The Miami Dolphins fired coach Joe Philbin in October. In January, the Dolphins decided to keep nine members of Philbin’s former staff.
On Tuesday, Dolphins executive V.P. of football operations Mike Tannenbaum explained the retention of so many coaches for Adam Gase’s staff.
“The coaching staff in particular reports to Adam and certainly [G.M.] Chris [Grier] and I made some suggestions, but they [all] went through and were vetted through a pretty rigorous process,” Tannenbaum said, via Adam H. Beasley of the Miami Herald. “They wouldn’t be on our staff if Adam didn’t feel good about them.”
Grier separately defended the decision. “They’re good coaches and good people and obviously Adam did his background on them and stuff and feels comfortable with them,” Grier said. “It’s good to have a little bit of continuity. They’ll help them in the transition.”
“He’s a very authentic person,” Tannenbaum said of Gase. “And to go back to the previous question, nine coaches staying, it would be easy to come in and say, ‘Hey, this team was 6-10, they’re all gone.’ I thought he was very methodical. I thought he was very fair, very critical, and I think we got a great result.”
On one hand, the move can be viewed as more evidence that Gase won’t have the same juice that other coaches enjoy, since he wasn’t able to come in and clean house and hire his own guys. On the other hand, the development can be viewed as further evidence that Gase is different from the typical megalomaniac coach, willing to work with anyone and everyone and not determined to do it his way simply in order to say, “I’m doing it my way.”