How much should we dislike Ireland? Take a look...

He was a dictator, as he has always been.

or else someone else will..

If you are going to say that Parcells is to blame of the bad contracts and bad picks etc, he then gets credit for the Marshall signing, the Pennington signing, the Long pick, etc. because all of those happen while he was here.

See, I don’t buy any of the Parcells, he was the dictator, crap. Parcells specifically brought Ireland with him as the GM so Parcells didn’t have to make decisions. Parcells might have been a sounding board, and offered advice, but the GM in this organization makes the decision. That IMO was Ireland.

Brandon Marshall is one of the top paid receivers in the NFL and all he does is drop touchdowns and be a troublemaker. He is not a real #1 receiver. Wasting 10 million dollars a year and two second round picks for a freakin cancer like Brandon Marshall. A real #1 receiver is like Hakeem Knicks or Andre Johnson

It wasn’t Ross’s fault that Jeff Ireland stabbed Tony in the back and went to look for another coach to save his own ass

Ireland and Sparano hated each other, hell even their families and wives hated each other since Ireland went on that plane. Ire NEVER tried to help Tony out.

Bottom Line it has been four years with Ireland as GM and we have been 7-9, 7-9, 6-10. The first year was fluke because of a soft schedule and Chad Pennington fell into his lap.

He has done nothing to inspire any confidence he can do this job PERIOD.

lets look for a second at this club from 2010 to 2011 and exclusively on the offensive side of the ball as the defense returned 10 starters and the predominant needs were on offense. I talked about this only a few days ago with Phinphanatic. He made a post where he gave the Offensive Line a “D” rating. I illustrated how that is unfair IMO and elaborated on the team on these issues from 2010 to 2011. I said:

I have to disagree with your rating of the Offensive LIne. I agree with alot of what you said in the justification for the grade but I think the D is very unfair. So many fans continue to malign the performance of the Line as a whole but without justification.

I am disagreeing with two things here. First I agree that the line improved throughout the season but I also believe that the unit all season is the most unfairly maligned unit on the team.

The second thing is that the "line was a below average unit". As a whole I would say the Offensive LIne was only slightly above average because of how irratic pass protection was and the glaring problems Marc Colombo presents in protection schemes.

Let me start here. Despite a worse record by one game in 2011 than 2010 I think the Offense as a whole was better. Coming down the stretch of the 2010 season the offense as we all know had some serious problems especially as injuries accumulated. The interior of the offensive line was a serious problem in the running game with Joe Berger at Center and John Jerry at Right Gaurd as we couldn’t conistantly get penetration at the point of attack. Combined with the problems we were having in pass protection predominatly at Right Tackle and two older runningbacks. The result was that teams felt confident in their base fronts applying pressure and stopping the run allowing them to allocate resources to the passing game. Defenses really had two things to contend with that they could’t allow to beat them. The first was Brandon Marshall in the intermediate passing game and across the middle of the field. The second was Davone Bess underneath and in the short passing game. For the whole second half of the 2010 season if a Defense took these two things away, the offense was done. So what teams did is they bracketed Marshall incessantly and used their best corners on Bess (sometimes doubling him as well). They would shift up their coverages and what personnel groupings and double teams they used e.t.c. but those were the things they could not allow to beat them. If their club was able to succesfully eliminate these players like the Browns, Jets (second time) Bills (second time) Patriots (second time) e.t.c. then the offense was crippled. We couldn’t run the ball as I mentioned, we had troubles protecting the Quarterback, we didn’t have any speed (as Dan Henning said so many times in the season and whom I also and controversially believe was unfailry maligned) and as a result we couldn’t force the defense back up so they condensed the field in combination with the coverages they were running on Marshall and Bess. The result was an offense tied for 27th in the league in yards per play, 21st in yards through the air (per attempt which is the most accurate way to assess stats IMO) 29th in yards per attempt on the ground and 30th in the league in turnovers.

http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?tabSeq=2&offensiveStatisticCategory=GAME_STATS&conference=ALL&role=TM&season=2010&seasonType=REG&d-447263-s=TOTAL_YARDS_GAME_AVG&d-447263-o=2&d-447263-n=1

