Same play caller, same QB: Miami Dolphins opt for continuity over change in 2021
After two consecutive years of upheaval, the Dolphins are betting on continuity in 2021.
No more quarterback carousel.
No more revolving door on the coaching staff.
The Dolphins next year will go as far as Brian Flores, Tua Tagovailoa and Chan Gailey can take them.
Barring an unforeseen development, all three will begin the coming season in the same jobs that they ended the last.
Flores as coach of an ascendant team.
Tagovailoa looking to make next season better than the last.
And Gailey charged with crafting an offense that maximizes Tua’s ability.
“Yeah, we expect everyone back,” Flores said Tuesday at the Dolphins’ year-end Zoom news conference.
Flores’ comments were in response to a question about his staff of assistants.
But his answer applied broadly.
This offseason will be a lot different than the last two. Not quieter — particularly with tens of millions in projected cap space and four of the top 50 picks — but different.
In 2019, Flores asked Chad O’Shea and Patrick Graham to run his offense and defense and Chris Grier took a shot on Josh Rosen as their quarterback of the future.
By August of 2020, all three were gone, replaced by Gailey, Josh Boyer and Tagovailoa.
Those three did enough to get Miami to 10 wins, but not the playoffs.
But the team either believes they weren’t the reason the Dolphins fell short, or the trio will make enough growth in the next eight months to close the gap with the Bills.
Now it’s up to Grier to fill in the necessary holes to take the next step.
That includes either taking an impact player with the third-overall pick, or trading back to build on an already impressive draft stockpile.
“I’m not really going to sit here and talk draft strategy or anything right now,” Grier said. “The season just ended. Right now we’re our focus is on the next few weeks, getting through our evaluations with the team here and really self-scouting our team and seeing where we feel as Brian just said, what we want 2021 to look like.
“We’ll start dealing with that here shortly once the Senior Bowl comes around here in a couple of weeks when we’re down in Mobile going through that process. But we’re excited to have the picks we have. There are some good players. Again, most of the players haven’t even declared yet still, so not going to speculate on anything. But we’re excited about the future here and what we can do for 2021.”
Flores likewise wouldn’t speculate on possible changes to the offensive scheme that seemed to fit Fitzpatrick better than Tagovailoa. But he did suggest their comfort level and communication should improve with another year together and spoke broadly about an offense that ranked 15th in points (25.3 per game) but 23rd in yards per play (5.3) and 21st in yards per pass (6.7)
“I think that group made a lot of improvement,” Flores said. “Obviously, we played a lot of young guys there. Along with two guys we signed as free agents. I thought we made some improvements but these next four, five weeks, six weeks, for us as a staff, to include Chris, we’re going to evaluate everything.
“We’re going to evaluate the OL. The DL. The offense. The defense. The special teams. First down. Second down. Third down. Red zone. Two minute. Schedules. Anything we can do to improve this team. Take a look at the roster. Honestly this process and that process, coupled with the draft and free agency, we will just try to create a vision for what we’d like the ‘21 team to look like. So that’s what this process is. I think I’ll probably have a better answer of that in a couple of weeks, after looking at it again.
“But my snapshot postseason is it was an improved group. I thought they improved over the course of the season. Saw some development from young players. So that was what we were looking for. Development from the veteran players. I thought the group came together. It wasn’t perfect. But I thought they were solid. But at the end of the day we’re not satisfied with where we ended up. And we need to get better.”
▪ Cornerback Xavien, whose 10 interceptions set a franchise record and led the NFL, is the Miami Dolphins’ 2020 MVP, the team announced Tuesday.
▪ The Dolphins signed 12 players to futures contracts Tuesday: DE Nick Coe, S Brian Cole, CB Javaris Davis, CB Tino Ellis, C Tyler Gauthier, T Jonathan Hubbard, LB Kylan Johnson, TE Chris Myarick, G Durval Queiroz Neto, DE Tyshun Render, QB Reid Sinnett and LS Rex Sunahara.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 4:15 PM.
