Cote: Bags on heads, season dead as Grier departure begins Dolphins reboot | Opinion
The Miami Dolphins season died at home Thursday night. Friday morning, so did the career of longtime general manager Chris Grier. And the season of change, the needed reboot of a desperate franchise, has begun.
Many football fans were in the holiday spirit and dressed up as if for Halloween as the Dolphins hosted the Baltimore Ravens at Hard Rock Stadium, no on except owner Stephen Ross knowing then it would be Grier’s last night on the job.
As the game wore on, skidding to an eventual 28-6 Miami loss, some of those fans in particular would have won a best costume contest, hands down. And so economical, those getups they’d donned, yet so unmistakable in the message conveyed.
The fans who wore bags over their heads said it all. It’s the last resort of sports fans — the clarion symbol for some combination of frustration, anger and embarrassment.
“That sucks,” said Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel of those bags. “Fans enjoy winning. It’s up to us to give them something to cheer.”
The sacking of Grier (the Dolphins’ statement says they “parted ways”) will please most fans. Don’t call him a scapegoat; the firing is deserved. He has had nine years in charge of the roster, with little to show of it.
Eight games remain, but Miami’s season all but officially died on Thursday night, buried by a 2-7 record. The pallbearers had bags on their heads. The feel-good of the previous week’s resounding win in Atlanta proved a mirage. Up next: the nemesis Buffalo Bills.
“We could not get back to the momentum we thought we were building,” as McDaniel put Thursday’s collapse.
The sequence in the game that defined the night for the Fins-as-in-Finished:
Miami is going for it on fourth-and-1 deep in Ravens territory. Oops. Tackle Larry Borom is flagged for a false start. Now it’s fourth-and-6. And the resulting 35-yard field goal try — a six-inch gimmie putt in the modern NFL — wobbles wide right.
The Dolphins lost two fumbles. Tua Tagovailoa threw his 11th interception, most in the league.
The offense, or lack of, kept putting Miami’s defense is bad situations. It also was the final push as Grier teetered on the edge of his career’s cliff.
The frustration was evident postgame. Down 14-6, Miami’s defense was playing well, sabotaged by offensive mistakes.
“Giving [the Ravens] the ball when they shouldn’t have it. Not scoring when we should” said leading tackler Jordyn Brooks. “Turnovers, they kill you. Until we learn how not to beat ourselves, we will not win a football game.”
The many Ravens fans in the house did most of the cheering as Lamar Jackson returned from injury to throw four touchdown passes.
“I love being home, man,” Jackson said afterward.
If only he had never left. It could have happened. It’s one of the dozens of could haves and what-ifs that have piled the mountain of regret upon the NFL’s most forlorn franchise of this 21st Century.
Hark back to the league’s 2018 Draft. Miami was coming off a 6-10 season quarterbacked by journeyman fill-in Jay Cutler. The club decided they would stick with so-so Ryan Tannehill coming back from injury the next year. So with the 11th pick in that draft, Miami selected safety Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Later in the first round Baltimore drafted Lamar Jackson, the sort of generational talent who very likely would have saved Grier’s job.
The Dolphins had it good for most of three decades, 1970s through ‘90s, with Don Shula and Dan Marino at the helm. But the karma has been hell to pay. Shula left, Marino retired and the franchise has been cursed ever since.
Miami last won a playoff game in the 2000 season, the longest active drought in the NFL. Last reached a Super Bowl in 1984, Marino’s second season. He just turned 64. Last won a Super Bowl in ‘73. Gramps may remember. Ask him.
The Dolphins last had the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2008. They took a tackle. Could have had QB Matt Ryan. In 2020 they opted for Tagovailoa over Justin Herbert. They made a run at coach Jim Harbaugh but failed to close the deal. Before, in between and since, a litany of decisions not made or gone wrong pockmarks the franchise. Many have been on the watch of doomed general manager Chris Grier.
Miami’s priority should have been, and now evidently was, replacing Grier with a proven, accomplished GM given the power to replace or retain McDaniel for one more try. Grier’s firing does not save McDaniel’s job, it just puts it in somebody else’s hands. And with the season already lost, it matters little whether the hammer falls soon or after the season. It should fall, though, as an answer to a quarter century of mostly losing and zero playoff win.
The matter of Tua Tagovailoa is more complicated. I still have some faith, albeit dwindling, that he is franchise-QB capable. As pertinently, or pragmatically at least, it would cost owner Stephen Ross almost $100 million to, in effect, buy out Tagovailoa’s contract and move on from him.
The league trade deadline is this coming Tuesday, and I would be surprised if the Dolphins were not sellers foretelling a season of change. Anybody want a used Tyreek Hill?
The bottom line, as we gather here to say goodbye to another lost, wasted year — and now to Chris Grier — is that nobody in the NFL begs a fresh start more than this team and its beleaguered fans. And now the reboot has begun.
When the bags are on the heads, there is no turning back.
This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 12:06 PM.
