Miami Dolphins co-coordinators to run offense is unconventional. And strange | Opinion
Stephen Ross loves outside-the-box thinking and in that regard the reported naming by coach Brian Flores of co-coordinators to run the offense could delight the Miami Dolphins owner because it’s, well, unconventional.
The move is so different that no championship team since the NFL merger has thought of it before.
For example, the Super Bowl will be played Sunday. And neither the Kansas City Chiefs nor the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both averaging 30 points per game in the postseason, has co-coordinators running its offense.
There have been 54 previous Super Bowl champions, and none of those teams thought of having co-coordinators running the offense.
So, yes, this is some really new stuff.
Some championship teams have actually gone in a completely opposite direction to where the Dolphins are headed. Instead of two offensive coordinators, some of the NFL’s great teams had no offensive coordinators by title, especially the teams in the 1960s and 70s. Many of those teams had their quarterback calling his own plays on game day.
Other championship teams went without a named offensive coordinator because the head coach was the de facto offensive coordinator — such as Bill Walsh with the San Francisco 49ers.
Walsh, of course, was suited to call the 49ers offense because the West Coast offense was his brainchild.
It’s uncertain whether Dolphins co-coordinators Eric Studesville and George Godsey are going to combine on an offense that will change the course of the NFL for decades to come.
More likely the duo will run an offense that will seem to the naked eye to closely resemble some of Chan Gailey’s 2020 offense with perhaps more run-pass option, more motion, and not as many weirdly timed gadget plays. The assumption is quarterback Tua Tagovailoa would benefit from RPO use and not having to learn a completely new offense.
Studesville and Godsey are expected to split the running game and passing game coordinating duties, with Studesville probably attending to the running game, and Godsey probably handling the passing game.
Studesville is expert and experienced at coordinating the run game and did that for Adam Gase when the former Dolphins coach hired the assistant in 2018. Studesville had those duties taken from him when Flores kept him on staff in 2019, but it makes sense to correct that error now.
Godsey has been an NFL offensive coordinator before, in 2015-16 for the Houston Texans, so don’t be surprised if he integrates some of former Houston coach Bill O’Brien’s work into the Miami offense.
The Dolphins leaked news of their atypical co-coordinator setup to the NFL Network and ESPN at precisely 11:58 on Tuesday morning, but the team didn’t deem the move immediately worthy of an official release.
So it’s unclear whether Godsey or Studesville will call the plays on game days. It’s unclear what happens if the Godsey-Studesville collaboration hits a snag of disagreement as to how to attack an opponent.
Like, who wins the debate?
It’s also unclear which one will shoulder the most responsibility for developing Tagovailoa.
Another interesting part of this dynamic is how much voice on the new offense Flores will give new quarterback coach Charlie Frye. I mean, if two offensive coordinators are better than one, then three might be better than two.
Frye was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Central Michigan the past two years. He spent five seasons playing in the NFL, but this is his first NFL coaching job.
Studesville and Godsey and perhaps Frye and obviously Flores will try to breathe life into an offense that finished 15th in the NFL with 404 points in 2020.
And my reaction to all this is what is Flores thinking?
Look, I understand he had two in-house candidates he deemed worthy of one job. I get that he wanted to reward both.
But multiple cooks concocting one stew sounds like a terrible idea. It’s bad like having two quarterbacks, with one starting and the other trying to come to the rescue if the starter struggles.
And it sounds like Flores punted on making the hard call of picking one coach over the other.
If Flores wanted to reward both assistants he could have easily promoted Studesville to assistant head coach/run game coordinator/running backs coach and promoted Godsey to offensive coordinator.
Or he could have done some other iteration of the same thing — like making Studesville the offensive coordinator and Godsey the assistant head coach/pass game coordinator/playcaller.
It’s just titles, people. everyone still would have gotten a raise.
And either way would have put both longtime assistants on a path to getting head coach interviews if the Miami offense succeeds.
Normally this stuff matters not one iota to me. A head coach has the right to construct his staff any way he wishes, and if he’s going to do odd stuff then, that’s his prerogative and who are we to question it?
The problem is Flores is effectively working on, like, his second or third staff and the turnover and the coach’s hiring decisions have become a curiosity.
Flores has earned the benefit of the doubt on his coaching decisions because many of them have worked his first two seasons on the job. But he has lost the benefit of the doubt on his coach hiring decisions because so many have failed his first two seasons on the job.
For example: Gailey was hired to come out of retirement at age 67 to mentor a rookie first-round-pick quarterback. How could Flores believe that dynamic was built to last?
This latest decision? It marks the third time in three years Flores fills the offensive coordinator job.
He has filled the offensive line coach job four times.
Frye is the fourth quarterbacks coach Flores hires in three years and that includes Jim Caldwell, who left suddenly before the 2019 season because of an illness and so far has shown no desire to return even after his recovery.
That’s a lot of turnover for a team that isn’t graduating assistants to promotions around the league. And this latest co-coordinators idea is just, well, strange.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 12:00 AM.
