Miami's plan to tank will make 2019 season painful
The Dolphins' plan to put all their efforts into acquiring future assets is causing a lot of short-term pain for the franchise but Miami hopes the long-term gains will be worth it.
Video Transcript
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MIKE FLORIO: Welcome to PFT OT on Yahoo Sports. Bad news for the Dolphins, they lost 59 to 10 in week 1. Worse news for the Dolphins, the Patriots are coming to town this weekend. Look, Peter, that blowout loss did indeed spark multiple players to tell their agents, get me out of here. We perceive this to be a tank job.
Whether it is or isn't, they don't want to be part of what the front office and/or the coaching staff are deliberately deciding is a long-term view with a short-term stink being part of it. They don't want to be part of that stink. And now the Dolphins are going to have to process that, along with the fact that the guys who are on the team clearly aren't good enough to be competitive as evidenced by what happened against the Ravens on Sunday.
PETER KING: You know, Mike, when they traded Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills, they did a good job for the long term Miami Dolphins. At least they perceive that they did in getting two ones and a two back. But they did a terrible job for the short term version, because you don't want to be a football player who's putting his body on the line every Sunday.
There's 45 guys on this team who for the next 15 Sundays are going to be putting their bodies on the line for this team. And for what? So that this team can be in position next year to have the first pick in the draft?
I mean, how would you like to be a player who, you know, if you're a receiver, are you going across the middle with no fear, knowing that you could get blown up, your season could be over and whatever, and for what? For a team that is playing mostly for the first pick in the draft?
This is different than tanking in basketball. It just is. Football is inherently significantly more dangerous than it is in other sports. And that's why your report about players wanting out is absolutely totally logical.
And in my opinion, when you look at what's going to happen in Miami, this is going to be a great chemistry experiment, Mike, because we're going to see now how hard their players are going to play over the next 15 weeks.
MIKE FLORIO: And Peter, the owner, Stephen Ross, has made no bones about this being the plan. Sometimes you just have to take your lumps. Sometimes you have to take a step back. And you're absolutely right about the difference between basketball and football. Think about how a basketball season unfolds. You're constantly playing games. You're playing three a week. It's not nearly as physical. And you're kind of caught up in it, and off you go.
With football, the intense physicality and the fact that you've got seven or eight days between games, that just gives you more time to stew about what's going on and to think about, do I really want to go through this? Do I want to put myself through this physical risk, when I know that my organization really isn't fully and completely committed to having the best possible team on the field, but is instead thinking about next year or the year after that?
So look, we've yet to see overt, season long, trust the process tanking in the NFL. I think late season from time to time, there have been some decisions made about putting in the backup quarterback, the backup linebacker, the backup whoever to see what they have by way of their young players. But the deeper message is, hey, if we lose this game, we're not complaining, because we're going to be in better draft position.
But to go into the season, basically throwing in the towel before the first game even starts, that perception has been out there. And I think that perception has made its way into the locker room. And it's going to cause-- I mean, of all the things, you know, Brian Flores has enough to worry about as a first year head coach then his locker room fracturing based on one game.
PETER KING: Mike, Stephen Ross is one of the most entrepreneurial guys in America. He's built some of the biggest projects, architectural and otherwise, in the United States. He's got a gigantic new project in Manhattan called Hudson Yards that people are flocking to with a bunch of businesses and huge buildings.
And-- but I think that one of the things that Stephen Ross is going to learn about 2019 is that you can't approach a football season and say, my eye is on the last weekend of April 2020, because that's when we're either going to get Tua Tagovailoa, or Justin Herbert, or whoever the latest new shiny object is who plays quarterback.
It does it doesn't work that way in football. You at least have to give your players a semblance of an idea that you're trying to be a dark-horse playoff contender in September and October. That was thrown out the window on Labor Day weekend. That is why Miami is going to be the most interesting chemistry experiment in football in 2019.
MIKE FLORIO: I often wonder if guys like Stephen Ross, Daniel Snyder, who were previously anonymous billionaires would like to just go back to that if they could. It's-- a wise man once told me, the only thing better than being rich and famous is being rich. And maybe for Stephen Ross, it's better to just be rich, because notorious is what he's becoming, at least in South Florida.
All right, that's it. For more PFT OT on Yahoo videos throughout the NFL season, check us out.
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