With his team at 0-4, Dolphins coach Tony Sparano may be on the hot seat. But one of his best-known players says he shouldn’t be.
Dolphins running back Reggie Bush says he’s glad Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has given Sparano a vote of confidence, because the players deserve as much or more of the blame for the Dolphins’ bad start.
“I think coach Sparano is a great coach and it’s not all on him,” Bush said. “Like I said, it falls on all the shoulders who’s getting paid by the Dolphins, we’re all employees here and we’re all grown men, we have a job to do. A lot of us haven’t been doing the job as well as we should have been. It’s not all Coach Sparano’s fault, he’s a great coach and obviously, being the head coach, he’s naturally going to be one of the guys that takes a lot of criticism. As long as we in this locker room know that it’s not all on him, it’s about us, altogether, getting better collectively, we’ll be alright.”
Of course, one of the people in the locker room who deserves the most blame is Bush, who has just 119 rushing yards this season and is averaging less than three yards a carry. That’s not what the Dolphins were hoping for when they acquired Bush this year.
Bush says he and his teammates are committed to turning things around for a coach they like and respect.
“I think everybody in this locker room knows what we have in coach Tony Sparano, we have a great guy, a great person, a great coach, a great mentor, and we just try to block it out and focus on taking care of the things we can internally,” Bush said.
Regardless of whether his players like him, the problem for Sparano is what his old boss Bill Parcells always used to say: You are what your record says you are. And the Dolphins’ record says Sparano is not a great coach.