Defining hour is amateur hour for Dolphins

We’ve reached the amateurhour portion of the Adam Gase era. Maybe it passes. Maybe someone passes with it when everything plays out. Maybe everyone in this era passes and Dolphins owner Steve Ross starts anew again, depending how this full season plays out.

But when Gase oddly and publicly backed safety Reshad Jones for quitting 10 plays into Sunday’s win against the Jets, it suggested more is amiss in this franchise than just one player going rogue. It said Gase was pointing the loud finger of blame at defensive coordinator Matt Burke.

It said Gase’s top assistant wasn’t communicating properly with a star player. It also said Gase didn’t know what was going on between that star player and the assistant he’s ceded half the team to during a week of groundbreaking and locker-room changing decisions involving the defense.

The decisions short-term worked, too. Rookie Minkah Fitzpatrick replaced the veteran Jones in certain defenses and nothing failed on the field. The defense didn’t surrender a touchdown and had four interceptions of Jets rookie Sam Darnold. All good, right?

But the defining topic of the game has become Jones refusing to play. Quitting on teammates is considered the most unforgivable sports sin. Or so it seemed until the fallout from it kept falling.

Gase met with Jones on Sunday night and said all is good and he’s now, “on the same page,” with the player who refused to play. Huh?

The coach who has repeatedly proclaimed he has nothing to do with the defense then said he hadn’t yet talked with Burke, but that Jones would play in Sunday’s game against Green Bay. Huh?

The team leader who has made a series of personnel moves involving players with attitudes, from trading running back Jay Ajayi last season to cutting defensive tackle Jordan Phillips this season, came out in public support of a player who quit in the middle of a game over his top assistant. Again: Huh?

Let’s say this, too. If Gase wants to forgive Jones, if he wants to say a good veteran had a bad day and deserves some benefit of the doubt, that’s fine. Everyone moves on. Jones’ record of good service probably warrants that. But let’s not pretend this didn’t happen or the fundamental problem was a communication issue.

It’s a player quitting on his team. Mike Wallace quit in the 2014 finale in what became his last game as a Dolphin. In 2005, Hall of Famer Jason Taylor was so upset about an unknown player quitting during a game that in the postgame locker room in Cleveland he threw a full coffee pot and had the loudest and long-

est rant of his career. And the Dolphins coach, Nick Saban, welcomed it.

As it is, if Burke wasn’t fired after the defense’s dismal outings against Detroit and Houston, he might as well be after a shutout against the Jets. Gase couldn’t have undermined him any more publicly than he did by suggesting he’s OK with Jones refusing to play on Sunday.

This brings up the oddest part of this mess. Burke’s decision sure looks right. Fitzpatrick’s talent demands him getting on the field more. Even Gase said so. If that means a popular, if aging, player like Jones takes a lesser role, that’s the Darwinian nature of sports.

“We’ve got to make some adjustments,’’ Gase said. “We’re not going to sit there and do the same things that we did the last two weeks that you guys have been b------- about.

We let up 1,000 yards in two games. We’re not going to stay the same.”

All of this, folks, is how team “cultures” are set. The Dolphins were big on culture this offseason. They thought bringing in some good pros like Frank Gore and Danny Amendola would re-set their culture toward winning.

The coach primarily sets the culture. His decisions and words define what the team stands for. When a player quits and the coach takes his side over an assistant, that’s about as important a culture-defining move as you can make.

Maybe Gase just needs help with his words judging by recent weeks. Because words matter when you’re the voice of a franchise. Gase was repeatedly asked what Ryan Tannehill’s injury was and repeatedly said, “I don’t know.”

Your starting quarterback. The player you married your career with. And you don’t know?

Gase was asked Sunday in the immediate aftermath

of the Jones saga why the veteran star pulled himself from the game. Injury? “I’m not sure,’’ he said.

But Jones definitely pulled himself out? “Yep, I haven’t gotten into it,’’ he said.

When a subject like this looms as big as the outcome itself, it’s the head coach’s job to discuss it better, even if just to say, “I’m not getting into all that right now.”

It was a bold decision, benching a popular veteran for a rookie. It worked, at least for a week. This week’s game is in Green Bay. As Gase said, “Aaron Rodgers is a little different than Sam Darnold.”

But what happened on the Dolphins’ Monday involving Jones looked odder than what happened on Sunday. The coach backed the player who quit. He suggested the problem is with the assistant empowered to run the defense. A defining hour, in short, looks like amateur hour.