Chris Grier keeps failing, but he keeps surviving.
The easiest thing for Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross to have done this offseason would have been to press the reset button with the entire organization, firing the team’s general manager when he removed coach Brian Flores a day after the season finale, which capped the franchise’s first back-to-back winning seasons since 2002-03.
But Ross chose the hard route. He opted to extend Grier a lifeline, keeping one of the few minorities in power in the NFL at the top of his organization, hoping that Grier could make the hires and moves needed to fix this franchise and get it off the mediocrity merry-go-round the Dolphins have been riding for two decades.
“I don’t think it’s just one thing,” Grier said when asked about the franchise’s consistent struggles.
The latest dysfunction was highlighted by Flores’ lawsuit against the Dolphins and the NFL, and the league’s investigation into Flores’ claims that Ross offered to pay him $100,000 per loss at the end of the 2019 season to secure the No. 1 draft pick.
The Dolphins fired Flores in January because, according to Ross, “an organization can only function if it’s collaborative and it works well together.”
The way they talked you’d think there was a power battle taking place inside the organization, but anyone who has had some level of exposure to Grier knows it couldn’t have been a battle of egos because Grier has none.
And he’s the furthest thing from power-hungry. He’s accommodating, probably to a fault.
That’s how he’s survived all these years, all these regimes, and found a way to move into power within the organization he’s spent the past 21 years with.
But that doesn’t means he’s innocent, and Grier knows that.
“I have to take blame for that,” Grier said about the team’s latest failures.
Flores was his hire.
Tua Tagovailoa seems to be more of a placeholder than franchise quarterback after two seasons as a starter, and Grier picked Tagovailoa over Justin Herbert, whose play with the Chargers has him viewed as one of the NFL’s brightest stars.
Part of Tagovailoa’s issue is the talent placed around him has been lacking, and that’s on Grier.
The Dolphins’ offensive line was a disaster during Flores’ tenure — despite Miami using five early draft picks on Austin Jackson, Robert Hunt, Michael Deiter, Solomon Kindley and Liam Eichenberg to fix the unit.
The Dolphins have passed on selecting at least half a dozen young tailbacks who could have propped up the team’s sputtering rushing attack. Instead they relied on seventh-round pick Myles Gaskin, cheap free agents and undrafted players to carry the rushing attack.
That’s just bad roster management, and nobody can deny it. Not even Grier, who should feel fortunate that he gets a chance to fix the lingering issues this offseason, whether he deserves it or not.
“I don’t view this as a rebuild anymore. I think a lot of those were rebuilds,” Grier said, referring to six coaching changes he’s been part of as an executive since 2007. “We’re in a place now where we have some young talent, young players. There’s an opportunity for us to be able to take advantage with a lot of things we do and we’ll be able to win games here.
“I would say the difference in those [previous eras] was they were rebuilds. I think [now] we’re just trying to supplement and keep building on what we have to push us forward.”
After a month-long coaching search, Mike McDaniel was hired to replace Flores, and he assembled an accomplished offensive staff the organization hopes will fix Miami’s struggling offense while retaining Josh Boyer as the defensive coordinator with the goal of keeping that unit consistent.
McDaniel’s specialty is building a forceful rushing attack, and if Miami achieves that — by fixing the offensive line, developing a productive zone-running scheme and adding talent that facilitates the run game — it will take some of the pressure off the passing game and Tagovailoa.
Whether that fixes the offense and makes Miami a perennial playoff team, only time will tell.
But if it doesn’t, we know who clearly deserves the blame, and that’s the individual who has managed to escape it for two decades.
That’s why Grier shouldn’t be allowed to survive if the Dolphins fail this time around.
