The 2008 Silly Season – Did it end before it began?
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 Here’s the promised follow up to my last observation on this forced period of football abstinence, between the Miami Dolphins off season program and the start of training camp.
I believe this period to be the NFL’s cunning little plan to get us diehard football fans pleading for some action like starving nomads in a desert of sports boredom.
It’s also that time when the slightest hint of bad behavior by a player gets trumpeted and dissected and judged, and discussed till it finally dies because, well, there’s nothing else to do. It’s a period when Miami Dolphins players have in the past few years excelled in hitting the scandal headlines.
In Dolphinland, the silly season has been a seemingly constant breeding ground for bad behavior, bad decisions and just plain good old gossip fodder. We had Ricky, smoking and philosophizing (he used to be so much fun!), and we could always count on Randy McMichael to beat up his wife (not exactly the poster boy for anger management). And who could forget good old Cecil Collins and all the fun he gave us climbing in and out of bedroom windows?
I could go on with a long list of unfortunates who hauled their baggage through a once proud organization and dragged it to its proverbial knees, players and coaches both, but you get the message.
The Miami Dolphins organization became over a period of four or five years like an increasingly dysfunctional family, welcoming misfits and malcontents into their fold and watching with disbelief as the whole pack of cards crumbled in the final disaster which was 2007.
The Silly Season became a normal part of the Miami Dolphins year. The year began with the final acceptance in January that Miami had yet again failed to even sniff the play-offs. It continued with the rumors and final dispatch of the coach and/or the quarterback, and then drifted shakily into free agency and the Draft and the production of virtually no starters. Then followed the off-season practices when we Dolfans began the process of predicting 13 or 14 wins based on a bunch of fringe players running around in shorts. That took us to the Silly Season and the annual display of lack of control by growing numbers of players, as we waited for Training Camp to start, pre-season games to happen and finally for reality to set in when the real season and real agony actually started.
But as I settled down to write this little offering, it struck me that something different was happening this year. Sure, we started off as usual with the coaching change and the dumping of the quarterback(s). But since then, that old disastrous mold described above has been showing distinct signs of cracks. Something’s changing.
Take free agency and the Draft for instance. Doesn’t it seem to you that Miami has added some real solid players this year and has been going about the whole process with, dare I say it, a good, sensible, workable plan in mind? And the off season program. Many sage Dolfans were actually being conservative and predicting a losing season. Better than last year, but they were seemingly accepting of the fact that this would be a rebuild year for their beloved Dolphins.
But most shocking of all, since those early missteps by the likes of Will Allen, Reagan Mauia and Channing Crowder, this so called Silly Season has been totally devoid (to this point at least) of any scandals involving a Miami Dolphins player.
And, to top all that, Ricky Williams has become a model citizen and a role model at the training facility!
What on earth has happened, and what does this all mean?
Well, the fact is, my ever faithful and punch drunk fellow Dolfans, Bill Parcells has happened. Along with Tony Sparano and Jeff Ireland.
Bill Parcells, the man with a plan, the legend, the proven winner, has instilled partially by his reputation alone, partially by his word and actions, and partially through Tony Sparano, a standard below which no Dolphins player dares to stray if he wants to be part of this team.
In just a few short months the persona of this once gloried franchise has been dramatically redirected from weakness down the road to toughness, from negative to positive attitudes, and I feel confident in saying, from loser to eventual winner.
Training camp will begin in less than two weeks. We will be watching the emergence of the new Miami Dolphins. The Silly Season is coming to an end, but as I reflect on the past few months I realize that it actually ended in Miami the day that Bill Parcells agreed to take on this challenge.
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