Cote: Dolphins new coach, GM take on 25 years of irrelevance and QB mess | Opinion
The question — no, THE question — finally came Thursday around 40 minutes into the hourlong event at the Miami Dolphins’ training facility outside Hard Rock Stadium.
This was the introductory news conference for newly hired head coach Jeff Hafley and general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan, who had been hired a week or so earlier. Pleasantries and platitudes were flying from both men and of course from owner Stephen Ross as he takes his latest shot at finally hitting a bull’s-eye on a coach/GM combo.
Hafley and Sullivan were super-impressive, presented really well. Most do on this day, when change for the mere sake of it is applauded by starving fans. When the Dolphins’ battered Hope Machine is polished and humming again. Dolphins legend Dan Marino and fellow quarterback great Troy Aikman, a consultant on the GM search, sat elbow-to-elbow in the front row Monday, lending the gravitas of accomplishment to the proceedings.
Everything was great. Turns out Sullivan and Hafley are “Sully” and “Haf” to their friends, like the title of an ‘80s buddy-cop TV show. Eeerily, they sort of look alike. Could be brothers. Twins, even. They come from the same team, turning the Dolphins into Green Bay South. They’convey likable. They’re also both the antithesis of fired Mike McDaniel on the macho/football-leader stereotype scale -- but not too macho to not show emotion, as both did in fighting back tears of gratitude for the chance they’ve been given.
Then a microphone was passed among the media and at last THE question was heard.
“What are your thoughts on the Dolphins’ quarterback situation?”
“Obviously that’s a huge question looming over the organization,” said Sullivan, putting it mildly. “I’d be naive to think everybody doesn’t understand that. I have a lot of respect for Tua [Tagovailoa]. I thought Quinn [Ewers] did a great job at the end of the season. But whether it’s Tua or anybody else, it would be unfair for me to talk about anything specific until I talked to the player himself. It’s the most important position in sports. We will do what is best for this football team. But today’s not the day I can give you that answer.”
Points to Sullivan for admitting the Dolphins’ QB room is wrought with upheaval; my words, not his. Smart to publicly compliment Tagovailoa and Ewers. But let’s be real.
One current QB option is the young veteran Miami thought would be the franchise guy — but who got benched by McDaniel with three games left in the season. The other is the seventh-round rookie who showed some promise amid mixed results late in the season.
You could say this QB situation is one Sullivan and Hafley “inherited.” I would sooner think both took the Miami job in spite of it. Not even Hall of Famers Marino and Aikman have the magic wand to make Tagovailoa the player Miami thought he would be in 2020, or to make disappear the shortcomings that saw Ewers to fall to the seventh round.
The new regime did not rule out the idea that Hafley may differ with McDaniel and decide Tagovailoa deserves a fresh chance. Or that Ewers might be the guy moving forward. Or that “Somebody not in the building,“ said Sullivan, might be Miami’s next QB.
“We will figure that out,” said the new GM.
Doing so should be priority A, A1 and B for the Dolphins’ new leadership.
And to what degree they figure it out will answer the question whether the Hafley/Sullivan tandem will finally end this franchise’s 25 years of futility since last winning a playoff game in 2000, unfathomably the longest such current drought in the NFL.
“I know you’ve been frustrated by recent performances of the team,” Ross said Monday, as if addressing Dolfans. “Well I’m equally frustrated. I want a new generation of winning football games.”
What a contrast in teams for the two men now in charge.
To go from the hinterlands and winterlands of Green Bay to Miami, where people save all year to go on vacation, is jarring enough.
To go from a franchise that enjoyed a 30-year continuum of Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers at QB to a franchise that has spent almost as long looking for a failing to find the next Marino or even an acceptable facsimile.
And to go from a club that brags about the “Green Bay Way” to a club that plainly has Lost Its Way, at least pending an answer at quarterback and a merciful end to that endless playoff-win drought.
Give Ross credit for stubborn persistence, at least. Since becoming majority Dolphins owner in 2009, Ross, now 85, has never hired a new head coach with previous NFL experience at the job. Tony Sparano, Joe Philbin, Adam Gase, Brian Flores and McDaniel all were first-timers who all failed in the end. Hafley is Ross’ sixth straight stab at the dice roll finally turning out right.
Maybe the law of averages will finally smile upon the Dolphins?
