SPF Daily Rating: Lack of Playmakers Leave Florida Teams Winless

Posted: Sep 22, 2009

"I'm not interested in Pro Bowl players, I'm interested in world champions."

"[I'm interested in 'non-talent issues' [namely] the hustle, the effort, the technique, the fundamentals, all of those things."

The above quotes sound good don't they. Who said them? Vince Lombardi? Bill Parcells? Surely, it was one of the NFL's greatest winners.

Nope - it was the NFL's greatest loser, Rod Marinelli of last year's Detroit Lions, the only coach to finish winless in a 16 game season.

We hate to beat up on Marinelli. He took his medicine like a man without excuses, and he now is back doing a fine job as a defensive line coach in Chicago. We are taking issue with the idea that talent isn't important.

Talent is the most important thing.

Sure, people like to point out physically talented players who don't play hard all the time, but it is still better to have a player like that over one that tries hard, but can run faster than your grandmother.

We've all watched a few too many movies like Rudy which make us believe that talent doesn't matter.

It does.

Case in point, all of SPF's Florida teams - the Miami Dolphins, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Collectively, these teams are 0-6 to start the season. Collectively, their talent base on the field is among the worst in the NFL.

We've been harping on the Jags for years. Their coach, Jack Del Rio, was given multiple first round offensive players, and he couldn't develop them. After a while, squandering first round draft picks will catch up to a team. It has with the Jags. (Memo to Del Rio - cutting players after each game won't get you off the hook either. It's a "tough business" on underperforming coaches too.)

The Bucs are rebuilding, but the perception to fans is that they doing it on the cheap. It also doesn't help when your young coach specializes in defense and the defense is struggling. We'll see how it turns out, but it sure seems like they don't have enough players to win.

The best example of a lack of playmakers is the Miami Dolphins. They played a nearly perfect game last night. They possessed the ball for over 3/4 of the game. They rushed for over 200 yards. Their QB passed for over a 66% completion rate.

And they lost 27-23.

Now, everyone knows what the problem is - the Dolphins lost because they have no playmakers.

We admire QB Chad Pennington. He will surely be a fine coach someday when he decides to enter that profession. However, he is a weak-armed QB who has had a few too many surgeries. Defenses know that they only have to cover a small portion of the field when he is under center because of his limited passing ability.

Additionally, WR Ted Ginn, the only first round draft pick of the ill-fated Cam Cameron era, couldn't make an important catch last night dropping two TD passes and running out of bounds in front of the first down marker which caused the team to burn additional seconds that they couldn't afford.

The defense isn't looking very good either. The offense didn't score enough points, but it did allow the defense to rest for 3/4 of the game. They rewarded the offense by allowing quick TD strikes from Manning to TE Dallas Clark.

Greg Cote wrote an article back in August questioning this very scenario and asking whether there might be a scenario that would allow 2nd year QB Chad Henne to start. As much as we like Pennington, the time for Henne may be now.

The Lions might have been able to fool their fans with the Marinelli approach. It makes sense in a way because they do lie inside of Big Ten country, a region of football that has been kidding itself for years. The interesting thing about the lack of playmakers is that our SPF teams too often forget that they lie in the "real" heart of college football.

The fans here understand the value of talent through the recruiting process. They know that great football teams have talent.

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