A plea to Dolphins’ Ross to be proactive: How he must change and what he must do
There’s no guidebook for being an NFL owner, no manual that would ensure that Stephen Ross’ immense success as a businessman would translate to any kind of success as a steward of a football franchise.
But if the Dolphins’ beleaguered owner looks around, he can quickly identify the two areas where he must change for his franchise to escape a quarter century of mediocrity and irrelevance:
1). He must make better hires, or find the people who will help him make better hires.
None of his key hires have produced any kind of sustained success - Joe Philbin, Adam Gase, Brian Flores, Mike McDaniel, Chris Grier and Mike Tannenbaum, who made clear in his ESPN analyst role that he would have pushed for Justin Herbert over Tua Tagovailoa if Ross hadn’t dumped him.
He passed on hiring two interim coaches (Dan Campbell, Todd Bowles) who have had far more success than anyone he has hired. He couldn’t land an interview with well-regarded Ravens GM Eric DeCosta because he reportedly wanted his new GM to keep Philbin.
Here would be our suggestion to Ross: Find the smartest unemployed football man available and ask both him and president Tom Garfinkel to do the leg work to compile a list of the best young front office executives in football, presenting Ross with qualified options to take over the Dolphins’ front office.
There’s no need to conceal this from Grier; he understands how the business works and he should know he’s on borrowed time. If Grier doesn’t like it, he can quit. If Grier is OK with Ross authorizing research on a GM successor, he can stick around until he’s replaced.
That way, if Ross finally musters the strength to move on from Grier, he will have a list of qualified replacements at his fingertips.
2). Ross must be less patient in trusting employees who haven’t earned it.
A quick history lesson:
Three years after Doug Pederson guided the Eagles to a Super Bowl title, owner Jeffrey Lurie had the gumption to make a coaching change after 9-7, 9-7 and 4-11-1 seasons. There has been more subsequent success with Nick Sirianni, even though Sirianni had a rough spot in 2023.
Five years after winning their sixth Super Bowl together, Patriots owner Robert Kraft dumped Bill Belichick, then moved on from Jerod Mayo after one year, if only because Mike Vrabel became available.
The Packers fired a coach (Mike McCarthy) who won a Super Bowl, went 125-77 and won 10 of 18 playoff games and replaced him with Matt LaFleur, who has gone 69-34 with three playoffs wins.
Even after Rick Spielman’s teams made the postseason six times and won three playoff games in his 10 years at GM, owner Zygi Wilf -- who has done a lot more winning that Ross -- concluded that wasn’t good enough, and replaced Spielman with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and replaced Mike Zimmer with Kevin O’Connell, giving the Vikings a coach/GM duo that has gone 37-21 in three-plus years together, albeit without any playoff success.
How exactly does Ross have more patience with a 10-year general manager who hasn’t won a single playoff game (Grier) than Lurie had with a coach who won a Super Bowl and Kraft had with a coach who won more Super Bowls than anyone in history?
Mike McDaniel said Monday that Ross was “very frustrated” after the loss to Carolina. But what good does frustration do if it doesn’t translate into finding solutions?
You can blame Grier for a million things, including spending his first- and second-round picks on players rated by Pro Football Focus as the worst at their positions -- Kenneth Grant and Jonah Savaiinaea. (The Savanaiinaea pick also cost Miami third- and fourth-rounders in a trade-up.)
But do you know who’s most to blame?
The owner who hasn’t won a playoff game since buying majority interest in January 2009, the owner who should never have entrusted Grier with the 2025 draft and certainly shouldn’t entrust him with another one.
Did Ross not have enough evidence, before last April’s draft, that Grier’s college player evaluation was spotty?
Did he not remember Grier drafting Charles Harris over TJ Watt and Austin Jackson over Justin Jefferson and pursuing Noah Igbinoghene and Cam Smith and Channing Tindall and Liam Eichenberg and Josh Rosen and picking too good a quarterback for the tank (Ryan Fitzpatrick) and failing to upgrade the trenches and messing up most of his draft-day trades and continuing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in players with a history of injuries?
Or was Ross simply not paying attention?
Even the best talent evaluators make mistakes.
Dave Dombrowski, who built one Marlins World Series champion and the nucleus of another and ranks among baseball’s best GMs of the modern era, once traded a young prospect who had three big-league wins (Randy Johnson) for veteran pitcher Mark Langston. Johnson went onto win 300 more games and become a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Jimmy Johnson, among the best talent evaluators to pass through these parts, traded down from 19 to 29 in the 1998NFL draft (before knowing that Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss would drop to Minnesota at 21) and selected running back bust John Avery at No. 29.
With Grier, it’s not simply that he has made some big mistakes; all GMs do. It’s the large volume of mistakes combined with the gravity of the errors combined with the totality of the mistakes now surpassing the good moves he has made (drafting De’Von Achane and Patrick Paul, acquiring Tyreek Hill and Darren Waller, among others).
Nobody is asking Ross to meddle. But like Lurie did in moving on from Pederson and Kraft has done in dumping Belichick, Ross must stop displaying eternal patience and be more adamant about demanding excellence.
There’s something to be said for continuity and stability in sports, as the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Heat and other successful organizations have shown. But there’s nothing to be said for continuity when the results don’t justify it.
This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 4:28 PM.
