Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE
The Kansas City Chiefs hired Brian Daboll to be their offensive coordinator this week so the first thing I did was contact Brian Miller of Phin Phanatic, FanSided’s award-winning Miami Dolphins site.
Brian was FanSided’s very first blogger and he has since turned Phin Phanatic into the premier Miami Dolphins site on the planet. Brian regularly attends games and team functions and he is well respected by the Dolphins organization. He is certainly a tremendous authority when it comes to Dolphins football and so I wanted to find out exactly what Brian’s thoughts were on the Chiefs’ new offensive coordinator.
As expected, Brian came though. Here is what he had to say about Daboll’s time in Miami.
So Brian Daboll has joined the Kansas City Chiefs as the teams new offensive coordinator. My immediate thought as a Miami Dolphins fan who watched him last year was “good for the Chiefs”. Then as it began to settle in a bit more, I realized that “good” may not be the right word to use here. The truth is Daboll is still a bit of an unknown, even to Miami fans.
For starters, his name is pronounced Daybull, not that it really matters. When Daboll was hired as a the Dolphins OC last season many fans laughed at the fact that the Dolphins hired the former Cleveland OC who statistically finished worse than Miami the season before. Yet without an off-season (lockout) Daboll still managed to install a system that had a lot more flow than the previous Miami offenses. To Chiefs fans I would say do not read anything into Miami’s record last season.
Early on in 2011, the Dolphins defense lost many games and the Dolphins offense was still trying to pick up the Daboll offense which used more down-field attacks and mismatched coverage. He used his running backs in a way that kept defenses unbalanced..specifically Reggie Bush, who had his best statistical NFL year of his career. Towards the end of the season the Dolphins offense was dangerous and began to show consistency with their scoring of thirty or more points.
Daboll seems to use the strengths of his personnel well and will tender his offense to meet those strengths but he won’t get away from the passing game just to pound the ball. He will also play the hot hand more than not. So if the passing game is working, he will tend to keep with that and use the running game to keep team honest or to strike a long gain. And vice-versa.
I would warn however that while he has lot of upside, and he does, his track record hasn’t been stellar and his ability to lead a team’s offense still hasn’t produced playoffs or statistically high standings. He seems to be a good coach who the players do respect and his offense isn’t so difficult that players can’t make the transition easily. KC will benefit from having a full off-season with him to learn the playbook, unlike Miami where the full book was never installed and many components weren’t implemented into the system well into the season.
Still, the good news is that he is not a “bad” coach and this is not a hiring I would be down on. He isn’t the flashy name but he seems to be a coach who is heading in the right direction and I think the KC offense will improve under him. For what it’s worth, many Dolphins fans believed he showed enough last season to retain him under new Phins coach Joe Philbin.
I agree with Brian’s assessment. Daboll’s time in Cleveland and his first few games in Miami don’t tell the whole story here. Neither job was particularly stable when Daboll was hired. This time around, he is coming on board with a new coach and should have at least two or three years to show his stuff.
What say ye, Addicts? Do Brian Miller’s words make you any more excited about KC’s new offensive coordinator?
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Patrick is the senior editor of Arrowhead Addict. Back when he used to have a life, he enjoyed theater and long walks in the park. Now he spends upwards of 18 hours a day looking at his computer writing about the Chiefs. He spends the other six hours thinking about writing about the Chiefs. It may one day cause him to lose everything,
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