Perhaps no team has had a busier offseason than the Dolphins.
But the guy presiding over that traffic jam of moves wasn’t sure he was ever going to get the chance.
Dolphins executive vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum told Jenny Vrentas of TheMMQB.com that he was “worried” he’d never get another opportunity after getting fired by the Jets. He pointed to former Super Bowl-team-building General Managers such as Jerry Angelo (Bears) and Marty Hurney (Panthers) as evidence that G.M.s rarely get second acts.
“Getting fired hurts a lot,” Tannenbaum said. “You need to have a lot of conviction and belief and self-confidence [to run a team], and I had all those things. I felt like I was the best man on the planet to run the Jets. Woody Johnson felt differently, and I totally get it. I’d been the voice of that franchise a long time.
“But it was devastating. I had the range of emotions, from being really angry, like, why did this happen, to humility and self-doubt. I questioned everything. Could I have been a better listener? More prepared? Were there missing conversations with a head coach or owner?”
He apparently convinced Dolphins owner Stephen Ross he had learned, because Ross has allowed him carte blanche with the organization. While Dennis Hickey still has the G.M. title, it was Tannebaum who landed defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, and was the architect of quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s contract extension.
Compared to those two moves, shipping out disgruntled wideout Mike Wallace, extending center Mike Pouncey, and bringing in receiving targets Kenny Stills, Jordan Cameron and DeVante Parker pale in comparison.
Of course, extending his young quarterback didn’t go so well in New York, as it’s easy to draw the line from the Mark Sanchez contract to his own firing. But Tannenbaum said he wasn’t going to be gunshy.
“The easy decision would have been to say, well, I extended a quarterback early in his career, so let’s not do that here. But I think that would have been selfish of me, moreso than what’s the best decision for the Dolphins,” Tannenbaum said. “We felt like this was a very reasonable bet to take. When you are doing an extension, it’s not about comparing Ryan to Sanchez, it’s much more about aspirationally, what do we want our program to truly be about?”
At the moment, it’s clear it’s about the vision Tannenbaum is creating for his former divisional rival, based on the lessons he learned previously.
