Character will always trump talent for Flores. Is that the right approach?
Brian Flores had a point to make about his ideal makeup of players and locker room.
The Miami Dolphins coach and his staff spent all of last week meeting with and coaching over 100 NFL draft prospects at the Senior Bowl, so he had time to perfect his wish list.
But one aspect of it turned my stomach.
“We’re looking for guys who are tough, who are smart, who are competitive, who love to play, love to practice. [Players] who are looking to get better, want to improve, and guys who are team-first,” Flores said last week. “Those are sort of the intangibles we’re looking for and if a guy has that and is talented, then I imagine he’ll do the things and make the sacrifices necessary to make himself the best player he can possibly be.”
All this is fair and acceptable, things I’ve heard Dolphins coaches say verbatim for nearly two decades.
Flores reminds me so much of the late Tony Sparano, and I get it. Sparano was a Bill Parcells protégé, as was New England coach Bill Belichick, whom Flores spend a decade learning from.
Then we get into the territory
that made me a bit — to quote Joe Philbin — “queasy.”
“If a guy is more talented and doesn’t have those qualities, then I guess . ... Well, I don’t guess, but I believe that that player will get passed up because some other players will do all of the things
necessary and make the sacrifices necessary to get better and improve,” Flores said.
So, the Dolphins head coach just said that he’d pass up on a more talented player with possible character concerns for the decent player who is a choir boy? Philbin took the same approach and it cost Miami a ton of impact players during his four-year tenure all because he didn’t feel he could — or wanted to — coach them.
“I think that player with lesser intangibles, I think he’ll pass [the character-concerns guy] up,” Flores added.
Maybe he’s right. But I’ve seen too many safe selections for this franchise over the years to wholeheartedly agree with this approach.
“Now when you get a good player with good intangibles, that’s really what you’re looking for,” Flores continued. “It’s a team game, so I think you need guys to be in unison, you need guys to play together, you need guys to pick each other up. There’s ups and downs and ebbs and flows in every game, so you want a team that supports each other and a team that is talented also. Talent wins in this league, but talent and let’s call it unity, I think that’s really what you’re looking for.
“You want guys who when it gets tough and tight in fourth quarters of games, that guy’s got your back. Those are the kind of guys we’re looking for.”
That’s the type of players Flores won 10 games with in 2020. But let’s be honest, last year’s team had one dog on the roster and that’s Xavien Howard.
And even his future with the franchise isn’t on solid footing because of some ... let me be gentle with this ... personality conflicts.
Howard probably barks too much.
We’ve seen this debate from both angles.
We’ve seen the Dolphins be in position to select Hall of Fame talents like Randy Moss during the Jimmy Johnson era, but pass on them because of character concerns, and live to regret it.
We’ve also seen dominant players sign here for big money, like Ndamukong Suh, and then play a mercenary role on the team. Suh was singularly focused on getting his in Miami — he regularly ignored play-calls and did his own thing.
I’m not sure there is a right answer on this debate about whether you want a team full of choir boys who do what you say without questioning it, or does a team need dogs you let off the leash from time to time.
I personally believe good teams — championship-caliber teams — have both.
Moss played for the same Patriots team Flores coached on under Belichick, and so did a few other character-concern, me-first guys who called New England home.
Tyreek Hill was a firstround talent who was selected in the fifth round of the 2016 draft because of character concerns.
He’s been a Pro Bowl selection every year of his career.
Suh is playing in yet another Super Bowl and his Buccaneers team is full of players that had character smudges in the draft process. Somehow coach Bruce Arians and defensive coordinator Todd Bowles found a way to make it work.
Good coaches find a way to relate to every player and get them buy into the team approach.
This isn’t a black or white conversation. Football players come in all shades of gray, and I hope Flores figures that out, and learns to reach those he’s having difficulty with.
Not everyone will buy in. Minkah Fitzpatrick didn’t, and he checked every character box there is.
The good coaches find a way to shepherd the wondering lamb into the flock.
Don Shula got the best out of the Marks Brothers, Mark Duper and Mark Clayton, and Bryan Cox, who lived on the wild side.
Parcells was able to reach Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor during their time together with the New York Giants.
I’m not saying take it to the extreme like Johnson did in Miami, adding troubled players like Lawrence Phillips and Cecil Collins, who both had legal problems that led to incarceration during their prime playing years.
But don’t rule out players with some baggage just because you’d have to coach them harder than some others.