Hiring Flores comes at a cost for Dolphins
Dolphins general manager Chris Grier has made half-a-dozen significant trades in 2019.
He traded quarterback Ryan Tannehill to Tennessee. He traded defensive end Robert Quinn to Dallas. He traded for Josh Rosen and traded away Kenyan Drake.
Grier also traded Laremy Tunsil to Houston and Minkah Fitzpatrick to Pittsburgh in what feels as close to blockbuster deals as the Dolphins have ever had, with two eventual Pro Bowl players leaving Miami and three first-round and two second-round draft picks coming back in exchange.
But, turns out, none of these were the biggest trade Grier has made for the Dolphins so far.
(Yeah, now you’re wondering …)
The biggest and most consequential trade the Dolphins’ general manager has made so far is trading Brian Flores for Joe Burrow.
That happened. A potential excellent coach for a potential franchise quarterback. Grier acquired a coach owner Stephen Ross has already publicly anointed as the right man for the job in exchange for a quarterback Ross would have greatly loved to play in Miami if the Dolphins had the first overall draft pick in 2020.
The Dolphins, by the way, won’t have the first overall selection in that draft. Bad as they’ve been this season, they haven’t been bad enough. And so they won’t be in position to land Burrow — who will 100 percent go in the first
pick or two if he declares for the draft, as expected.
But the Dolphins don’t walk away empty-handed here.
Grier, you see, was given the reins of the 2019 Dolphins coach search. And, yes, that search included Ross, and club vice chairman, president and CEO Tom Garfinkel, and even a suddenly empowered Brandon Shore, who was promoted to vice president of football operations, and is the team’s lead player contract negotiator.
But even as all those people and voices were involved in the January 2019 coach search, it was ultimately Grier’s project. It was Grier’s baby.
And he wanted Flores. And the Dolphins got Flores.
And so far Flores is working out well. He’s gotten rave reviews nationally as well as locally for propping up what seems like a roster of sacrificial lambs that Ross himself has rightly described as “no-names.”
The no-names have mostly been competitive.
Well, they got off to a rough start — losing the first three games by a combined 133-16 score.
But something weird happened en route to the most hideous season in Dolphins history: The Dolphins, still without great talent on the roster, improved gradually. They made plays every once in a while.
And then they won a game in November. And then another.
And now they have four wins, which is still unacceptable by practically any standard, but is noteworthy in that it is not the worst season in Dolphins history and isn’t even the worst season authored by an NFL team this year.
The Dolphins have actually shown some likable traits amid the losing. They enter the season’s final weekend tied for fourth in fewest penalties committed, which suggests these guys have discipline. They have shown improvement as the season has moved forward, even as injuries have piled up and claimed more talent.
And the Dolphins have accomplished a major goal this space set for them this season: They’ve been bad but haven’t been ignominious to any great degree.
What do I mean by that? Well, the team didn’t go through the season winless, which would have been a lasting stain for the franchise that once had an undefeated season. And the team didn’t do things that made you cringe like, say, have a coach snort a powdery substance in his office or have players simply quit on coaches.
The blemishes for this season are the result of wins and losses. Nothing more sinister. And those get erased after the season while that other stuff can leave scars on the team’s legacy.
So why have the Dolphins shown these encouraging signs despite their admitted lack of talent? Coaching in general and Flores in particular.
The team’s 38-year-old coach will have a terrible winning percentage on his record when this season is over. But he’ll be able to walk away thinking he had a pretty good year, all things considered.
That’s praiseworthy. Grier gets the credit for getting the hire correct.
Now are you ready for the “yeah, but …?”
Here it is: Yeah, but, it’s only one year. Yeah, but no one is going to get crowned for a four- or five-win season. And most importantly, yeah, but what about losing out on Joe Burrow?
The fact Flores raised the Dolphins to modest heights means the Dolphins will have to go find the next best QB prospect in the next draft because they were simply too good to be in position to get Burrow.
This is seriously troubling for a lot of Dolphins fans because they’d much rather have the potentially great quarterback than potentially great coach. They’d rather be, well, the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengals are the NFL’s worst team this season and they’ll likely land Burrow, who is from Ohio. But Burrow will go to a team with a questionable coaching situation.
No disrespect to former Dolphins quarterback coach and current Bengals coach Zac Taylor, but I was stunned he was selected as anyone’s head coach in the last hiring cycle. And Taylor’s done nothing to suggest I shouldn’t have been surprised. Because he’s kind of, well, unremarkable so far.
And maybe getting Burrow will suddenly turn Taylor into Paul Brown (no, it won’t) but the Bengals have a veteran quarterback now in Andy Dalton and he’s about to finish perhaps his worst season ever, which reflects on Taylor.
So Burrow, who was just a guy before this college football season began, has to overcome what seems to be a struggling coach and put that Bengals franchise on his back and win championships?
That’s going to be interesting to see.
Let me tell you something I want to see: If
Flores could raise the “nonames” to four wins, what will he do when/if Grier fills the roster with talent? Then what?
That will be fun to see. Then we’ll be able to understand if Grier’s trade of Flores in exchange for Burrow cashes the dividends it currently seems headed toward paying.