Kicking off week 8 of the 2018 NFL season tonight, the Miami Dolphins will play the Houston Texans. Starting at quarterback for the Dolphins will be Brock Osweiler. This is notable because on March 9, 2016, the Texans paid Osweiler $72 million to be their quarterback. Exactly one year later, the Texans paid the Browns to take Osweiller off their hands. Then the Browns cut him. A QB of that calibre has to end up a Dolphin.

Osweiller gets the start for the Phins because oft-hurt Ryan Tannehill is hurt again. Tannehill has started 5 games in the past two seasons, and the writing may be on the wall. Tannehill has already started twice as many games for Miami as any other quarterback since Dan Marino, and his record isn't exactly sterling.

Tannehill's record is 40-42. The quarterback with the second-most starts is Jay Fielder — does anyone else outside Miami remember him? — at 36-23. For comparison, Marino was 147-93. *sigh* (And, since we're here, I might as well remind everyone once again that the Dolphins, under Head Coach Nick Saban, passed on signing free agent Drew Brees in 2006 because of medical questions about Brees' reconstructed shoulder. Brees has only gone 117-79 since, missing exactly 2 games over those 13 years. *double sigh*)

So with fragile Tannehill looking at the tail end of his mediocre career, why isn't there someone in the wings ready to take his place? Osweiller is obviously not a long-term solution, and the third QB on the team depth-chart, David Fales, was shown the door by the Chicago Bears who let him attempt only 2 passes during a 2017 season in which they won only 3 games. The problem here, obviously, is with whoever is in charge of player personnel for the Dolphins. According to his contract, that executive for the Dolphins isn't GM Mike Tannenbaum but Head Coach Adam Gase.

Giving this sort of power to the Head Coach might seem like a good idea after years of Jeff Ireland' blind eye for talent, but maybe Gase isn't the right man for that job, either. It was Gase's decision to trade star running back and "locker room cancer" Jay Ajayi to the Eagles (where he won a Super Bowl) for a fourth-round draft pick. It was Gase's decision to trade star receiver Jarvis Landry to the Browns for fourth- and seventh-round draft picks. And it was Gase's decision to bring Jay Cutler out of retirement to do whatever it was he did last season. If there's no quarterback of the future on Miami's roster, that's Gase's decision, too.

Yeah, I'll be watching tonight as the Dolphins struggle to stay afloat in the race to the postseason, but all I see in the team's future is more of the same old canned tuna.

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The train wreck that was the 2015 Miami Dolphins didn't end today with the season's closing bell. Even before even taking the field to play (and defeat!) the New England Patriots, the team had fired Dennis Hickey, its General Manager of the past two years. Hickey is the same man responsible for overpaying Ndamukong Suh and Ryan Tannehill. Too bad he won't be taking the balance of those contracts with him.

To be fair, Hickey was also responsible for bringing in two players I like, Brent Grimes and Knowshon Moreno. By any metric, he was a far better judge of talent than his predecessor, "Blind" Jeff Ireland. I don't think its any coincidence that in the past two years that Ireland has been scouting for the New Orleans Saints, they've fallen to the bottom of the talent hole in the NFC South.

Hickey is being replaced by Mike Tannenbaum, the man who brought superstar Darrelle Revis into the league when Tannenbaum was working for the Jets. However, Tannenbaum also drafted Mark Sanchez, a quarterback bad enough to ride the bench for the snakebit Philadelphia Eagles. In the five years Tannenbaum was guiding the Jets, the team went only slightly better than .500. In the Dolphins' case, that would be an improvement.

Speaking of drafting talent, the Patriots have won the AFC East for 7 consecutive seasons in part because at draft time they have plenty of picks they've hoarded from trades with other teams. It's no coincidence that they keep reaching Super Bowls with players no one has ever heard of. As a general rule, you should emulate the best teams, not do the opposite of what you see them doing.

