Brian Flores talks about recast Dolphins coaching staff: One addition needs to be amazing
Brian Flores gathered a huddle of local reporters covering the Senior Bowl practices in Mobile, Ala., Monday evening to talk for the first time about his new coaching staff -- the one with a new offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator and multiple guys who have never coached in the NFL.
And my takeaway from what Flores said is that a ton is riding on the Chan Gailey hire.
You can monitor the ebbs and flows of Patrick Graham leaving for a lateral position as defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, if you wish. You can worry about how Flores goes through offensive line coaches like a saw goes through wood, with Steve Marshall Miami’s third line coach since Flores was hired in February 2019. You can even wonder about assistant defensive backs coach Curt Kuntz going from the high school level to the NFL and Flores acting like that’s a normal climb when it’s not.
But the success and failure of the newly cast 2020 Dolphins coaching staff is going to rest on Flores first, of course, because he’s the head coach. And Gailey a close second, because the new offensive coordinator is going to have a giant weight on his shoulders.
“This is a guy who has coached for a long long time,” Flores said of Gailey. “He’s very innovative. He’s been a head coach in this league. He understands situations. He has coached a lot of different types of players. He’s done a job of getting the most out of players. He’s someone I have a lot of confidence in.
“He’ll help us.”
Gailey’s job, best I can put it, is to help install the offense, help identify and then develop the Dolphins’ next great young quarterback, help Flores on the advice front because he’s been there and done that as a head coach, and, oh yeah, help the Dolphins win in a division that includes the rising Buffalo Bills defense and Bill Belichick authoring the defense in New England.
Yeah, that’s a lot.
It was surprising, frankly, that Flores dumped Chad O’Shea after the season. The Dolphins had very little in the way of big time NFL talent on offense and yet finished with a flurry, scoring 65 points in the final two games. The Dolphins averaged 25.4 points per game in their final nine games.
Flores nonetheless found O’Shea wanting. So he was fired him the day after the season ended. And he didn’t explain the reason for that Monday.
But Flores certainly explained what he needs and expects from Gailey as the successor.
“Chan has been a spread guy,” Flores said. “A lot of people don’t know he coached defense for seven years. This is someone who has been around the block. It could be spread. It could be the power game. It’s whatever. He tries to put players in position to do the things they do well. You’ve heard me say that often. That’s something I’ve always seen from him, and something I have a lot of respect for.
“I know he’s a great teacher. Just in my conversations with several players and coaches that have spent time with him, and that’s obviously very important. The first thing I should have said is that. Obviously we had a lot of turnover this year, we’re obviously going to have more turnover.
“We’re at the Senior Bowl. We got a lot of draft picks. Every team has a lot of turnover. Having great teachers in the building is important. We have a staff full of great teachers.”
Teaching is important to Flores. And it’s clear the New England system the Dolphins ran last year wasn’t easy to learn. And maybe the guy teaching it didn’t do as well as Flores wanted.
Flores, in fact, admitted the ability to teach and communicate are the top traits he wants from his coaches.
“Being able to teach and communicate, which in a lot of ways go hand in hand,” Flores said. “So teach the players and communicate with the coaches. Those are the two things.”
When Flores discussed the Gailey hire he prominently mentioned how the move has a lot to do with vision.
“At the end of the day, I feel like for the future of this team, my vision for us offensively, I feel like it’s a move we have to make,” Flores said.
“...From a vision standpoint, as far as how we’re going to run the football and throw the football. How we’re going to go about meetings and practices and walk throughs I felt like we needed to do something a little differently than we had in the past.”
This part is curious. Flores is talking about vision for the offense and he hired a 68-year-old coach who was retired since 2016 to set that vision into focus.
And yet that veteran coach will have to installing that new offense for the quarterback the Dolphins expect to draft in April. And that rookie needs to be great for Miami’s future to be great.
It’s part of Gailey’s job to make that work.
“He’s worked with a lot of quarterbacks, he’s been a head coach,” Flores said. “He understands, let’s call it ‘coach-quarterback,’ that dynamic, that relationship, how important it is. He’s a very good teacher and he’s gotten the most out of every guy that’s been in that room. To me, that’s coaching.”
To me, that’s a very big job.
This story was originally published January 20, 2020 at 9:48 PM.
