Today's question is from Shawn in Connecticut. You guys probably know him from his various comments (he goes by Shawn). Thank you Shawn for the question. It is an interesting one and I am going to try my best to answer it fully.
Here it is:
"My question is if and when Sparano is fired do you think Mike Nolan should be promoted or who do you think would want to come and coach the Dolphins?"This is an interesting question.
I am going to tell you right now that I do not want Nolan as the Head Coach of the Miami Dolphins, and I have one statistic to show you why:
He is 18-37 as an NFL Head Coach.
While Nolan is a great Defensive Coordinator, he isn't really a great Head Coach. When you first asked me that question Shawn, I thought to myself that he would be a great Head Coach, but then after looking up how he has done before as one I wasn't so confident anymore.
The problem is that if Nolan has another great season like this past one, he will probably get an offer to be a Head Coach for another team. That team may not end up doing so well, but that wouldn't matter to us Dolphins fans. What would matter is that we lost a great defensive coordinator that would be hard to replace.
We could end up in a situation where either we hire Nolan as our own Head Coach or he leaves us to go be a Head Coach somewhere else. That would be a problem, and I would lean toward saying let him go coach somewhere else because his history doesn't make me confident that he would be any good as the main coach.
As for possible replacements, I am sure there will be a bunch of candidates that would like to take the job, but the two I think should be the most strongly are Super Bowl winning coaches Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden. I haven't done any research on coaches other than them, but I am confident that one of those two could help Miami tremendously.
Of course, this all depends on how well the Dolphins do and if Sparano is fired as a result. I am not sure if I have said this before, but I think Sparano and Daboll will be the first ones to go if Stephen Ross starts firing people after a bad season. I can see Jeff Ireland staying even if they do bad because Ross seems to like Ireland a lot.
I do want to say that I don't think Sparano will be fired if they go 8-8 or better. About a month ago Ross said, basically, that he would allow the Dolphins to build a team and that he didn't expect huge success immediately. Whether he really meant that is still to be determined, but I think there is a chance that Sparano keeps his job after a mediocre season if Ross saw some promise in what he did and if Ireland still approves of him.
We will just have to wait and see. I'm just ready for this darn lockout to be over with. The offseason is hard enough as it is. Throw in a lockout with no free agency or contract talks, and it is incredibly difficult to write about new things.
That is why I am doing these Miami Dolphins Fan Questions, though. If anyone has any other questions please do not hesitate to email me at paul@dolphinshout.com or tweet me @PaulDSmythe on twitter.
Thank you everyone for reading and thank you for the question Shawn.
