Cameron Wake Needs to Get Paid

Cameron Wake goes after quarterbacks like he watched them murder his parents as a child and he's spent his whole life plotting revenge. He is easily my favorite Dolphin. Even in 2009, when he was only used for special blitz situations, when he is on the screen, your eyes are drawn to him. He brings an intensity that is palpable. Unfortunately, that intensity is now being aimed at the Dolphins due to the fact that he is currently getting paid 1/4 the salary of our kicker.

On one level, you have to give it to Jeff Ireland. As much as I hate him for all the dumb moves he's made, getting Wake was genius. Wake was scouted from the CFL, given the largest NFL contract ever given to a player out of the CFL (The previous high was 3 beaver pelts and NHL season tickets) and we got a Pro Bowler for chump change.

The bad news is that Cameron Wake doesn't like you calling him a chump. He does not like it one bit. So Cameron Wake is now holding out until a contract extension is reached. I almost always despise player holdouts but with Wake being 30 and currently being paid less than his backup, it's time to pay him. I know we have limited cap space and we still need to sign the rookies we draft, but there is more than one reason we need to pay Cameron Wake.

An unhappy Cameron Wake puts us all in danger
Cameron Wake clearly deserves a higher salary based on his play, but another prime reason to pay him is public safety. Wake has built a reputation for being a model citizen off the field and a tireless workaholic on it. He is known for being a gym-rat, often the first guy to get there and the last guy to leave. But you take away that gym and those workouts and you then have a very strong, very angry gentleman walking around South Florida. He's nice, but so is Bruce Banner before people piss him off. When he files his taxes, how long is he going to stand in line at the post office before the line of people start to look like an offensive line and the teller starts to look like Tom Brady? He seems really nice, but why test him?

Hopefully we get this deal done soon. In the mean time, the holdout frees him up to do other jobs on the side. I have some suggestions.

Ways for Cameron Wake to Make Money During His Holdout

1.Do Commercials

Although he is well known by other players and coaches, he is virtually unknown to a lot of fans outside Miami and there is no excuse for it. Unlike past Dolphins who aspired to a career in acting, the only role he seems interesting in auditioning for is lead murderer in his opponent's nightmares. He should have more of the fame and endorsements that come from playing at a high level and that starts with becoming a pitchman. I've drawn up a couple quick ideas for products that might suit him.

Improved Dolphins Uniforms

Yesterday, Nike came out with their new NFL uniforms. They are pretty much the same except, now when players throw up a dynasty sign, it forms their logos, which is fun for everyone except Diamond Dallas Page.

It's going to take a while to dish out all those Diamond Cutters

The new uniforms are ok, but they are not going to be enough to help the Dolphins get to the Super Bowl so I have taken the liberty of redesigning them with a few small touches that I think will give the Dolphins the edge they need. (You may have to click the image to enlarge it)

Get to Hate a Jet: Tim Tebow

Over the past few weeks, I have seen a couple Dolphin fans on Twitter and message boards saying they want to remain Dolphin fans but if the Dolphins don’t improve, they will become Jets fans. Let us not forget there is a third option in this scenario. You could kill yourself. Seriously. Think it over. If you have been a lifelong Dolphins fan and the idea of taking of trading in your orange and teal for New Jersey green sounds appealing, please first take a nice long chug off of one of the bottles under your sink. I would cheer for cancer before I would cheer for the Jets.

I have discussed my hatred of the Jets before in this passage from 9/8/2008 
I hate the Jets probably more than a sane adult should hate a group of athletes he’s never met. The Jets first win over the Fins last year inspired me to start this site. I don’t just hate the Jets, I hate everything they represent. Every time you are on I-95 and some greasy haired dildo in a Camaro with a New Jersey license plate cuts you off, that guy LOVES the Jets. Every time it gets 43 degrees outside in Miami; that douche walking around in a tank top, saying “Youz guys think this is cold? Growin up in Hackensack, I used to freeze my friggin bawlz oowff.” That guy LOVES the Jets. Full disclosure, I live in New York City now and this is not hate against all northerners. It’s specifically against Jets fans. Every time the Jets win a football game, humanity loses and a depressed white trashy girl from New Brunswick has to reluctantly show her tits.

But why hate them as a group when you can hate them individually? That’s why I am starting a new feature on the site called Get to Hate a Jet.

From time to time I will write up reasons why you should hate one person from the Jets, past or present. From coaches and players to towelboys, I’ll probably eventually cover their whole organization down to their finance department.



I should add that I reserve the right to reverse these opinions the moment any of these people become Dolphins.

Example: Jets Chad Pennington = Noodle-Armed Sissy

Dolphins Chad Pennington= Laser Accurate Leader



This week we will start with the newest Jet that everyone seems so excited about...

