Cam Cameron Looks to Finally Make the Dolphins a Contender
The Dolphins recently hired San Diego offensive coordinator, Cam Cameron to take over the Head Coaching vacancy left by Nick Saban when he abandoned ship for an easier job with quicker success at Alabama. Cameron, who led the San Diego Chargers to three-straight 400-point seasons, takes over as the seventh Head Coach in Miami Dolphins history. He had one other Head Coaching stint at Indiana where he posted a losing record of 18-37 from 1997-2001.
After having had a established college coach take over the reigns in 2005, Nick Saban could not do better than a 15-17 record with the Dolphins before leaving for the Crimson Tide. Perhaps the NFL success of Cameron bodes well for the Dolphins, especially on the offensive side, even though he was far less than successful at Indiana six years ago. Last season, Cameron’s running back, Ladainian Tomlinson rushed for a league best 1815 yards and a record setting 28 touchdowns in addition to 3 more receiving touchdowns.
Cameron takes over a Dolphins team with lots of talent, but not much to show for it. Chris Chambers, who had a breakout season in 2005, making the Pro Bowl, was hardly mentioned in 2006. Randy McMichael, who had always been touted as one of the league’s premier Tight Ends, seemed to drop more balls than he caught, and was sometimes absent in the offensive game plan. Luckily for him, McMichael is now going to play under a coach who helped create one of the best tight ends in football over the past few years in Antonio Gates.
Mike Mularky, the Dolphins reigning offensive coordinator from 2006 is going to be retained on Cameron’s behalf, however Cameron admitted he will be taking over the play-calling. Mularky led the Dolphins to the 20th overall total offense in the league after Scott Linehan helped the Dolphins achieve the 14th overall offense in 2005. Linehan left after the 2005 season to become the St. Louis Rams Head Coach.
Offense was one of the biggest questions in this off-season’s coaching search. It was important that owner Wayne H. Huizenga hire a coach with offensive background in order to try and correct the woes of an offense that has been mediocre to bad since Dan Marino retired after the 1999 season. Cameron brings an enthusiasm for the NFL and for offense which hasn’t been an attribute of a Dolphins Head Coach since Don Shula retired following the 1995 season.
The Dolphins have the 9th pick in April’s NFL Draft and have a number of positions that need to be improved. Always a top priority for this team is its offensive line. The last two seasons under offensive line coach Hudson Houck, the Dolphins O-line has started off extremely slow, and then finally melded about mid-season to be one of the league’s best. The project this year, is to achieve that mid-season form by September. Houck and Cameron are familiar with each other, having worked together in San Diego, before Nick Saban lured Houck to the Dolphins in 2005. The biggest concern, however, might be at quarterback, with Daunte Culpepper’s heath status still up in the air after having to sit out most of the 2006 season with the same knee injury that ended his year in ’05. Joey Harrington was inconsistent at best replacing Culpepper, and ended up being benched in the last game of the season against Indianapolis while backup Cleo Lemon got the start. With quarterbacks Brady Quinn and DeMarcus Russell available in the top ten, this could be an interesting draft to see what the Dolphins do. Quinn, who is rated on most draft boards as higher than Russell, had a terrible Sugar Bowl game in which Russell thrived.
Cam Cameron takes over a team with a lot of potential, but even more question marks. He has a job ahead of him in his first NFL coaching stint. Having said that, he was clearly the best man for the job and Wayne Huizenga and the Dolphins organization did a superb job in trying to find the best man to fill the position.
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