Stephen Ross – March 26, 2019
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Chairman of the Board/Managing General Partner Stephen Ross
(I guess I’ll start off with this, what are you looking for from this team this season because you know the tanking word has been thrown around a lot. What are your expectations for this season?) – “I’m looking to build for the future and have a great team and develop players and create a real winning mentality.”
(Does that include winning as many games as possible? Would you be unhappy if the team only won two games and set yourself up for a higher draft pick?) – “I don’t have a … How many? You want to see the team develop. It’s going to be a young team. I want to see it grow and at the end of the season, I’m sure it will be a better team than when it started because there are going to be a lot of young ballplayers that will have meaningful positions. Then we’ll know, the following year, what we have to bring in … Hopefully we make the right decisions upfront.”
(How long of a building process do you envision?) – “As I’ve said before, how would I love it? I would love for it to be two years. But you have to be realistic. Hopefully we make the right decisions. We have a good young nucleus to start with. It’s not like we’re starting all over again. We have great players. You walk around and guys say ‘Hey, I want (Laremy) Tunsil. I want this guy.’ Yeah, so do we. (laughter) We’re going to keep them, Xavien (Howard) and all of that kind of stuff. We have some real good ballplayers. And we are a young team but there are positions we need to get better at. You’re not going to go buy those positions. You’ve got to draft and build them and grow them.”
(I think we’re coming up on a decade you’ve been the owner. How would you assess how you’ve done as an owner in the last 10 years?) – “From my perspective? Look, I think we’ve built the best football organization in the NFL. If you look and see what we’ve done, at what (Vice Chairman, President and CEO) Tom (Garfinkel) has done and the organization he’s built from a business perspective, if you look and see what we’ve done with the stadium and where we’re going and thinking outside the box, I don’t think there’s a team in the league that could come close to us. Have we performed on the field the way I feel comfortable? I’m used to being best in class. To me, that’s the only way to be acceptable. I’ve done it by building. I didn’t buy it. You grow people and you groom people and they stay with you because you do things the right way. I got sick and tired of seeing … Every coach comes in because they know they’re on a short cycle, at least they think so, and they say ‘Hey, we’ve got to spend the money on some big free agents’ or some guys that aren’t so big free agents, guys they knew. So where do we go? We were anywhere from 6-10 to 10-6. You’re never going to build long-term. Sure, if you have a great quarterback, that helps.”
(How would you describe the QB Ryan Tannehill era? It was seven years.) – “I love Ryan. But you’re right, how many years? It was time to move on.”
(What traits do you hope the organization finds in the next franchise quarterback?) – “You want a guy that’s a winner, that’s going to put that effort in, (will provide) a spark, intelligent, sturdy ballplayer that can withstand a lot of hits because that’s what this game is about. A real leader. That’s what you want. At the end of the day, that’s what you need in a quarterback is a real leader.”
(On a league-wide topic, I’m doing something on the qualities that are sought in head coaches nowadays and we just saw a bunch of offensive-minded coaches get head-coaching jobs. You obviously went defense this time. Do you think a defensive head-coaching candidate is at a disadvantage nowadays with everybody looking for the next Sean McVay?) – “I think the most important thing is finding a leader that can motivate men. There are two sides of the ball. That’s what we were looking for. It happened to be that before, it was all offense. But I think when you start following what everybody is doing, that’s not where you want to be. You’ve got to do what’s really best for you and have your own plans and believe in that, and not be a copycat. That’s how I’ve built my own positions. I don’t want to be where everybody else is. I want to know what they’re doing, but I want to be thinking outside the box. We were looking for a leader.”
(What would you say to the Miami fans? You know the fan base. From my seat anyway, and I’m curious what you think, it seems like there are times where they may not be described as patient. What would you say to the fans in regards to patience in 2019?) – “From what I’ve heard, I think they’re smart fans. They love football. I think that it was met, at least the response that I heard – I’m going to build it and build it the right way, like I’ve built all of my organizations – I think the fans really embrace that. You’ve seen by not doing it that way, it doesn’t work. Fans are sophisticated. They’ve got it. If you sell them one guy, you sign this guy or you draft that guy, that’s not a solution.”
(Could you explain where the genesis of this all came from? Because admittedly, this is a 180-degree shift from what it’s been earlier.) – “A lot of it is you hire your coach and you listen to him, and I could see what was going on. When you first enter the league, this is so different than any other business. I bought a team because I wanted the challenge of building a winner. I know I’ve built winners. I started from scratch and found the best people and created an environment of people who all would work together and bring the best out of them and not be like any other organization. But football is so different – you can’t believe it – then running any other business. At first, you want to sit back and watch, initially, and learn. After a while, I just said – after last season – ‘this isn’t working.’ I think you have to have … The more we talked about it after the season, I just came to the conclusion that we have to change. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity, right? (laughter) And it’s more me finding the right people and having them working together as a team. I really feel good about it. I think (Head Coach) Brian (Flores) is a really quality guy. (General Manager) Chris (Grier) … Our team is really working together like I’ve never seen it before.”
