The Dumpster Fire and the Damage Done

 

The fish rots from the head. My Fish are rotting from the head and I'm wondering how much longer I'll have the capacity to care.

February 1 should have been a happy day. After all, Tom Brady, the most fucking annoying shitbag to ever lace up cleats in the NFL, finally, FINALLY retired. I honestly did not think I'd live long enough to see the day and I am a little nervous that he'll turn around and un-retire. But for the first time in over two very long decades, the possibility of an NFL free from Tom Brady whining to refs to get penalties on anyone who looks at him funny finally seemed possible.

It should've been a happy day. It kind of was, though I mostly felt relief and exhaustion, as if I'd survived an emotionally and psychologically taxing ordeal. But I did feel a small measure of weary happiness.

For a few hours, anyway.

Then the bombshell went off. News broke that former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores was suing the NFL and several teams, including the 'Phins, for discriminatory hiring practices. As part of his allegations, Flores said 'Phins owner Stephen Ross offered him an extra $100,000 for every game he lost during the 2019 season (when the team was trying to land the top draft pick). Flores also alleged Ross tried to get him to break league tampering rules by courting "a prominent NFL quarterback" (Tom Brady, perhaps?). 

The tampering garbage is something that's probably more common than we realize. But the payoffs for tanking? That's a fucking serious charge, especially considering the importance of sports gambling to today's NFL. That's getting perilously close to fixing games and even though the Dolphins aren't the only team to have tried tanking for draft position, a foot, and I mean a big, heavy fucking foot needs to come down on Ross and the 'Phins. Heavy enough to dissuade other teams considering tanking to never do it again.

Some of the chatter online has been that if proven to be guilty of bribing Flores, Ross should be driven out of NFL ownership. You know what, that sounds really good to me cuz, for the most part, Ross's time as 'Phins owner has been a wasteland of drudgery and disappointment.

There are some good things about Ross. He wants to win. He paid for renovations to the 'Phins home field, Hard Rock Stadium. But when it comes to football moves, Ross has been clueless 90% of the time. 

An example: Just last month, Ross fired Flores after the 'Phins finished above .500 in consecutive seasons for the first time in damn near twenty years. When details surfaced, we began to learn that Flores was likely fired at the behest of general manager Chris Grier. That's fucking infuriating cuz when you look at Grier's track record, it's abundantly clear that Flores has performed better as head coach than Grier has performed as GM over the past three seasons. 

Flores led an undertalented roster with holes all over it to a 19-14 record the past two seasons. Meanwhile, Grier has made some positively ghastly personnel moves. Sure, he drafted Jaelen Waddle, Mike Gesicki and Xavian Howard. He also handed Kyle Van Noy a huge deal only to cut him a year later, let the offensive line crumble to pieces and drafted Tua Tagovailoa when Justin Herbert was still available. I like Tua and hope he becomes a truly great player and gets to tell all his critics to go fuck themselves. But I can't deny that Herbert has a much higher ceiling, although I don't think even Jesus could win a Super Bowl with the Chargers. Cuz the Chargers are the Chargers. Fuck you, Dean Spanos.

It gets worse. It seems a lot of the disfunction is happening because Ross lives and works in New York, only flying in for games. Because he's not around, he doesn't know what's going on and has to depend on people like Grier to tell him what's up with his team. Grier likely has a sense of self-preservation and loves being the general manager of an NFL franchise. He is also likely aware that he's failing in his job and that the players he's selected aren't up to par. So, to save his own ass, he tells Ross that Flores is the problem and Flores gets canned, even though Flores with making chicken soup out of the chicken shit Grier was supplying him.

Watching this has been soul-killing, heart-breaking shit, not only because this is a merry-go-round of failure my favorite sports team has been on basically ever since Dan Marino hung up his cleats, but also because it doesn't look to be ending anytime soon. That has everything to do with the dip shit at the top, the billionaire oligarch who wants what he wants and does whatever he wants to get it. Ross has no idea what's going on within his own team's building, fired an excellent head coach because said coach refused to be as crooked as Ross himself was willing to be and may even find himself forced out of ownership if Flores' charges of bribery are proven true. 

And, believe me, that would be the best thing that could happen for this team. The 'Phins are a formerly-proud franchise that has lost its luster since Marino retired. They deserve an owner who is in the building every day and knows who's doing what within his organization. The idea of someone other the Ross owning the Dolphins makes me smile. 

That said, I don't know how much I have left. I love this team. I've loved them ever since I first heard they had a dolphin in a tank on the sideline. I loved watching Marino, the Marks Brothers, Troy Vincent,  Zach Thomas, Jason Taylor, hell, even Ricky Williams. Seeing them struggle for so long with so little success has drained copious amounts of happiness from my life. And cynicism makes me unable to envision a mega-wealthy shit stain like Ross being held accountable for what he's done to my team, through both his (alleged) illegal actions as well as the stuff that's happened just cuz he's a terrible owner. 

Twenty years is a long time to suffer for something as comparatively unimportant as a football team. It may be time to let that go.