LONDON -- That's right, mates. I'm still in London. I was supposed to use this bye week as a mini vacation but instead the Miami Dolphins conducted a mini Black Monday and so here I am.
And as I work, my chief question today is how has Dolphins defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle managed to keep his job so far? Look, it is not personal between myself and Coyle. I'm sure he is a good guy and has a nice family and all that.
But this is about putting a good defense on the field for the Miami Dolphins and he hasn't done that. I nonetheless do not blame Coyle for the fact he's still on the coaching staff. He's merely reporting for work.
I put this on Stephen Ross and the fact he is an absentee owner to his $1 billion NFL business. That was my column today. It's about Ross failing to recognize he should have fired Philbin long ago, about Ross failing to do it the right way once he decided to take the step, about Ross not really knowing his new interim coach Dan Campbell all that well, and about Ross not yet seeing that Coyle has to go.
And why all this?
Because Ross simply is not around enough.
No, I don't want him making personnel decisions. No, I don't want him calling plays. But also, no, I don't want him to be blind to things anyone who is around the team with regularity can see.
Imagine owning a store and only going there on the weekends? Imagine running a company while living 2,000 miles away? That's Ross and his Miami Dolphins.
By the way, Robert Kraft shows up most every day in New England. The Pegulas live in Western New York where their NFL and NHL teams play. Woody Johnson, for all his idiocyncracies, sees his team practically every day.
Not Ross.
(I grew up dirt poor. My family immigrated to this country without a penny. But my dad taught me you take a job and then you get out of that job or project only as much as you put into it. If you work at it -- hard -- it will somehow pay off. If you coast, you will not maximize your performance.)
So that's where I'm coming from, folks. I don't see Ross putting in much work on his football team. Of course, no one will tell him that because he's the boss and he treats people great and they like making hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars off him. But I don't work for him. So I don't mind calling it as I see it. Honestly, if I did work for him I'd call it as I see it. Whatever.
Anyway, read the column before Ross buys the Miami Herald and shuts the site down. Yes, kidding.
Moving on to future Dolphins issues:
These guys are going to try to sell you on the idea interim coach Dan Campbell may really turn this season around. And so he will be a serious candidate for the full-fledged gig after 2015.
I hope that works out. But taking the more likely scenario that miracles don't always happen into account, Mike Tannenbaum will be the guy picking the next Dolphins coach for Stephen Ross. Yes, it will be Ross's final call. But it will be Tannenbaum leading the search.
And I present to you a name: Jim Mora.
He checks a lot of boxes.
He is currently the head coach at UCLA and having success there. Check.
He is the former coach of the Atlanta Falcons (2004-06) and Seattle Seahawks (2009) so he has NFL experience as a head coach. Check.
He's 53 so he's young. Check.
His dad was Jim E. Mora, who coached the NFL New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts and the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars of the USFL. The GM of those USFL teams? Carl Peterson, who was a Ross confidant until about a year or so ago. Anyway, Mora has the gene pool, the name recognition, the connection to Ross and I'm told Mike Tannenbaum really likes him.
Check. Check. Check. Check.
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