Tim Tebow

Tebow is happy with his new team because he loves Jets. Here is him pointing at one.

When I found out the team I hate the most was signing the quarterback I hate the most, it was kind of convenient. Now I'm just waiting for them to sign Skeletor and my building's super. Why hate Tim Tebow?

1. He is too much of a good guy
I know some of you out there are saying "How can we hate Tim Tebow? He loves Jesus and spends his offseason rescuing orphans from demons!" With Wrestlemania happening this past weekend, I'll put it in wrestling terms. In wrestling, bad guys are called heels and good guys are called faces. Because wrestling isn't known for subtlety, heels are often pretty obvious, but sometimes you have a guy who is so much of a face, the fans turn against him. John Cena is a good recent example, but for me growing up it was Kurt Angle.

Kurt Angle was an actual gold medalist in the 1996 Olympics. He came into the WWF (Yes, it was the WWF and I will still call it that. Suck it, pandas) as an American hero, waving the flag. He was such an annoyingly over-the-top good guy that crowds eventually started chanting "You suck!You suck!" and chose instead to cheer for charming anti-heros like The Rock. Kurt Angle was a great heel but it illustrates my point. There is a point where someone can be so good that it makes you hate them. You can have too much of a good thing.

In a league filled with criminals and wife beaters it's nice to have one guy who, out of the purity of his heart, chooses to get laid less than I do. At a certain point, it gets to be too much though. It seems too good to be true. It makes you think he's hiding a dark secret.

2. He is enormously overrated
Speaking of players who have hidden dark secrets, people said Michael Vick was overrated when he was with the Falcons because, despite the flashiness, he was not that good at quarterback. They said despite his big plays, he was no good in the pocket. Vick's defenders said that his low QB rating did not factor in his extensive running talents and his ability to extend the play to win games. Well, change the skin tone, subtract half the talent and add a moral compass and you have Tim Tebow.

Let's compare their second seasons in the NFL. Let's look at 2002 Vick to 2011 Tebow.

Passing
	GP	CMP	CMP%	YDS	TD	INT	FUM	RAT
Vick 2002	15	231	54.9	2,936	16	8	4	81.6
Tebow 2011	14	126	46.5	1,729	12	6	7	72.9
Rushing
	ATT	YDS	AVG	LNG	TD	FD	FUM	LST
Vick 2002	113	777	6.9	46	8	44	5	4
Tebow 2011	122	660	5.4	32	6	35	6	2

Forget about Tim Tebow being no Peyton Manning. Tim Tebow is no Michael Vick. In fact Vick was better in every conceivable way.

I know some people are saying, "Yeah but he won games." Last year he led the 25th best scoring offense in the NFL(Miami was 20th. Where are all the Matt Moore jerseys?). He won games thanks in large part to an incredible defense that kept games close enough for those 4th quarter comebacks. Then again if anyone would buy that "The only stat that matters is wins" crap, it would be the Jets. Their greatest quarterback has a lifetime 65.5 QB rating and a 173/220 TD/INT ratio.

3. The Religion Thing

If this rubs some of you the wrong way, so be it. The constant Tebowing and pointing to the sky after games gets on my nerves. I know there are some people who believe you should be constantly screaming your religion from the mountaintops, but for the people whose breakfast you are interrupting with your pamphlets of "good news", it's annoying.


For one thing, overtly praying and pointing to the sky constantly after you win a game is a cruel form of taunting, even if it isn't meant that way. For the team that just lost, it feels like you're saying "We didn't win this game. God won this game for us. Our victory was His will." It is like humblebragging at it's most extreme. The other team gets to think "Hey. It's not just that we didn't play hard enough, it's also that God hates us." Please do not waste time writing me with "That's not what it means. It actually means...". I don't care. I'm not demanding you keep your religion a secret, but if you drop down into a prayer stance after you beat me at Jenga, I'm going to think you are a dick.

Side note. For any Dolphin "fans" who went to University of Florida who still cheer for him because he went there too, he's not in college anymore and neither are you. Now that he's a Jet and you have a choice to make.

Who have the Dolphins Beaten? (Mostly their wives and girlfriends)

Koa Misi got arrested on charges of battery with serious injury and from the look in his eyes, he's very sorry about it. It hasn't yet been reported who the victim was so at this point we don't know. What we do know is this is the 12th violent arrest on the team in the last 10 years. This does not count arrests for DUI, drugs or players who were arrested when they weren't on our team (Brandon Marshall), just violent arrests by active players. Who have they attacked? Lets look at their stats.

