Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Dolphins show again why it’s time for this era to end
MIAMI GARDENS — On the most depressing day, in the most depressing stadium, the most depressing play involved Ryan Tannehill reminding any die-hard still squeezing hope why it’s time to roll the credits on this Miami Dolphins era.
It was a pass he shouldn’t have thrown, the Dolphins quarterback said afterward of the short attempt to running back Kalen Ballage.
It was a pass he’d seen several times on film, Jacksonville linebacker Telvin Smith said of the ball he intercepted on a good sprint.
Who suspected we’d get a play with this symbolism to end it all — the day, the season, maybe the latest mediocre and malodorous era?
Who expected such a dramatic confluence in one play that resonated like a loud drumbeat of continued, wrongheaded investment by decisionmakers and bone-headed play by Tannehill?
Smith ran the interception back 33 yards into the end zone, where his Jacksonville teammates, happy to suspend their
own ugly season for an afternoon, were flagged for celebrating their cemented 17-7 win too hard.
Then came the even more depressing sight of Dolphins owner Steve Ross looking ill in his suite. To his right, Dan Marino looked ready to spit nails. To his left, Mike Tannenbaum, the Dolphins vice president of football operations, looked ready to walk the plank. Or be set on it.
That’s where we are, folks. Ross hasn’t been happy since last offseason with the direction of this team, trusting his football people knew their football. And now that it’s proven again on the scoreboard they don’t?
Ross needs to find someone with a comprehensive plan for building a winner rather than a regime that just keeps adding players to the roster and crossing their fingers Tannehill was good enough.
Seven years says he isn’t. The past three years under Tannenbaum and coach Adam Gase underline it. Ross saw it enough to push for another quarterback last offseason and grow unhappy as the season moved on.
So will Ross trust all those who made the wrong decision the past few years to make the right one now? When anyone with a television can see at this point it’s time to move on from Tannehill?
The roster constructed over the past three years with Tannebaum and Gase is worse than when they inherited it. That’s an indictment in itself. But there’s also no hope of something more — that a better coach could solve Tannehill or rebuild the defensive line.
Ross has been at this a decade now. His options are the common ones: Does he hire the best assistant general manager out there and hope? Does he tell the one winning part of the franchise, the business side and CEO Tom Garfinkel, to make the hires on the football side?
See, the easy part is firing people. That’s always the easy part by this part of any regime of this millennium, Joe Philbin or Jeff Ireland or Cam Cameron or whomever.
The harder part is making the right hire. Ross hasn’t been able to do that. Sunday on the field shows that again. In the locker room it did, too, as there were smiles and even chuckles coming from some players. Everyone takes losing differently, of course. But like this?
Still, it was Tannehill and the offense on the field that looked lost. It only scored on its opening possession. It had 51 yards of offense in the second half. It was a good defense, sure, but Jacksonville had lost eight of its previous nine games.
Then came the three plays in succession that dropped the curtain on Tannehill’s era. He ran for 12 yards, showing his athleticism. He took a delay of game penalty, showing his problems. Then he threw the pick-six to end the day, the season, probably the era.
In the Jacksonville locker room, quarterback Blake Bortles chuckled when asked if he would start next week. Bortles, benched the past few games, provided a small spark when he entered the game Sunday.
“Hey, man, I just work here,” he said.
Not everyone can be sure of that on the Dolphins side.