What if the Miami Dolphins didn’t blow it up? Let’s take a trip to an alternate universe
On Earth, the Dolphins are cheerlessly slogging through their worst season since 2007 and perhaps their worst — period.
But on Earth 2, they’re 11-point favorites against Eric Bieniemy’s Jets and right in the thick of the AFC playoff race.
Adam Gase is still their coach, and his starting quarterback is the front-runner for Comeback Player of the Year.
Cameron Wake and Preston Smith give the Dolphins their best pass-rushing duo since Jason Taylor played, and new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is on the top of his game.
Mike Tannenbaum has finally gotten the Dolphins’ financial house in order and Chris Grier just had his best draft as a general manager.
And up in Hudson Yards, Stephen Ross is glad he ignored all the advice his New York friends gave him the previous fall.
Instead of blowing up his team and starting from scratch, he stayed the course for one more go-round.
A very soft schedule, Andrew Luck’s retirement and key injuries to the Steelers, Chiefs and Chargers have the Dolphins in contention. But can Gase, Tannenbaum and Grier get them over the top?
Reality check
Back in the real world, we know this is a fun fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. Plus, that fairy tale was the best-case scenario. Maybe things would have gotten even worse than 2018, and the Dolphins would have wasted another year.
Plus Ross famously said that it would have been insane to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
He was done with Tannenbaum, Gase and Ryan Tannehill. No amount of convincing would have changed his mind. Ross wants to win a Super Bowl before he shuffles off this mortal coil, and he didn’t see a way to there from here without blazing a brand new, polarizing trail.
And who could blame him? The Gase-Tannebaum-Grier trio produced a 23-25 record, one playoff appearance (a blowout loss to the Steelers) and a roster that had major warts.
Ross’ response: Control-Alt-Delete. Hard reboot.
So here we are, 10 months later, with perhaps the worst Dolphins-Jets matchup in the series’ 53-year run.
The Brian Flores-led Dolphins are winless in seven games.
The Jets, with Gase as their first-year head coach, are 1-6.
As ESPN’s Rich Cimini points out, this is the first game in NFL history between two teams with point differentials of worse than minus-100 this early in the season.
The Dolphins’ roster? Unrecognizable from 2018. Just 17 players on the team through Friday were with the Dolphins last year.
Tannehill and Wake are in Tennessee. Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills are in Houston. Ja’Wuan James is in Denver. Minkah Fitzpatrick is in Pittsburgh. Danny Amendola is in Detroit. Frank Gore is in Buffalo. Kenyan Drake is in Arizona. Xavien Howard is on injured reserve.
And the Dolphins are at least 30 players away from competing for a championship.
Again, no one’s arguing the Dolphins would win a Super Bowl this year if they had kept that core intact and made six or seven smart, strategic moves.
But there’s absolutely no reason to think that wouldn’t have been enough to make the playoffs in a watered down AFC.
One prominent member of the 2018 Dolphins privately said they would have won at least 10 games by bringing back the best of last year’s roster.
Others wouldn’t even dare to dream.
“I try not to think about those things,” said Dolphins receiver Jakeem Grant, one just five active Dolphins remaining from Gase’s 2016 playoff campaign. “At some point, it is in the back of your mind. ... There was a lot of talent on that team and I think we could have went far. Injuries and stuff like that happened last year. But it happens to the best of us.”
Gase told New York reporters this week that he got fired because “we didn’t win enough.”
And when asked on a conference call with Miami media if he believed the nucleus he had in Miami was good enough to compete, he didn’t say no.
“That’s irrelevant,” Gase said. “I’ve got to worry about this game. I can’t worry about what it could have been, all that stuff. I’m not worried about that.”
Not enough credit
Tannenbaum took a lot of abuse — some warranted, but plenty not — for the job he did in Miami, but he doesn’t get enough credit for leaving the Dolphins with great salary cap flexibility. There’s a reason Miami still has $26 million in cap space despite carrying $61 million in dead money and buying three 2020 draft picks.
So while the financials looked bleak last November — the Dolphins were projected to have just $16 million in 2019 cap space — Tannenbaum had them in position to be active in free agency with just a handful of obvious cuts.
Their cap space would have jumped to $50 million simply by releasing DeVante Parker, Robert Quinn, Andre Branch and Ted Larsen.
That would have allowed them to keep Wake and sign up to six quality starters. How’s this for a scenario? Keeping Wake and adding Smith, defensive back Ronald Darby, running back Tevin Coleman, receiver Cole Beasley, tight end Tyler Eifert and tackle Bobby Massie.
As for the 2019 draft on Earth 2, the Dolphins would have likely taken the best available offensive lineman at pick No. 13, a source tells the Herald. Names like Chris Lindstrom, Garrett Bradbury, Andre Dillard and Tytus Howard would have been considered.
With Gase still the head coach, Josh Rosen would not be a Miami Dolphin, unless they got him for a throwaway late pick. Gase was not a fan coming out, and that hasn’t changed.
So the Dolphins would have had been able to use their second-rounder instead of trading it away. Maybe they would have moved up from 48 for quarterback Drew Lock. Maybe they would have stayed put and taken edge-rusher Ben Banogu.
But whomever they would have signed in free agency and taken in the draft, they would have improved a roster that had many good, and a few excellent, pieces.
Need at quarterback
You might have noticed we haven’t yet discussed the biggest reason the Dolphins have spent two decades out of contention: The quarterback position.
Tannehill was cruising along nicely before suffering the first of three significant injuries late in the 2016 season. He never regained that form in a Dolphins uniform, and as a result, probably cost Gase his job.
If the Dolphins’ power structure would have returned intact in 2019, there would have been a fierce debate within the organization about what to do with Tannehill. Some would have gotten on a table for him to get another year. Some would have demanded he go. It would have been messy.
But Tannehill has proven this year that he is still capable of playing good football. Since his March trade to the Titans, he has taken over for an ineffective Marcus Mariota, and has posted a 108.3 passer rating and wins in both his starts.
He also still has a fan in Gase, even from afar.
“It’s good to see that he’s having success,” Gase said. “It’s good to see him winning. I watched a little bit of his first game. He ended up throwing an interception, so I turned it off. Thought I was bad luck.”
But if not Tannehill as the Dolphins 2019 quarterback, whom? They would have made a strong play for Teddy Bridgewater — like they did in the real world — and with a talented roster and coaching stability, perhaps they would have convinced him to sign.
It’s a tantalizing dream.
Instead, we get reality.
Jets-Dolphins like we’ve never seen it. And hopefully never will again — on this Earth or any other.
This story was originally published November 1, 2019 at 11:56 AM.
