It's not been a good month for the Dolphins.
Passed over by Peyton Manning, Miami seemed like a natural landing spot for Matt Flynn, touted as something of a soul mate to new coach Joe Philbin.
Flynn explained his thinking on bypassing his old mentor for a chance to start in Seattle.
"I am close with Joe, I think a lot of him. I think he's gonna do a great job in Miami. I think he's gonna be a really successful head coach in the league," Flynn told KIRO-AM in Seattle, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. "So when it came down to it, I just felt like it was a better situation for me -- I felt it's a program that's really on the rise, doing the right thing -- is being led by the right type of people. And you look at it, I think it's the second youngest team in the NFL, and so there's a lot of talent everywhere and I think it's a team that, in the very near future, has a chance to be special."
Flynn was careful to airlift Philbin out of his argument for picking Seattle over Miami.
Seattle is an organization, led "by the right type of people," a message in stark contract to the current piling on of Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland, a figure unpopular enough to generate fan protests on a Tuesday afternoon in Miami.
"The players in the locker room don't even like talking to him face to face," one league insider told The Palm Beach Post. "A lot of people around the league feel like Jeff should've gotten fired when Tony (Sparano) did, and that weakens the respect level people have for him."
It doesn't matter what outsiders say about Ireland. It matters what his players and coaches believe, and he maintains that "players and coaches want to be here."
Whether or not Ireland has a magnetic personality is up for debate. His immediate responsibility is fielding a team, and if the Dolphins don't experience success in the AFC East in 2012, the questions -- along with the public uproar -- will proceed unhindered.