(So are you ready for a little pain?) – “If I have to get it, yes. I want to win all the time, but sometimes you have to take a little pain, recognizing the fact that we’re a young team, we’re drafting, we’re not signing all of these guys. It’s all going to be the talent. That’s what it is at the end of the day – finding guys who are motivated, who want to play ball. It’s not all about money. It’s about winning. That’s what you’re looking for.”
(When you came to this realization about this is how it has to be built, you were going to hire a GM and a head coach who were going to build it your way, through the draft, as opposed to them telling you it should be built this way. You were going to tell them this is how it needs to be built.) – “Yeah. I think you have to be on the same page. A lot of coaches didn’t want to be there and going through that. First of all, like you say, you’re skeptical if I believe in that when you lose a few games. A coach is more worried about his job. I’m still going to be there. (laughter) The coach is putting pressure on you – ‘I need this and I need it now.’ So when you decide you’re going to do it, the coach, they have to believe in you that you believe in it, because all of a sudden if you don’t believe in it and don’t give them time to do their thing, they’re out of a job. If you’re a young guy and you’re a coach, how many coaches get second times? Very few, so you have to make it. You can understand their mentality to start with. We had to really be on the same page. If you’ll notice with Brian, most coaches sign for four years. He got a five-year contract.”
(Did you have to tell Head Coach Brian Flores ‘Brian, it’s okay. I’m going to be with you?’) – “No. I said ‘Brian, this is what we’re doing. Are you okay (with it)?’”
(Were those difficult conversations to have with coaching candidates that it’s going to be done like this?) – “No, it’s not difficult because first of all, they want a job. You have to be with guys who believe in things. And there were good ones. That’s why we didn’t talk to a lot of the guys that you would otherwise suspect. That was one of the reasons. Adam (Gase), I know he wouldn’t, at that point, change where he was going. And I like Adam. It wasn’t a question of that.”
(You obviously helped pick the coach, helped pick the GM. Are you going to have any input at all on the quarterback, because that is the other one?) – “One thing – I don’t pick players and I don’t call plays.”
(Do you have opinions on quarterbacks or do you share them?) – “I ask questions in making sure they do their homework, and they do. They know what they’re looking for or you shouldn’t have them working for you. I believe very much in Chris (Grier) and I believe in Brian (Flores). I saw the staff he put together. You could see the quality of the staff, together, that he was able to bring, even though he had probably less time than anybody else. The people that he brought believed in him, which tells you an awful lot about him to get the kind of staff that he brought in. You could see it wasn’t this guy who just brought all of his friends with him. This guy is I think really unique and really a quality guy. His story is unbelievable of how he got to where he is. What’s interesting is here’s a guy that I believe – right now being a head coach in the league, he’s probably the only coach that has only ever coached for one team and didn’t bounce around anywhere else. Tell me another coach who has that kind of background.”
(Has Patriots Owner Robert Kraft or Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick or anybody else sort of said anything to you about Head Coach Brian Flores since you’ve seen them here?) – “Yeah. I sat next to Kraft at a dinner and he was telling me ‘You really got a good guy.’ There was no reason to (tell me that unprompted). But everywhere I’ve gone, people really respect him and what he’s done. You’ve met him. You can see what kind of character he is.”
(Is it a fair read that you’re in this process that you’re going through for the long term?) – “I’m looking at it now to do it the way I’ve built every business and build it from the ground up. I’m prepared to stay with it. You can call me on it any time you want – ‘You know what, you’re abandoning your idea.’ I am committed.”
(The growing pains of having a young team and having a young coach, a first-time coach … How do you think you would cope with the growing pains of dealing with wins and losses?) – “As long as we’re getting better and we’re going out there and guys are giving it. The players, you have to worry about. These guys who play football, they play to win. That’s why you don’t talk about tanking. These guys are giving their all on the field. You don’t take those kind of hits and practice and put all that in there knowing the team is tanking. They believe that. We have to see who is getting better and they see themselves getting better, and they see something developing here and we’re building it. That’s what you really want to see this year. The wins will take care of itself. That’s what the whole thing is – growing and them feeling it, that we’re building something here in Miami and this is where we want to be in Miami because they’re doing it the right way. That’s what you have to feel. If a guy’s not there and he’s just playing for the money or his contract, get rid of this guy. That’s not what we’re looking for. That’s easier said than done. How many guys as free agents really do well? If they did well, the other team would’ve signed them if they really felt they were that way.”
(As far as this process, what do you call it? Is it rebuilding, is it a bridge to better things?) – “It’s building a franchise to sustain itself over a period of time. That’s what you want. You don’t want to be ‘We made the playoffs this year, now I have to wait four more years.’ We’ve been doing that. But look at the growth. Look at the kind of guys we’re drafting and see how they’re growing and the commitment of this staff and the organization behind them.”
(And do you feel that this is the best place that the organization has been in that you’re knowledge of being in the league?) – “It feels like this is more me.”