Tannenbaum has a pronounced history of giving away picks, averaging about 4 per Jets' draft compared to the Patriots' 8. It's hard to find talented players to fill the roster when your already-talented opponents have twice as many picks as you do. I hope Tannenbaum has learned that lesson. Given that the Dolphins think so highly of him, I'm pretty sure he hasn't.

UPDATE 2016-01-04: Tannenbaum will apparently remain in an executive role ("Executive Vice President of Football Operations," whatever that means), as the Dolphins have announced that the new General Manager is the previous Director of College Scouting, Chris Grier. I am not going to pretend that I understand the difference between an EVPoFO and a General Manager. My guess is that it just gives Tannenbaum someone else to fire before he feels any heat himself. Grier has been with the Dolphins since 2000, which means he's seen just about every possible wrong way to build a team, including the draft busts of Ted Ginn, Dion Jordon, second-round quarterbacks John Beck and Pat White, and many, many other questionable decisions that didn't pan out. I hope Grier has learned his lesson. Given that he's still with the organization, I'm pretty sure he hasn't.

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I feel the need to comment on some recent coaching/staff departures from my preferred football teams.

Last week, GM Jeff Ireland and OC Mike Sherman were fired by the Miami Dolphins. Good riddance to both, but especially Ireland. It will be hard to hire someone with a worse eye for talent. Maybe now the Dolphins will stop overpaying for free agents and develop some talent through the draft. Who knows. In a few years, they might actually be able to post a winning record.

This week, DC Todd Grantham chose to leave the Georgia Bulldogs to go to work for shitbag Bobby Petrino's Louisville Cardinals. Grantham had his worst year as a Bulldogs coach in 2013, allowing opponents 189 more points than in his second-worst year. Keeping in mind that he did have a very young squad and that the SEC decided to go all-in on offense in 2013, I wouldn't have minded if Grantham had stuck around for the final year of his contract. (Bobo is STILL the problem at UGA.) That said, I can't begrudge him leaving, especially since Petrino is throwing a $150,000/year raise at him. (Petrino just got the job, and already he is throwing away Lousiville's money. What a dick.)

Of course, the Dolphins and Bulldogs haven't replaced the departed coaches yet. Whoever they hire, I'm sure I'll hate them just as much as these outgoing guys once I get to know them.

[UPDATE 2014-01-15: Of course, the day before this was posted, UGA announced the hiring of Jeremy Pruitt, former DC for the 2013 champion FSU Seminoles. He was only at FSU for one season, coming to UGA for a $350,000 raise. (The previous two seasons he was at Alabama. That means he's been on 3 consecutive national title teams!) If he can do for us what he did for FSU, that's be great, but don't expect him to stick around for long. If he improves the UGA defense — and it will be hard not to — some other college will be throwing $1 million or more at this guy in 2015.]

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I guess now that even The Daily Show is talking about the Dolphins' locker room meltdown, I, as a Dolphins fan and frequent critic, should probably comment on it, too.

Was offensive tackle Jonathan Martin bullied? Was offensive guard Richie Incognito following orders when he called Martin racial slurs and extorted $15,000 from him? Did the Dolphins coaches really have no idea what was going on? I don't know. All I see is the second half of the 2013 season getting flushed down the toilet.

At this point, we've lost two starting offensive linemen, probably for the rest of the year and maybe forever. Through eight games, we're already allowed 35 sacks. Given that half our starting offensive linemen have left the team, that's not going to get better.

Also, I think I've mentioned before that I'm not impressed with Coach Philbin's ability at managing people. This is just more of the same. I've never been in an NFL locker room, but I find it inconceivable that Philbin had no idea that there was bad blood on his team. If Philbin's staff really did encourage Incognito, that's not just morally wrong, it also might cripple the team. Last year the NFL suspended several coaches for encouraging players to injure other players on the field. What's the likelihood that the NFL won't come down hard on a coach who encourages the same sort of behavior in his own team?