So as a result Henning stepped down (as I said though I dont believe he was the problem) and Ireland tried to address these issues in the offseason. Let Ronnie Bown and Ricky Williams walk, traded for Reggie Bush and drafted Daniel Thomas in the second round. Let Joe Berger go, moved Vernon Carey to Gaurd and addressed RT (although unsuccessfully). Drafted Clyde Gates in the fourth round to give the team seperation and downfield ability and drafted Charles Clay in the sixth round to help the Tight End position and provide rotation for Fasano. All were the logical moves to address the team needs and despite some not working out some did. Back to the point about the Line. The Dolphins finsihed the season 11th in the league in yards per attempt on the ground, and slightly better in total offense per attempt and Turnover margin (not too much better becuase of moves like Gates not panning out). Obviously Reggie Bush was a piece of the improvement in the ground game but the larger piece were the moves on the interior of the Offensive LIne and teams that had personnel or schematic issues against the run really struggled through the middle of the season against the Dolphins especially Buffalo twice, the Chiefs and the Raiders and possibly Philly had injuries not be sustained. Teams that are very stout in the front seven like Washington and Dallas held their own.

http://www.nfl.com/stats/team

Sorry for rambling. My points were this. As for Ireland I have no idea where you stand, I have mixed feelings because I think he addressed all the right areas but only some of those moves panned out. My main point is that the ones on the interior of the Line did and that despite problems in pass protection (RT!) the line deserves a better grade than a D. As you said though "I think that this Line is great example of how bad one player can affect an entire line."

So in review Jeff Ireland addressed the key offensive needs as I did and attempted to address them all. Addressing needs though is only a tiny piece of his job description.

The problems on the interior of the Offensive line were dealt with through the Pouncey pick at 15 and moving Vernon Carey to Gaurd. Two very effective moves. Hiring Marc Colombo however at Right Tackle was a huge mistake in judgement creating a serious problem on offense and detracting from very good line play for the entire season. Injuries to Lydon Murtha e.t.c. he has no control over.

The Dolphins had to address the runningback position which they did with the Reggie Bush trade and the Daniel Thomas draft pick in the second round and by letting Brown and Williams sign elsewhere (Philly and Baltimore). The Reggie Bush move was phenomenal but the Daniel Thomas move has not been neearly as successfully. Again injuries are not Irelands fault, but many of Thomas struggles on the field should have been seen.

We needed explosion badly and downfield speed to create seperation. He drafted Edmond Gates in the fourth round and Charles Clay in the 6th round. Gates has not yet worked out and Clay is a situational player.

At Quarterback he failed to address the need in a starting capacity. Meaning that Jeff Ireland dealt with all of the offenses critical needs but solved them at less than a 50% rate. So it is a mixed bag.

Sorry for that being so long.

Polamalu has really elite physical talent talent but Ryan clark is really good at covering up Polamalu’s bad decisions (moving too far forward in OT against Denver!!).But overall a real elite combination between the two.

We get that problem solved and we’ll be fine.

paying attention. If you hate him that’s fine and I can even accept made up reasons like “I hate his stupid face” over that poorly thought out argument.

It's so obvious Duke!

Its all his fault unless you also want to blame Ross and make the asinine assertion that a self made billionaire is a moron. That is also a very popular option.

But I always wondered if there was a possibility Dez lied about what Ireland said. Ireland would really have no choice but to do what he did (apologize) to make it all go away.

With all the attention that story got I’m amazed that no one thought that Dez could be lying or embellishing a bit. He’s proven himself to be quite dishonest…….

But I respect your opinion

your waitin for the same thing a lot of us are.. but besides that, gotta like what hes done with the place

but my point was that anything he does will get picked apart and griped at. If he trades up for a QB, people will complain that we spent too much and shouldn’t have traded away picks. If he stays put and drafts the BPA, someone will complain about that.

My point was that nothing will make fans happy and someone is going to complain about something regardless. Nothing is good enough for Dolphins fans.

I can’t believe that people are getting so worked up because Ross didn’t want to give Jeff Fisher whatever he wanted. I never wanted Fisher to begin with. And it seemed that most fans didn’t care until the “wait and see” saga began and now people are getting pissed because he didn’t choose us.

Give him a full offseason he will show you

You guys need to look at things objectively and not be homers

We are and I would say the same to you.

They mentioned what we would be willing to give up to get that QB… and he decided he would rather take that deal and rebuild St Louis… If we do get that QB it will matter a lot less who our head coach is anyway…