Patrick Mahomes and Chiefs beat Ryan Tannehill and Titans. Why that’s good for the Dolphins | Opinion
It’ll be the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium in two weeks, so South Florida will be spared a Ryan Tannehill visit for a chance to win the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Spared, by the way, is a carefully chosen word here because, harsh as it may sound to Tannehill fans, such a visit would have brought a fog to South Florida that we really do not need.
And without that visit, we can all hopefully enjoy the clarity as the Miami Dolphins go about their offseason business.
What do I mean? This ..
The fact the Chiefs were simply too much for Tannehill’s Titans Sunday afternoon saves us a whole lot of unnecessary noise.
Because if Tannehill and his underdog team had pulled the upset at Arrowhead Stadium, it would have given life to a debate about whether the Dolphins trading the quarterback last March was right or not.
And it would have blinded countless Dolphins fans to what an NFL team should be trying to accomplish in looking for a quarterback.
And as the Dolphins are looking for a quarterback this offseason, neither of those would have served anyone’s purposes.
Let’s address the second point first. The common and almost universally accepted philosophy for winning championships in the NFL is to find an elite quarterback. We agree on that, right?
Starting in the mid 2000s -- when new rules prohibiting hitting the quarterback too low or too high and going through to the recent rules on helmet to helmet contact both in the pocket and against receivers -- the NFL has been mandating the game be won and lost via the pass.
The rules ushered in a passing era that saw passing statistics climb to previously unthinkable levels. Good quarterbacks began to produce high levels of success. And great quarterbacks became the most valuable piece on the game’s board.
Everyone knows this. Everyone accepts this as fact.
The problem is there are still maybe only 5 or 6 elite quarterbacks in the NFL. And that leaves 27 or so teams with someone who isn’t quite great. And that forces them to do other things like try to piece together dominant defenses, or running games, or generally surround their QBs with as much talent as possible.
The problem those teams have is sometimes a team with a great quarterback also surrounds him with other great players. That’s where champions are made.
And that’s what we saw when the Chiefs and the underdog Titans played on Sunday
The Titans had previously run roughshod through two playoff games against New England and Baltimore with a sledgehammer running game, a very disciplined and talented defense, and timely play from Tannehill.
In that regard, Ryan Tannehill was a featured player. He was important to his team. But he wasn’t carrying his team or leading his team to success. He was a cog in the Tennessee machine.
The problem is the Chiefs have built a similarly strong machine. But they have an elite quarterback.
Patrick Mahomes is a quarterback who can carry his team. He can do seemingly superhuman things that most guys playing the position cannot. He gives the Chiefs a huge advantage.
And when the team with that huge advantage at QB played the team with the cog at QB, well, the outcome was almost predictable.
Chiefs 35.
Titans 24.
And I insist this result is good for the Dolphins and their fans. Because now the debate about whether the Dolphins should have hung on to Tannehill this year is muted.
And now there should be no question what the Dolphins should be trying to do at quarterback going forward. That’s this:
The Dolphins need and should be looking for an elite guy, a star, a great player to be their quarterback.
The team that settled for solid-to-good Tannehill for seven seasons and solid-to-good Ryan Fitzpatrick last season needs to go elite-guy shopping.
And that shopping spree must not stop until it’s clear the Dolphins have what? An elite quarterback.
This makes sense, right? It takes absolutely no genius to believe this and do this, right?
Wrong.
After the Dolphins ushered Dan Marino out the door at the end of 1999, did they go searching for an elite quarterback? Nope. Jay Fiedler was a fine and feisty player but no one thought he’d ever been or become elite.
Years ago, after Chad Henne had failed to fully develop as the Dolphins had hoped, general manager Jeff Ireland was trying to find a quarterback he liked in the 2011 draft. He couldn’t find any, so he told me he’d instead try to put as much talent around Henne as possible.
It didn’t work.
Later, after Tannehill arrived, the Dolphins continued doing the same thing through 2015 and into 2018. At the end, general managers and coaches who ran the organization admitted to me -- but more importantly to themselves -- Tannehill wasn’t elite but they still couldn’t break away.
So they tried to put as much talent around him as they could, although clearly not enough.
The point is the Dolphins for decades have been caught in the trap of trying to find players to lift up the quarterback instead of aggressively looking for the quarterback to lift up the entire franchise.
My fear was if Tannehill had won on Sunday, the Dolphins would somehow convince themselves they could continue repeating the cycle, staggering along with a Fitzpatrick, or maybe some project dude they select in the third or fourth round, rather than go for a chance at a star early in the draft.
That worry has passed now. My hope is that seeing Mahomes perform erases any thoughts of that now.
Mahomes is in his second year as the starter in Kansas City. He’s only 24 years old. And he is arguably the best quarterback in the game now.
This is who the Dolphins and the rest of the AFC have to contend with going forward. This is who they’ll be chasing for years.
The Titans losing helps clear the air on what the goal in Miami should be. It’s not searching for a solid guy who can be part of the pack that chases Mahomes. It’s searching for the elite guy who can catch and surpass Mahomes.
This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 9:48 PM.
