Cameron takes fall for not-all-his-fault miserable season

By Anthony Bialy  |   Friday, January 04, 2008  |  Comments( 6 )

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Out of a job to start the new year, Cam Cameron apparently wowed Bill Parcells and Miami Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland about as well as Homer Simpson impressed the new German owners of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. I don't know that Cameron was caught daydreaming about the Land of Chocolate, but the new regime undoubtedly noticed that the 2007 Dolphins were plagued by the consequences of some strange coaching decisions.

At the same time, the brutal reality of having 14 players end up on injured reserve combined with the staff's conscious decision to give younger players a chance for experience made the nastily terrible record not excusable but understandable. Cameron was like the director of a Ben Affleck movie: Given limited talent with which to work, he could only do so much to make things good.

For example, the Dolphins finished 24th in passing offense at 189.4 yards per game, but the biggest hindrance to proficiency could have been who wasn't around to help. Namely, it's important to remember that they didn't have Wes Welker, who became a crucial element of the Patriots' unprecedented success after he was traded. The transaction was part of a plan to acquire younger players, and Miami did get rock-solid center Samson Satele with one of the draft picks it received in exchange. But, the tradeoff to looking toward the future is that the present suffers.

The argument could also be made that Welker wouldn't have thrived in South Florida this past season. It would be like hiring Gordon Ramsay to work at Quiznos: Even with tremendous aptitude, he just wouldn't have the resources at his job to succeed. Meanwhile, almost any half-competent receiver could have been plugged in to that New England team this season and pulled off a career-making campaign. Nonetheless, Welker has unique capabilities that might have aided a feckless Dolphin passing game.

Cameron also lost the services of not-great-but-pretty-good wideout Chris Chambers, whom then-G.M. and fellow former Dolphin employee Randy Mueller dealt to the Chargers partway through the season. The problem with the Chambers trade is that they now need to consider drafting a substitute for him. Getting a second-round choice for a player it will at least take a second-round choice to replace can be either seen as A) rebuilding, or B) causing the rebuilding process to last in perpetuity.

As it stands, Chambers caught 35 passes for 555 yards in his 10 games as a Charger; coincidentally, the top Dolphins receiver for 2007, Marty Booker, only managed a single yard more in the 15 games he played than Chambers' total with his new team.

Of course, it was Cameron's responsibility to get the most out of the available resources. In that vein, the blame for the maddening truth that rookie Ted Ginn Jr. was criminally underutilized, getting 420 yards over a mere 34 grabs, can be dumped at the head coach's feet, even considering the justification that the coaches were trying to ease him into his role. That said, there was an overall lack of receiver depth, and it's tough to get an engine running when the only tools at your disposal to repair it are a mallet and salad fork.

The meager passing options also affected John Beck, who doesn't look as if he could last in the sadly defunct NFL Europa right now. While he didn't perform at a level that could be considered anywhere near capable, the shallow receiving pool hurt him during his first handful of games.

He was one of three quarterbacks who started for this team, none of whom were good: After coach's choice Trent Green underperformed until he was injured, Cameron did flip-flop between the painfully horrid Beck and marginal stopgap Cleo Lemon in a desperate attempt to get a single win. But Beck's bad-for-even-a-rookie play didn't give him any choice.

Parcells, who, in an oft-repeated interestingly related fact, won three games in his first season heading the Giants, will now bring in a Parcells disciple at coach, making Cameron the most prominent employment fatality after the worst season in team history. One of the most telling things about the year was that, among the whippings and medium defeats, six of Miami's losses were remarkably by only three points each. While this meant that the Dolphins often hung close, it was also apparent that the drive and instinct to pull ahead when the opportunity presented itself weren't there.

Progress or positive signs aside, having to wait until mid-December for a victory wasn't encouraging enough for anyone, much less the unsentimental guy brought in for the single purpose of replacing dead weight with skillful players and coaches. Still, you can't fault Cam Cameron for trying to build a foundation for a new home, even if it meant sleeping outside this year.
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CommentsComments: 6  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
Cry-About-It-Fans		06:48 PM
01/04/2008
Who cares? Parcells hiring is no guarantee of anything. Some people think that just because he is now employed here that victory...
No.2
Uuser		07:04 PM
01/04/2008
Hi guys! Is anybody know what software can open CDL file type? I tried to use all Corel's, and most of Adobe's programms, but...
No.3
adruwebwrty		08:30 PM
01/04/2008
As is known, for successful business on the Internet, without promotion to not do without, even the best site with the beautiful...
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