Dolphins coach rips 'embarrassing' star player after Week 17 fight
The Miami Dolphins were the Tin Man of the NFL in Week 17, showing no heart in a loss that helped send the Buffalo Bills to the playoffs for the first time since 1999.
It seems like the solution to lack of a heart might be addition by subtraction, if the reaction of coach Adam Gase to a fourth-quarter fight is anything to go by.
Jarvis Landry, Miami’s wide receiver, got himself ejected as he and Kenyan Drake were involved in a brawl that Landry was found to have instigated.
During a press conference Wednesday, Gase said of the incident: “This last game was probably the pinnacle of what I’ve ever seen with him during a game. … I don’t think I’ve ever seen it get to a level where it was extremely bad. But the last game was about as embarrassing as I’ve seen in a long time. It’s just something we can’t have happen.”
“Embarrassing,” the coach said. “Extremely bad.”
These are not things you want said about you if you’re an NFL player hoping to keep your job and the millions of dollars it brings just as you come off the coveted-by-teams rookie contract.
Landry made $3.47 million over four years with the Dolphins after being drafted in the second round in 2014; he will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason.
But with character issues dogging his reputation, even solid stats — Landry led the NFL in catches with 112, for 989 yards and nine touchdowns, and twice in his first four years posted 1,000-yard receiving seasons — might not be enough to net him big money in a league where drafting a guy who can give you most of that on a sub-$1 million salary seems the new normal.
Miami went 6-10 this year, erasing the gains of a 10-6 season in 2016 and extending a dubious stretch where the team hasn’t posted back-to-back winning seasons since a seven-season run between 1997 and 2003.
Landry has said he wants to return to Miami next season, but the team might not want him after a year where lack of discipline was such a strong factor in the double-digit losses on its record.
Gase sure doesn’t seem happy with his star wideout, saying, “We’re going on our last drive, and two of our best players on offense aren’t in there. That was very frustrating to watch. … We need way better control from our best players in the heat of the moment.”
Leadership trickles down in football. If the best players aren’t role models, the rank-and-file aren’t going to fall in line, and football is like the military: If the entire squad isn’t fully engaged and on board, the enemy wins before the fight even starts.
Gase also seemed to acknowledge that Landry’s overall pattern of behavior will be part of the decision-making process for team brass, who unlike most teams with Pro Bowl-caliber players, have not yet made an extension offer.
Said Gase, “You can’t take one isolated incident and overreact, but at the same time we’ve got to make sure we look at everything we’ve been doing over the last couple of years. You look at the body of work and see what direction we want to go.”
When the “body of work” includes 400 catches in four seasons along with two Pro Bowl appearances, you might be able to overlook a minor transgression or two.
But General Manager Mike Tannenbaum sure sounds like he’s looking for another wideout on a rookie deal.
Tannenbaum told reporters, “Philosophically we want to draft, develop and keep as many of our own as possible. So we’ll see what happens with Jarvis and a few other noteworthy free agents. In a perfect world we’d keep them all, but there is a salary cap.”
And every good team knows that being capped out is a pretty good way to fall into the NFL’s parity trap. It’s hard to stay good when you’re a team like New England or Pittsburgh and you have to cut guys loose who are genuine stars, but they do it so well that they’re considered model franchises.
Miami is not a model franchise; it used to be, but it isn’t now. So if the Dolphins are going to try and emulate their frozen rivals, they might just have to start with the guy with the downside risks that might not justify that new contract.
And while Gase acknowledged that part of the problem this season was the loss of quarterback Ryan Tannehill to injury during the preseason, which led to the sinJay Cutler playing like the castoff reject from a bad Chicago team that Cutler is, the coach also made a telling remark that might just be the dagger in Landry’s hopes to stay in South Florida.
“It’s never going to be the way we want it until guys take control of this thing,” he said. “You need your leaders to step up and be vocal.”
Vocal — preferably not in a way that starts bench-clearing brawls in winnable games.
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