Omar Kelly Is Right Sometimes, Too

It's been a rough week for the Dolphins; heck, things have gotten so bad that even the local columnists who cover the team haven't been able to escape completely unscathed. We called some of these fine gentlemen out this past week, for refusing to acknowledge the shortcomings of the Dolphins' front office, regarding some of their draft day decisions. Now, however, one of them has made an outstanding point that, in our opinion, deserves praise.

Outside of Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, few men are reviled, among Dolphin fans, quite like Omar Kelly, of the Sun Sentinel.  This is generally believed to be for two reasons: number one, he has been one of quarterback Ryan Tannehill's harshest critics (and it's looking more and more as though he may be right about that) and, two, he became, shall we say, a bit too cozy with the spouse of a certain former Dolphins player, according to some. Since this former player's spouse was not very well liked by many Dolphin fans, Omar, by association, has seemed to have fallen in stature a bit, over the past couple of years, among the Dolphin faithful.

This week, though, Mr. Kelly makes a very salient point.  He argues that when both of the Dolphins starters went down, on the left side of their offensive line, the team should have moved Jermon Bushrod to left tackle and brought Billy Turner in off the bench to play right guard, a position he has played before, rather than setting Turner up to crash and burn, by thrusting him into the lineup at left tackle, a position he hadn't played since college. To make matters worse, when Turner, as pretty much everyone familiar with the team could have probably guessed if they'd been marooned on a desert island for the past six months, didn't do very well against the Titans, the team promptly cut him two days later.

Kelly makes a pretty good argument: not only had Turner never played a down at left tackle in the NFL, as far as we know, but Bushrod has started nearly a hundred games at left tackle, for the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears, and was the Saints' left tackle during their championship season of 2009.  He's also a former Pro Bowler.  Would Bushrod have been rusty, if the team had started him at left tackle against Tennessee ?  Of course, but Kelly's assertion that he would still have been a better option than Turner is one that we agree with.

We understand that he maybe has a tendency to sometimes rub people the wrong way; in some circles, this is also known as telling it like it is.  At any rate, we believe he's dead right this time, and you can hear his comments below.