What to Make of the Chris Grier Report

Chris Grier has been Miami Dolphins GM since 2016

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross (left) talks with general manager Chris Grier before a game in November 2022. / JIM RASSOL / USA TODAY NETWORK

Chris Grier's job status has been a popular topic among Miami Dolphins fans and media members while the team has frantically tried to work its way into the playoffs.

Then came more fuel for the fire Saturday with a report from CBSSports' Jonathan Jones suggesting scuttlebutt around the NFL in the fall was that Grier could retire and move to a senior advisor role.

This followed a comment a few days earlier from Sports Illustrated national writer Albert Breer on the Rich Eisen Podcast that the Dolphins GM situation could be one of watch.

The key words from this vantage point about Jones' report are "could" and "retire."

Grier is an NFL lifer, the son of a longtime NFL executive, so it's actually difficult to envision him "retiring" considering he'll turn only 55 when his birthday arrives March 24. There's obviously something else known as "being retired by an organization," which would seem a more realistic possibility, Grier being reassigned to a different role with some nice verbiage to not scream "fired" so loudly.

THE CASE TO MOVE ON FROM CHRIS GRIER

From one angle, it's easy to see why the Dolphins would make a GM change in the offseason if they miss the playoffs because — and we don't have to remind fans of this — the team hasn't won a playoff game since 2000, which is the longest active drought in the NFL.

Grier has been the team's GM since 2016, though during his first three years in that role the team also employed Mike Tannenbaum as Senior VP of Football Operations. So maybe Grier's tenure actually began in 2019 after Tannenbaum left the organization, so it's easy to point to him and look at the rebuilding project that began after Brian Flores was hired, the so-called "Tank for Tua" season.

The Dolphins amassed a ton of draft capital for the 2020 and 2021 draft, Ross spent a lot of money to acquire high-priced veteans like Tyreek Hill, Bradley Chubb and Jalen Ramsey, but the results have fallen short of expectations because, yes, there have been winning seasons but that elusive playoff win hasn't materialized.

But how much of that is on Grier?

For that, we take you back to that January 2022 press conference when the firing of Brian Flores was announced and bring back the word of Stephen Ross: “Well, I’ve been looking at this over three years now and watching the organization grow. I think an organization can only function if it is collaborative and it works well together. I don’t think that we were really working well as an organization that it would take to really win consistently at the NFL level.”

The key word there is "collaborative."

GRIER A GOOD TEAM PLAYER

There's never been a clear delineation of a Dolphins chain of command, rather constant comments about decisions made as a group.

Then we look at this year and Tua Tagovailoa's comment that Mike McDaniel stepped in to make sure his contract extension got done. And then there was the Calais Campbell trade deadline adventure when McDaniel stepped in to squash the idea of moving him for a draft pick because he was important to the team's ability to mount a playoff push.

Are we to believe that McDaniel, who got a contract extension himself this summer with two years left on his contract, didn't have a major say or influence in other decisions, decisions that maybe didn't work out so well?

Like being content with bringing back Skylar Thompson and Mike White as the backups to a quarterback with a lengthy injury history? While not acquiring a proven commodity at guard?

So maybe it's not fair to blame Grier for the team falling short of expectations this season because, again, everything is collaborative.

So basically shouldn't it be the whole group, including McDaniel, who get removed if a change needs to be made? And given the extensions that McDaniel, Tua, Tyreek and Waddle got this summer, it's pretty easy to suggest the Dolphins are going to want to see things through until they have outs on some of those contracts where the cap hit isn't so severely damaged.

Another part of Jones' report brought up the point that Ross won't have much desire to conduct a GM search considering he's 84, but there could be easy answer there of simply promoting Assistant GM Marvin Allen and moving Grier to an advisory role that maybe wouldn't be portrayed as a retirement — Grier is only 54 after all.

Grier has been with the Dolphins in one role or another since 2000, almost a decade before Ross became the owner and he's built a lot of equity in large part, as Jones wrote, because he gets along and works well with others.

That hasn't changed in recent years, though having good working relationships in the Dolphins facility haven't equated to a playoff loss. There clearly was dysfunction in the Dolphins operation when Flores was head coach, but the failure to make the playoffs with him had more to do with lack of top-shelf personnel.

The Dolphins roster has a lot of big names now, and has had big names since McDaniel took over in 2022, but there's clearly something still missing.

Could the fix be as simple as bringing in a new GM? Not likely.

That doesn't mean there won't be a change. We're just not sure it's a done deal or even all that likely.