson), Dallas Cowboys (Dak Prescott), NY Giants (Daniel Jones), and Atlanta Falcons (Kirk Cousins).

Again, not telling you how to “fan”, but I don’t want to root for a QB who accumulates wonderful statistics such as completion percentage and yardage totals. Those statistics on their own merit don’t win you football games. You have to score points, and we did score over 30 points per game against the weaker competition just like we did last year as well, but turn up the level of competition, and precisely like last season, same result. You look solely at the stat line, you’d think Tua had a magnificent game. 37-46, 365 yards, 2 TD’s. In reality though, we had 3 points through 13 minutes into the 3rd Quarter, and we when we scored our first TD, the score was already 27-3 with about 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. On the long drive where we settled for 3 down 14-0, that was the time to score a TD and keep the team in the game. Tua actually played his best with the game out of reach at 30-8, and the TD we cored there was a very lucky tipped pass that ended up in the hands of WR Tyreek Hill in the endzone. The stats are so extremely misleading, and I take no solace, zero, in the fact that Tua may finish with the highest completion percentage ever by a QB in the NFL if he qualifies after missing 4 games. IDGAF!!!!! Just get me wins! Dak Prescott, the NFC’s version of Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa has some wonderful stats on his resume, over 31,000 yards passing, nearly a 3:1 TD:INT ratio (213-82), a career 66.8% completion percentage. (Tua is at 68%), but Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys can’t win big games either. In playoff games, Dak is 2-5, and his TD:INT ratio drops to a still pretty good 2:1. Tua just hasn’t won big games later in the season and mostly against better competition. These are facts, and are not debatable, his record is abysmal.

If we’re going to march forward with QB Tua Tagovailoa at the helm, then we’re going to have to significantly improve the talent level here, fortify the trenches on both sides of the ball. This is going to be a nearly impossible task with us having no cap space, and far too many roster spots to fill. Beating the NY Jets this Sunday may bring joy to some, but to others like myself, misery. It will make Stephen Ross smile if we whoop on the hapless jets while it won’t mean a damn thing for our season, or the future of our team. A loss would be much preferred to get the wheels in motion that the status quo is a failure, just as country decided the very same with current regime in power from 2020-2024. They simply couldn’t tolerate 4 more years of the same, and I can’t tolerate on more extremely important year due to the current state of our roster with so few players under contract. This isn’t a roster fill in year, no, this practically an entire roster overhaul, and I don’t want to watch GM Chris Grier and HC Mike McDaniel continue to f*ck it up!

GO DOLPHINS!!!