Dolphins coach Brian Flores might be good, but the complete picture is still unknown
Brian Flores outcoached Doug Pederson last week.
Flores took a team with significantly inferior talent on both sides of the line of scrimmage and that team showed more smarts, preparation, and according to Pederson himself, more effort than the Eagles.
In his weekly radio appearance on WIP-FM, the Eagles coach said the Dolphins “played harder than we did … They wanted this game more than we did,” in upsetting the visiting Eagles, 37-31 on Sunday.
All of that points to the work Flores and his coaching staff did in the week leading up to the game and on game day.
And on that game day the Dolphins unveiled yet another trick play, of which they’ve tried about half a dozen this season. The Dolphins had been working for several weeks on the swinging gate trick play the team calls Mountaineer Shot — named after Appalachian State product Daniel Kilgore, who snaps the football to punter Matt Haack, who eventually tosses a TD pass to kicker Jason Sanders.
“We knew they were going to throw everything out there,” defensive end Brandon Graham told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They just made a good play on that play. We don’t let that happen, it might be a different outcome.
“It definitely caught us by surprise, because he was wide open.”
Here’s a football truism: When players admit they were caught by surprise by the other team, what they’re really saying is the other team brought stuff to the game that their coaching staff didn’t prepare for.
That is at once an indictment on one coach and his staff and a compliment to the other coach and his staff. So Flores and his assistants get tons of kudos for this one.
They also get kudos for getting a team that generally doesn’t seem very talented to compete. Yeah, that’s the low standard this season. The Dolphins are 3-9, which is an atrocious record in any season.
Except this season, with the roster so stripped of talent, 3-9 and playing hard and not giving up is a good day’s work.
So we all agree on this? Everybody on the same page?
Good.
Now, let’s take the next few steps and hopefully we can stay together. Ready?
Brian Flores is not Don Shula or anything like Shula.
Flores is not an NFL coach of the year candidate.
And although everyone sees signs NFL rookie head coach Brian Flores might develop into something special, it is way, way, way too early to declare he is that already.
Can we agree on that? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Look, I know you read this space because you probably love the Dolphins. You’re a fan. And fans see through prisms that aren’t set to the dispassion setting. Fans are, by definition, fanatical — as in zero to 60 in an instant.
As in rookie coach to Shula or coach of the year candidate in three wins.
I’m not there yet. And I’m not going to be there for a couple of years, folks. Because like you, I’ve been burned by Dolphins coaches before. But unlike you, I remember and have learned my lesson.
The lesson is one cannot judge whether an NFL coach is good based on 12 games. Or even one season. I believe you can generally judge if he’s terrible in that time. Everyone understood Cam Cameron was not cut out to be an NFL head coach before his one season with the Dolphins was complete.
But gauging good? That takes a while.
And how do I know this? Because history.
Remember 2008? You thought Tony Sparano was awesome. You thought Bill Parcells hung the moon. I remember the “In Parcells we trust,” slogans going up all over fan sites. It was the answer to any skepticism because the Dolphins that season won the AFC East with an 11-5 record.
Except that never repeated. And suddenly fans weren’t digging Sparano’s reaction to field goals. And soon they weren’t loving his inability to win home games in 2010. And then no one remembered how great they thought he was a couple of years earlier.
Remember 2012? You thought Joe Philbin was a great hire. So did the Dolphins, who publicly stated he could be the next Shula. Everyone was optimistic because they thought Philbin developed Aaron Rodgers. And because his first team, although clearly incomplete and rebuilding, was better than Sparano’s last team the year before.
But then Philbin admitted he didn’t have much to do with Aaron Rodgers becoming great. And we saw Philbin wasn’t much of a leader. And soon Ryan Tannehill found out Philbin’s not a guy you go into a foxhole with. And soon the Dolphins, who always started games slowly, were finishing seasons the same way.
The Philbin era ended in 2015 and that led to Adam Gase.
And you loved Gase. Because his offense broke records and went to the Super Bowl with Peyton Manning. And because he had a pulse which was a contrast to Philbin. And because after some early struggles, the Dolphins won a bunch of games and went to the playoffs.
You loved him. And then you didn’t.
Because Gase’s offense in Miami without Manning was never what it was in Denver with Manning. Because Gase said things that made you crazy. Because weird things happened like assistant coaches snorting white powdery substances in their offices.
And because the losing in 2017 and ‘18 eventually overshadowed the winning in 2016.
The lesson to be learned is be patient. Wait. See. Let the Flores era play out a little bit before rendering judgment.
Slow your roll on the Don Shula comparisons. And the coach of the year talk. And other grand proclamations of what Flores is or isn’t after all of 12 games.
I’m going to say this in all love (because I love you people): It’s one thing to win every once in awhile with a bad roster. It’s quite another thing — a harder thing — to win consistently with a roster built to succeed rather than built to fail.
It’s one thing to meet or surpass expectations when there are zero expectations for an entire season. It’s quite another thing to meet or surpass expectations when the bar for success is delivering a winning season, or a playoff berth, or a championship.
The true test of a coaching staff is the latter. Not the former.
I can tell you Flores is not a bad head coach. We have seen that. We already know that because amid some struggles and mistakes, he’s also had some shining moments. But these are merely snapshots.
The full and accurate picture? Sorry, but this cannot be cooked up via microwave. This is going to require a slow cooker that waits until next year. And maybe the year afterward.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 12:00 AM.
