Using TV Shows and Zen Philosophy to Explain Stephen Ross

When a child gets behind the wheel of a car and runs into a tree, You don’t blame the child. He didn’t know any better.   You blame the idiot authority figure who handed him the keys and said, “Drive, kid. I trust you.“

That’s a bastardized quote from Pam in The Office.

It also brilliantly portrays the quagmire the Dolphins are in thanks to Clueless Joe Philbin’s management style.

• Philbin kicks Pro-Bowlers off the team.
• He calls time outs to help the opponent.
• He passes when it’s 3rd and inches.
• He kicks whenever it’s 4th and inches.
• He hires his friends and their relatives.
• He admits he gets queasy under pressure and in turn undermines the Dolphins.
• In all his years before Miami, he never called a single play. For example, in Green Bay, he was the “offensive coordinator” in name only. He was never allowed to call a play. Never allowed to make a personnel decision. He had no say (rightfully so) about when to use timeouts.
• He was grossly underqualified and inexperienced to become a leader.  And, sadly, he still is.

A few months ago, we at Dolphins Truth began to realize that Philbin’s lack of skills and therefore his lack of success wasn’t his fault.   He’s like the child you hand the car keys to.  Don’t blame the inept driver; blame the man who handed him the keys.

Stephen Ross’s fingerprints are all over this mess.

Dolphins Truth welcomes the opinions of all our readers, but it’s baffling to see some readers still defending Ross.  These are knowledgable and diehard Dolfans, not johnny-come-latelies.  But they are misguided when they say Ross is doing all he can.  There is plenty more Ross could do, and tops on that list is getting us a good head coach.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?

If you spend a billion dollars to make empty stadium seats shady, are those seats still empty?

Ross hasn’t learned that no one cares about the stadium.  If the Dolphins were title contenders, us fans would go to a decrepit stadium in a crappy neighborhood and put up with anything to see our team win.  Winning counteracts everything else.   Adding an awning to a stadium doesn’t excite anyone.  (Especially when you remove 11,000 seats).

That’s 11,000 fewer people who will be allowed to come to the stadium and cheer our Dolphins.  Can you imagine other teams pulling those shenanigans?

Only in Ross’s mind do you want FEWER fans to vocally support your home team.  This is not surprising, considering that Ross has personally guaranteed that the home attendance for the Dolphins-Jets game on October 4 will be ZERO.

Attendance:  0.  Not a typo.

By moving the Jets game to England, Stephen Ross has tossed a home game into the dustbin.  (“Dustbin” is British for garbage can; we might as well start talking like them because Ross obviously likes them more than us.)

Some Dolfans state that getting rid of Joe Philbin would be too difficult, and the players would have to learn a new system, etc.  Continuity is overrated, my friends.

Continuity is important, but it not the most important thing. Winning is the most important thing.

But sometimes, you have to admit that winning isn’t possible.  In this case, you make IMPROVEMENT your goal.  Three years ago, the Patriots were the best team in the AFC East, and Miami had no chance.   We didn’t blame Joe Philbin for going 7-9 that year, because the Pats were the class of the division and virtually unstoppable.  So his goal was to improve the team.

The next year, he barely got us to 8-8.  That’s a mathematical improvement, but not a real improvement.  While the Patriots were still unstoppable, Philbin failed to improve against the Jets.  And he regressed against the Bills, losing BOTH games to Buffalo in 2013.

Then in 2014, there was no improvement again, mathematically or otherwise.

You don’t want to mess with continuity when you’re on the way up.  But when you’re stagnant and clearly NOT on the way up, why be dead-set against change?

In Star Trek, the Prime Directive guided the Enterprise, and they were not allowed to make changes to other planets and other life forms.  They were forbidden to interfere with the leadership of other worlds.

But in Return of the Archons, Captain Kirk seemingly violated the Prime Directive.   He interfered with the citizens of Planet Beta 3.  In his brilliant defense, Kirk said that the Prime Directive only referred to “a living, growing culture.”  Beta 3 was controlled by a computer, and the citizens were stagnant, not evolving and certainly not improving.  In this case, in order to get things moving forward again, Kirk realized when change was needed.

Ross/Philbin defenders keep behaving as if Miami was 11-5 last season.  “No, we can’t change!  We’re soooo close.”  Are you kidding me?  Close to what?

Dolphins Truth felt that Rex Ryan would have been a better choice than a 4th year under Clueless Joe.   I know many of you hate Ryan.   People hated that we called Ryan “tough-as-nails,”  But the truth is, he is.  He gets up in front of the podium after every Jet loss and took the blame and vowed to keep on trying.

He even challenged Channing Crowder to a fight.  Can you imagine Joe Philbin doing something like that?  Yes, it was all comical and staged, but you know the Jet players went to war for Ryan, while the Dolphin players laid down for Philbin.   Leadership matters, folks.  The Bills have it, and the Dolphins don’t.

A lot of our readers also hate that we defend Richie Incognito.  We don’t defend his actions.  He said some scummy things, and the groping incident was deplorable, if not illegal.  But the point Dolphins Truth always makes is that Richie was barely given any time or means to state his side of things.  Before he knew it, he was kicked to the curb.

Tony Dungy gave 20 uninterrupted minutes to Jonathan Martin and allowed him to say anything and everything.  No verification.  No fact-checking.  No rebuttals.  Just Judas spouting off and no one else allowed to say, “Yeah but…”

The Wells report was a joke, and we’ve covered that exclusively here.  For the 50th time, the Wells Report was a one-sided hatchet job on every Dolphin player and coach except Martin.   When Martin used drugs and alcohol and hookers and n-words and threatened Richie’s family, he was just kidding around of course, said the Wells Report.   But when Richie did the same thing, it was bullying of epic proportions.

And the Dolphins stood by and poured gas on the fire.

We’re not saying that Richie’s teasing scandal is the same as Deflate-gate, but we will continue to point out how the two different organizations handled it.

A Dolphin player got accused of bulling his best friend.  The Dolphins suspended the player and then and bent over to accept whatever Roger Goodell wanted to do to them.

By contrast, the Patriots defied the NFL, denied allegations, demanded an apology, and put themselves in a position to win  be handed a free title by Pete Carroll at the Super Bowl.

Stephen Ross just doesn’t have the defying leadership in him.   So it’s unrealistic that we expect Ross’s employees to have it.  Starting with Employee Number One, Joe Philbin.