Because I can't talk about the Dolphins' off-the-field drama without taking a parting shot at my least favorite member of the organization, let me point out that we wouldn't be in this situation at all if General Manager Jeff Ireland hadn't drafted Martin and signed free agent Incognito. Yes, I'm finding a way to blame Ireland for this mess. It's what I do.

UPDATE 2013-11-08 4PM: ProFootballTalk.com reports that Martin's agent reported the bullying to Ireland before Martin left the team. Ireland's response was to tell Martin to punch Incognito. Imagine telling your boss that you were being harassed, and your boss telling you just to punch your coworker. Yeah, that'll do it. The Dolphins continue to pretend that it doesn't have to conform to the same workplace conditions as the rest of the country. I think they'll find that defense isn't going to stand up for itself.

Also, the NFL's "independent" investigation announced that Martin will be interviewed about the situation late next week. This thing is going to drag on forever. *sigh*

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The 2013 NFL draft is tonight. I have no idea who the Dolphins will pick, but I do know that they will look like fools matter what they do.

I'm not talking about the moves of GM Jeff Ireland, who during the offseason has shipped out proven talent while overpaying for new questionable talent. (As I type this, rumor has it that Ireland is trying to trade Davone Bess — among the best third down backs in the entire league — to move up a few picks in the first round for another recievier. Sigh.) No, I'm talking about the new uniforms unveiled this week.

Yeah, that's more or less the logo that leaked a few months back. Like I said then, it's not so much bad as it is bland. All one color, with the sleeve logo smaller than the Nike logo? Gag. If there is one thing that these uniforms scream, it's "yawn."

With the product that Jeff Ireland and company are putting on the field, I guess it's a good thing that I don't really want to look at it.

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Last night was the fifth and final episode of Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Miami Dolphins. I was surprised to discover that I'm going to miss that show, but I can't say why.

The series chronicled the dysfunction of training camp and proved that there is no hope for the 2012 season exactly at that time of year where unfounded hope should be flourishing for fans of all 32 teams. Maybe that's what I liked about it: it demonstrated that I was right to be down on the 2012 season.

Although I can't say that I feel quite as hopeless as all that. The Dolphins released David Garrard yesterday, so I don't have to deal with that should-we or shouldn't-we quarterback quandary anymore this season. Joe Philbin looks a few fathoms out of his depth, but at least Fins fans don't have to be frustrated waiting through losing games for that to become apparent. And I got to see Jeff Ireland in action, so I know that I'm justified in complaining about his inability to recognize talent.

Could it be worse? Sure. But at least knowing how bad it is keeps me from worrying. Now I can embrace our upcoming 5 win season with schadenfreude. At least that's something to look forward to.

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A full month of Hard Knocks, and they've finally openly admitted what most Dolphins fans have already noticed: this team really isn't very good, especially on offense.

The episode spent a lot of time on Jeff Ireland, as though spotlighting what a happy family man he is will make long-suffering fans hate him any less. Lucky him, growing up with the 1980's Chicago Bears. Too bad spending time with Jim McMahon and Refrigerator Perry didn't teach him what talent looked like.

To stay positive, Dolphins fans can focus on the fact that we are in a division with a couple of teams that might be worse off than we are. The AFC East is also home to the Jets, a team whose pre-season offense actually looks worse than ours, and the Bills, a team that hasn't seen the post-season in 12 years. With such a lackluster division lineup, it's going to be awfully hard for the final team in our division, the Super Bowl runner-up New England Patriots, to win fewer than 12 games this season.

I'm not the only one to notice. NFL.com is running the headline "Camp Buzz: Could Dolphins be worst team in NFL?" today. Thus the Dolphins' motto remains, "there's always next year!"

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The more I see of Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Miami Dolphins on HBO, the more I'm left wondering, "why would any team voluntarily participate in that?" Athletes are humiliated, and coaches are exposed as clueless. Where's the up side?

The big moment in the second episode was the firing of Chad Johnson. Johnson was arrested last weekend on a charge of domestic battery against his wife of just over a month. The footage on last week's Hard Knocks hardly portrayed the pair as a loving couple. They barely looked at each other and came across as as two individual desperate for more time in front of the cameras. I guess this is another lesson in being careful what you wish for.

