By HCR Staff | November 4, 2020

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has spent a lot of money trying to win. He has cycled through many head coaches and highly paid players, as well as made massive facility upgrades.

But success has been fleeting, and he certainly has never gotten close to establishing any kind of foundation that gives fans the impression that things are in place for a relatively long-term, winning run.

It looks like all that is changing, as the franchise now is led by Head Coach Brian Flores and General Manager Chris Grier.

Flores, in particular, has broken through in our current rankings as a Top 5 head coach.  With a current Year-to-Date rating of 7.7, Flores is tied for fourth, and it wouldn’t surprise us if he ends up Top 5 – or higher – at year-end.

Flores’ game management decisions have been consistent; he leans more textbook – which we favor – and having been schooled by Bill Belichick, it’s pretty clear that his game management philosophy is that teams generally lose games, than win them.  In other words, minimize your own errors, and just wait for the opposition to make them, because they will.

Another aspect of Flores’ game management that’s impressive to us is that he has a very keen understanding of exactly what his personnel can, or cannot, execute.  We don’t see a lot of game-planning where he has players pushing the boundaries of what they’re capable of. 

At this juncture of his development, the only thing Flores has to be cautious of is his own ambition, and not getting too far ahead of himself.  The Dolphins and Flores have a growing, palpable confidence, but the roster still lacks a couple more explosive, dynamic players.  Therefore, their margin for error isn’t as wide as they’d like, and its important Flores continues to manage games with this understanding.

Stephen Ross’ gamble on two first-timers in Flores and Grier is paying off, and Dolphins fans look to have a successful pairing that could contend in the AFC East for quite some time.