DOWN & OUT
Dolphins had to ax coach after weekend flop in London, but owner’s move looks desperate
Maybe it was late, but it was still necessary. Maybe it doesn’t change the fundamentals to the season even while changing the singular voice at the top.
But Dolphins fans could nod in approval for the first time in weeks after Monday’s needed, if utterly desperate, move of firing head coach Joe Philbin and replacing him on an interim basis with tight ends coach Dan Campbell.
Dolphins owner Steve Ross did what he had to do after watching another week of football slop in London. Which was to do something. Anything. Just to keep the season from spinning completely beyond control for the remaining 12 games.
Campbell can’t change the team’s 1-3 record or its underachieving problems just by taking the helm. The offense remains the lowestscoring in the league. The defense remains the second-worst in yardage allowed. Surely it’s too far sunk to think playoffs.
But Ross belatedly righted his wrong in making the coaching change. You don’t make a decision like that after
the fourth game in the NFL unless you made a numbingly bad one months earlier. And Ross did.
He kept Philbin after a third blah season when every football person — except evidently the ones in the owner’s ear — said it was time to move on. Patience is generally a virtue for an owner of a sports franchise. Impatience was demanded when the Dolphins missed the playoffs for a sixth straight year.
It tells how desperately people wanted to see Philbin fired that a tight ends assistant with no head coaching experience was met with applause. We’ll see how it goes for the next three months.
Campbell, to be sure, looks the part. He brings a firmer voice and a jutting jaw to the sideline. And, Lord knows, there’s a needed place for each on this team considering the lackluster way it’s played to date.
“I feel like there’s a lot more that we can get out of these guys and we need to get out of these guys,” Campbell said during his introductory news conference Monday. “We need to change the culture. ... I’m going to challenge these guys, and I want them to have to compete.”
Pat your defensive players on the back after they’ve been constantly run over? Make apologies for players not giving full effort? Watch players run to the media about being worked too hard and then soften the practice load because of it? That was Philbin’s way. There’s no need to pile on him today. He is a decent man, with a good heart, who was overmatched for the job. He wasn’t the first one to be guilty of that. He wasn’t even the worst one, given Cam Cameron’s 1-15 season as head coach of the Dolphins in 2007.
One of the bad parts of this new millennium with the Dolphins is witnessing the lowest moments of a coach’s career. Dave Wannstedt. Nick Saban. Cameron. Tony Sparano.
Now it’s Philbin’s turn in that lineup. If that list shows anything, it’s that making a change doesn’t guarantee anything. And the move to Campbell isn’t even a change as much as a temporary shift.
Football isn’t set up like the other sports to have shifts of leadership in midseason. That’s why there are usually changes like this only near the end of failed seasons, as a franchise prepares for the next year.
No doubt Ross will have an eye on next year as this one plays out. No doubt he’ll weigh Mike Tannenbaum’s future as the team’s executive vice president of football operations against whatever options are out there.
Tannenbaum will measure coaches, too. He’s close with UCLA’s Jim Mora and San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Eric Mangini. Will that matter? Where does this eventually go?
That’s for tomorrow. Today, Philbin’s out and it’s Campbell’s show now.
This is becoming a Dolphins tradition. Wannstedt resigned under pressure nine games into the 2004 season. Sparano was fired with three games remaining in 2011 and was replaced on an interim basis by the defensive backs coach, Todd Bowles.
Bowles, now the New York Jets head coach, provided the final evidence Sunday in London it was time for Philbin to go, beating his former team, 27-14. That’s not to say Bowles should have stayed with the Dolphins. It’s just to note that you don’t know at this point where all the pieces will land.
The Dolphins are in such a hole that the playoffs are a fantasy at this point. But Monday’s move leaves the idea the team can still salvage some season. There are still talented players here. It’s now on Campbell to see if they can show it on the field.