My problem with the situation wasn't that the Dolphins released Johnson, but how they did it. Johnson entered Head Coach Joe Philbin's office well aware of what he had done. Rather than let Johnson know that he was being cut, Philbin let the poor, desperate man dangle for a few minutes before weakly dismissing him with more of his milquetoast "I'm not trying to be a dictator" bullshit. I suspect that Philbin was trying to come across as sympathetic or considerate, but managed only to act uncomfortably embarrassed as he fidgeted in his overstuffed seat. Way to lead, Joe. I'm sure both men were glad there were cameras present to capture the moment for posterity.

In all fairness, I have to say that my growing distaste for Philbin has not been helped any by the series editors. In both of the episodes so far, the lead-in has edited a series of events to put Philbin's actions and comments out of context. Last week, we opened with Philbin failing to give a player a chance, unaware that uniquely incompetent General Manager Jeff Ireland had already rigged the game behind the scenes. This week, we heard Philbin's side of a telephone conversation that sounded like it was belittling his wife's relationship with Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Andy Reid's wife, instead of commiserating about both Philbin and Reid having recently lost children. Maybe the man puts his foot in his mouth naturally, but NFL Films isn't doing him any favors.

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I'm not the only one pissed off that the Dolphins have added 2012 to their string of inexplicably terrible off-seasons. There were protests outside of Dolphins headquarters yesterday after the Dolphins released Yeremiah Bell for "cap space." The protesters carried "Fireland" placards to suggest what they think of General Manager Jeff Ireland. (Personally, I assume the "F" stands for "fuck.") The Dolphins had plenty of room under the salary cap to recruit an injured, 36-year-old Peyton Manning, but not enough room to keep a healthy, 34-year-old Bell? Is it a coincidence that Bell is the only consistently competent player in the Dolphins' secondary? Ye gods, what is Jeff Ireland doing?

To make matters worse, the Dolphins are privately saying that they have no interest in Tim Tebow, or as we call him around here, "Touchdown Jesus." I suspect that this means that new coach Joe Philbin thinks that Tebow sucks, which means that Philbin and I are starting out on the wrong foot. Right now, Philbin has on his roster a quarterback not good enough to play for the worst team in the NFL in 2010, and a quarterback not good enough to play for anyone in 2011.

Surely, Tebow, who managed to motivate his left-for-dead-in-week-5 team into a playoff victory, has to be worse than those two quarterbacks, right, Joe Philbin? You sure would hate to have to build a team around a quarterback like Tebow, especially since you already have such a fine team now, right, Joe Philbin? We shouldn't point out that your former protege Matt Flynn pointedly chose to compete for a job in Seattle rather than start for you, should we, Joe Philbin?

Bah. The 2012 Dolphins are already starting to smell like dead fish.

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Sigh. No Manning, no Flyyn, no Smith.... and after allowing their starting quarterback of the past three years to run off to join the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Dolphins -- who at this point should rename themselves the Miami Desperations -- have signed David Garrard to a one-year deal. This is the same David Garrad who was unceremoniously cut by the Jaguars before the 2011 season then refused to sign with the Dolphins mid-way through the 2011 season either because the Dolphins wouldn't offer him enough money (Garrard's version of the story) or because he wasn't interested in playing professional football anymore (the Dolphins version of the story). In any event, the Dolphins and Jaguars have now essentially traded unwanted quarterbacks Henne and Garrard. Hooray?

This obvious mismanagement by the Dolphins is drawing fire from past players, who are publicly criticizing team General Manager Jeff Ireland. NFL.com reports players calling Ireland untrustworthy and disrespectful. The League's media arm also reminds us that Ireland asked much-hyped potential draft pick Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute in 2010 and tried to hire Jim Harbaugh as Head Coach without first firing Tony Sparano in 2011. We have a name for guys like Ireland, and that name isn't "winner."

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