Who did the Miami Dolphins really hire in Dan Henning? Get the real Dirt here
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 When the Miami Dolphins hired Dan Henning right around the Super Bowl, it wasn’t really big news. The news everyone was talking about was the fact that the Patriots had just lost their first game of the season and the 1972 Dolphins were still all alone in “Perfectville.” So, instead of just reading Henning’s bio and throwing his name into a heap with all the other coaches recently hired by Bill Parcells and Tony Sparano, I thought I’d get the real dirt on him, and find out what he is really going to be like for the Dolphins.
The last two stints as offensive coordinator Henning has had were with the New York Jets (1998-2000), and the Carolina Panthers (2002-2006). When he was with the Jets, Parcells was their head coach, and in Henning’s first season, the Jets made it to the AFC Championship game after achieving a regular season record of 12-4. Vinny Testaverde also had the best season of his NFL career that year (he threw for 3,256 yards, 29 TDs and only 7 INTs). In Carolina, the Panthers reached the Super Bowl in 2003 and barely lost to the Patriots on a last second field goal 32-29. Then, in 2005, they got back to the NFC Championship game. Jake Delhomme and Steve Smith became Pro Bowl players under Henning, and the offense was explosive in Super Bowl 38.
Google, and other search engines are great for finding quick information, but there’s an even better way to seek out information like the kind I want. I went and found websites for the Jets and Panthers to discover real fan opinions of their former offensive coordinator and what they think of him now reflecting back on his time with their team.
I first visited CarolinaHuddle.com, a Carolina Panthers fan site and forums. What I got was 25 responses in 4 hours. Although their individual posts differed, on the whole the response I got was pretty much the same opinion.
It didn’t start off on the right foot though, as the first poster said, “This is definitely not the place to request info about Dan Henning, all u will get is a load of Henning bashing.” Right off the bat, I thought wow, what a mistake, the Miami Dolphins really made the wrong hire. It should be noted though that Henning was fired after the 2006 season when the Panthers posted an 8-8 record after being pre-season Super Bowl favorites by most analysts and pundits. So, to Panthers fans, their most recent memory of Henning was not the Super Bowl or NFC Championship game but rather, the underachieving 2006 season. According to one of the fans on CarolinaHuddle.com, about 90% of Panthers fans wanted Henning gone after that season, and another, “he deserved to be fired.”
The overall opinion on Henning, as I said, was pretty straightforward. He is a conservative play caller who runs the ball a lot. He likes to “feed the stud” and in the Miami Dolphins case, that stud would be Ronnie Brown, so let’s hope he gets 100% healthy for 2008. One fan said Brown would be aching by the end of the season after Henning pounds him into the middle of the line hundreds of times. The feeling I got is that it’s going to look an awful lot like Kippy Brown or Chan Gailey is calling our plays sometimes. “Run, run, run, punt.”
Henning is a solid coordinator, but as one Panther fan put it, “If you have a great line, quality QB, quality hard running power backs, quality WRs and a good blocking TE, you'll do well under Henning. If any of these phases are lacking, you'll be cussing Henning.”
The only certainty the Dolphins have on offense right now is running back, and even that isn’t so sturdy with Brown’s knee injury as I wrote in my last column.
When the Panthers made the Super Bowl in 2003, Delhomme was playing the best season of his life, Stephen Davis rushed for 1,444 yards and 8 TDs, and Steve Smith and Mushin Muhammad were one of the best receiver tandems in the league. That offense had everything going for it as far as talent was concerned. If Henning has the talent in the basic positions, he will do well with it. He’s “solid, but not spectacular.” He will run the backs into the line, move the offense down the field, and occasionally throw the deep ball, often using play action. He’s very predictable, and will often run draws on third and long. He is not a coach that is going to out-smart the defense, he’s a coach that just wants to play better football than the other team.
Now, having said all this, why did Parcells and Sparano hire this guy? I know Parcells has a history with Henning from their days with the Jets, but come on! Sparano has been preaching for weeks about molding a system around his players, yet everything indicates that Henning needs a certain type of player at every to have a successful offense.
A lot of the posters at CarolinaHuddle.com seemed to think that because John Fox (the Panthers’ Head Coach) is conservative by nature, he might have had some chains on what Henning was doing offensively. However, one fan pointed out that this past season in 2007 after Jeff Davidson took over as the team’s offensive coordinator, the tight end was suddenly involved in the offense, there were better schemes for the running backs, and for the most part Davidson was just more innovative and creative.
Isn’t that the type of coordinator Sparano should have been seeking out—one that creates a scheme for his backs, one that uses every part of the offense? What is going to happen to a talent like Lorenzo Booker if the offensive game plan never calls for a receiving back? If John Carlson, the extremely talented tight end from Notre Dame is available at say, the Dolphins second 2nd round pick (number 57), is Jeff Ireland just going to pass him over because that is not a player who will fit the offensive scheme? I don’t think so! Ireland is going to be drafting talent, and he will be seeking out talent in any form he can get it in free agency. So, it will be up to Henning to evaluate the new Miami Dolphins’ offensive players, whoever they may be, and formulate a system that exposes their talents, using them as assets rather than sitting on them like expenses, creating even more liability for an offense that frankly has been lacking since Don Shula retired. But will Henning do this?
All I’m saying is that this hire looks completely backwards. Sparano wants to compile a group of talented players and then formulate systems that fit those players. Henning just seems to be set in his ways. Maybe that is what this team needs though, as monstercat pointed out, “He's probably the perfect hire for a rebuilding team like the Miami Dolphins, because he keeps things fairly simple...it's not so much about out scheming the other team, it's about executing the offense and imposing your will with the O-line.”
This is how Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris, and Jim Kiick paved the path to a perfect season. But it’s not 1972, and with time comes innovation, something that Henning has apparently been lacking in the past.
Oh, as for the Jets message boards, I got what I expected: 2 posts. One was bashing the Dolphins, simply aiding the fact that Jets fans cannot have an intelligent conversation. The other looked like a text message that had been sent by a 13-year-old girl. According to the user’s profile though, the guy was 45.
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