The more things change, the more they stay the same. And for former Miami Dolphins head coach Adam Gase, that can only mean one thing: blaming others for the shortcomings of his own team and own errors. Gase may no longer be in Miami, but that didn’t stop him from offering a backhanded jab at his old quarterbacks in South Florida yesterday when talking about his new quarterback, Jets second-year pro Sam Darnold.
“It’s easy for me to call plays. … He’s not the kind of quarterback you’re looking to protect; you’re looking to turn him loose,” said Gase. “There are no limitations on him. That’s fun as a play caller.”
Oh. Why don’t you tell everyone how you really feel, Adam?
And while Gase isn’t necessarily wrong in his suggestion that he spent much of his time in Miami calling plays to protect his quarterbacks, Gase was very much a part of the formula that produced the Dolphins’ ill-prepared approach to backing up Ryan Tannehill — and for the offensive line tasked with protecting all of Miami’s quarterbacks during the Gase era.
After all, it was Gase who decided that the offensive guard position was a “luxury” and chose to neglect the position until 2018 — when the team’s solution was to sign an over-the-hill Josh Sitton, who was injured the first week and missed the entire season.
It was Gase who was so emboldened by his own theory that the game of football is won within 2.5 seconds after the snap that he never bothered to account for how to keep the opposition off-balance with the run game. Miami’s offense was 32nd and 25th in rush attempts over Gase’s final two years with the team — despite being top 10 in yards per attempt both seasons.
It was Gase who roped in Brock Osweiler and Jay Culter to play quarterback in place of Tannehill — and got a combined 8-11 record and net yards gained per pass attempt under 6 yards from both of them between 2017 and 2018 in over 600 combined pass attempts.
It was Gase who never entertained the subject of acquiring anyone to compete with Tannehill until 2018 — when he casually asked Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia about the availability of Matt Stafford and studied up on Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen — without being invested enough in searching for a new answer at quarterback to bother studying either Sam Darnold or Josh Rosen.
So sure, Adam Gase may have had to call plays around his quarterbacks in Miami — but he has no one to thank but himself for that predicament. You’d never hear that from him, though.