Assault/Battery Arrests Since 2002
Their Pregnant Wife/Girlfriend	2
Their Nonpregnant Wife/Girlfriend	3
Police Officer	2
Random Person at Bar or Restaurant	3
Airport Gate Attendant	1
Not Sure Yet (Koa Misi)	1

Or to make it a bit more clear, how about a pie chart.

That's 12 violent arrests in 10 years and 1 playoff appearance in that span. No success on a football field could ever make up for violence off of it,  but it would be nice if our team could be something more than a work-release program.

3/31/11 Update:
Ok. So it turns out a 19 year old taunted him from a balcony. Later when that guy was sleeping, Misi punched through the door (Punching through doors? Who is he? The Hulk?) and beat the shit out of him. It's a cautionary tale to anyone who has ever taunted someone from a balcony. If you're going to taunt, taunt safe guys. There are a lot of angry NFL players out there.

Bill Parcells is a Prostitute

Bill Parcells is a prostitute. It's no secret. Everyone in the NFL knows he will go anywhere and work with any team for the right price. He has now gone through 4 teams since he left the Giants, never staying more than 3 years with each team. We knew all this, but we were desperate so we hired him and for a while, he was our prostitute.

Like all prostitutes, he came to us with his ground rules. He would not coach, he would not work as a GM and I did not see his contract, but there was probably no kissing on the mouth. We were so desperate he even got a clause that if ownership changed, he could leave anytime he wanted. He knew we were desperate so he didn't come cheap. He signed a 4 year deal for a ton of money to turn the Dolphins around.

The beginning was great. He helped turn a 1-15 disaster into a 10-6 playoff team the first year. We were so happy we didn't want it to end. But then ownership changed and he saw a way out. He took the money the Dolphins left on the dresser for him and split, leaving the Dolphins with the blue balls of a half-built team. They say you don't pay prostitutes to come over, you pay them to leave but it would have been nice if he could have at least finished the job first.

If that was the end of it, it would be disappointing but understandable. We knew what we were getting into with him and we got it. Then in January of last year, Ian O'Connor reported that while Parcells was still drawing a paycheck from the Dolphins, he was instrumental in the Jets hire of Rex Ryan as a head coach. That's right. He was turning tricks on the side... with our arch-enemy... FOR FREE! Is Rex Ryan a better coach than Tony Sparano? Well, one of them is now working for the other.

Now, to rub even more salt in the wound, Parcells is considering coaching the Saints this season. All we can do is stand around with our blue balls feeling stupid that the prostitute who took our money, gave freebies to our rivals and left early is now considering doing all kinds of stuff for another team they had told us was off-limits. I hope he goes to the Saints and I hope he is an absolute disaster for them. I know it's a dick move to wish disasters on New Orleans after everything the city has been through, but that city was poorly built.  I believe it was renowned city planners Jefferson Starship who said if you want your city to thrive you don't build it on jazz. You build it on rock and roll.

"That's history. It's behind us."

A good way to gauge whether the Dolphins excuses for their terrible decisions are valid is to see if the tactics would work on my girlfriend. One of the most idiotic decisions the Dolphins have made recently was trading Pro Bowler Brandon Marshall to the Bears for two 3rd round picks. Now, Brandon Marshall was not a nice guy. He has always had a thing for the ladies, and by "thing" I mean backhand. Still, his talent will be sorely missed on a team lacking it.

The Dolphins have tried to spin it as a possible good thing, because who knows how good the picks might turn out to be? It reminds me of an episode of Family Guy where Peter had to choose between a boat or a mystery box leading Peter to say "The mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat!" What we do know is our last four 3rd round picks: John Jerry, Patrick Turner, Kendall Langford and Lorenzo Booker do not equal one Brandon Marshall. Not even close. Only one of them, John Jerry, is even still on the team. Maybe Jeff Ireland will suddenly get lucky but it seems unlikely.

When the fans weren't buying the trade Stephen Ross started basically saying, "We were going to cut him so we were lucky to get 2 terrible picks." The logic seems to be "I did something dumb but I almost did something way more dumb." Is that valid? How would it work on my girlfriend:

My girlfriend: You traded my dog for lottery tickets?!?!?!?

Me: Yes I did. First off, these tickets might be able to buy hundreds of dogs. 

Secondly, I was going to give your dog away for nothing, so isn't this way better?

That logic would not work on my girlfriend just as it did not work on Dolphin fans.

Then, today in a press conference, Stephen Ross tried an even ballsier gambit. Asked about Brandon Marshall, he said “That's in the past. That's history. It's behind us. It's a trade. He wasn't cut. We got fair value and we think the football team is better for it.” Wow. He restates the "We could have cut him" logic and that we got fair value which we clearly didn't, but ballsiest of all was “That's in the past. That's history. It's behind us." which would be totally valid if it wasn't 2 weeks ago! Let's go back to that scene with my girlfriend...

