Brian Flores decided he needed to make a change at offensive coordinator after his first season as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Flores elected to bring Chan Gailey in to run Miami’s offense as they look to catapult forward out of phase of bottoming out and accumulating draft assets in hopes of a brighter future.
According to Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald, Flores said that the reason Gailey is the right person for the job is his ability to teach and a shared vision for how the offense should be structured.
“At the end of the day, I feel like for the future of this team, my vision for us offensively, I feel like it’s a move we have to make,” Flores said.
”...From a vision standpoint, as far as how we’re going to run the football and throw the football. How we’re going to go about meetings and practices and walk throughs I felt like we needed to do something a little differently than we had in the past.”
Chad O’Shea was let go as offensive coordinator at the end of the season despite the team going 5-4 over the final nine weeks of the year after an 0-7 start. Gailey was the head coach of the Buffalo Bills and offensive coordinator of the New York Jets when Ryan Fitzpatrick was the starting quarterback for both teams. He’ll now get a third chance to lead an offense with Fitzpatrick as his starting quarterback unless the reins are handed to a rookie next season. A rookie draft pick will almost certainly be a part of the puzzle regardless and Gailey’s ability to teach that player is one of the benefits to the change.
“He’s worked with a lot of quarterbacks, he’s been a head coach,” Flores said. “He understands, let’s call it ‘coach-quarterback,’ that dynamic, that relationship, how important it is. He’s a very good teacher and he’s gotten the most out of every guy that’s been in that room. To me, that’s coaching.”