My girlfriend: You traded him away without even asking me! You are a monster!

Me: You're still yammering on about that? Look. It happened, ok? Neither of us can change it now. It's in the past. We have to move on with our lives in the present and later the future.

My Girlfriend: I just found out 10 minutes ago and you haven't even apologized!

Me: It's history! There's no changing it! I don't have a time machine! Do you want to live your whole life in the past?!?!?

And scene.

It is history, but unfortunately history shows us that Jeff Ireland has made a ton of stupid moves that turned out to be exactly as stupid as they seemed (Pat White) and until we learn from our history (Fire Jeff Ireland) we are doomed to repeat it.

Last Call

This week, I've heard everyone from Peter King to The Onion all laughing at the pathetic Dolphins for failing time after time to sign the person they wanted. If the NFL is a bar, everyone in the bar has just seen us go up and try to hit on every pretty girl in the bar and get shot down by every single one before settling on some trainwrecks. Harbaugh, Jeff Fisher, Manning, Flynn, and Alex Smith all have all shot us down. Ireland has said that Flynn and Alex Smith were not hot enough to justify the Cristal champagne they were demanding, but they both would be way better than what we ended up signing. The bartender yelled "Last call!" and we settled for the only person who would go home with us. Of the QBs in their mid-30's who missed all of last season coming off neck surgery, we got the second best one. As things stand our future rests on David Garrard and a coach who has never been a head coach at any level, but at least we've still got our Pro Bowl wide receiver... Oh wait... Shit.

 In the coming weeks and months, I am going to use my extensive Madden skills and child-like Photoshop abilities to come up with ways to make the team better, but before you can change, you have to admit you have a problem. So how did we get here?

Last summer, with Sparano still under contract, Ireland and Ross flew out to Cali to sign Jim Harbaugh as their new coach. But, the funny thing about cheating on someone is the person you're cheating with knows what a dirtbag you are. Typically that doesn't make them feel any strong urge to commit to you which is exactly what happened. To make it worse, the whole national media found out so the Dolphins had to make it right with Sparano. There's no guilty flowers in the NFL, more like a Kobe-style $6 Million diamond ring of a contract extension (Kobe's was only $4 million).

After another dismal season of Sparano enthusiastically celebrating field goals, the Dolphins finished 6-10, which is a good record if you want your team to both miss the playoffs by a mile and also not have a chance at any top draft picks the next year. The record eliminated our chances at Luck or RGIII and it also spelled the end for Tony Sparano after 4 years which isn't bad compared to others.

Stephen Ross and Ireland began a search for a coach, but Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden decided to stay retired and Jeff Fisher decided to sign with the Rams after weeks of us pursuing him. We then settled on Joe Philbin, a Packers Offensive Coordinator who did not call plays. He is also just the second Dolphins head coach after Dave Wannstedt, aside from interim coaches, to have never been a head coach at any level before being hired for it. Yes, even Cam Cameron was a college head coach. I hope Joe Philbin is awesome and I later look dumb for commenting on his lack of HC experience, but he clearly was not their first choice.

 

That brings us to free agency. So far we have traded a psychotic but talented pro bowl receiver for peanuts and it was also reported that Stephen Ross told a fan that if we didn't trade Brandon Marshall for 2 crappy picks, we would have cut him. I guess it's comforting to know that the dumb move they made was not nearly as dumb as the move they almost made. We then cut a team captain (Yeremiah Bell) several weeks into free agency after most teams had signed other safeties (classy).Oh and we have also publicly pursued and been turned down by pretty much everyone who can throw a spiral.

Why does no one want to sign with us? For one thing, no one has ever accused Jeff Ireland of being charming. This is the same guy that asked a first round prospect if his mom was a prostitute at the combine. The same guy who stabbed his friend Tony Sparano in the back for Harbaugh without hesitation and who cut Bell without hesitation. In the last week, Channing Crowder and Joey Porter (Who knows everything about being a nice guy) have said he's a liar and and asshole. In fact, the only person who likes him seems to be Stephen Ross.

I have no idea what horrible information Jeff Ireland is blackmailing Stephen Ross with that allows him to keep his job, but I do know I wish had that kind of work situation. I'm sure we all wish we were allowed to be as crappy at our jobs as Jeff Ireland is and still keep them. If Jeff Ireland were as good at making coffee as he is at managing a football team, they would have asked for his green apron years ago. 

But for the time being, he is not going anywhere. So all we can do now is watch Youtube clips of Ryan Tannehill and pray that A. He will be a franchise quarterback and B. We will draft him. I want to believe it but after watching a whole night of our guys getting shot down by everyone in the bar, it becomes harder to think the next girl to walk in the bar is going to be a supermodel who will come right to us.