Miami Dolphins: If Bill Cowher Is Serious, Miami Must Seal the Deal Now

With the Miami Dolphins losing to the Buffalo Bills, 17-14, on Sunday, and being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, the Bifecta regime of Tony Sparano and Jeff Ireland should be over.

The Dolphins won't likely beat both Detroit and New England, and probably shouldn't beat either one. Even if they do win out, there is no tangible improvement made on this team when you go from 7-9 to 9-7 and still don't make the playoffs.

More importantly, the personnel and coaching decisions of this regime are becoming more suspect by the moment. Dolphins fans are sick of discussing these decisions, which is why I will only spend a few sentences on these problems later.

Today, courtesy of Profootballtalk.com and according to a report by Chris Mortensen, former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher apparently has three destinations from which he would like to coach. Cowher apparently would apparently like to end his four-year layoff either in Houston, New York for the Giants, or in South Florida.

The Giants would appear to be on their way to the playoffs (or maybe not, after that ridiculous choke job). Texans owner Bob McNair doesn't seem to be interested in replacing current head man Gary Kubiak (why, I don't know, but don't tell McNair that the Texans have a high-school defense).

The Dolphins could actually be the favorite to land ol' lock jaw, and according to PFT, Cowher would look to his old Steelers connections Kevin Colbert or Omar Khan for a personnel guy (I can buy into how the Steelers evaluate talent).

So here is why Miami needs to strike quickly. Cowher is too good of a coach to stay unemployed for long if he really wants to come back. He is also a Super Bowl champion coach, which means it's going to take a fair bit of wooing and a lot more cash to bring him in.

Translation: Making the switch can't come in the playoffs, when other teams will have fired their coaches and Cowher can simply pick the most generous offer and best situation.

I don't know about you, but I am not sure the Dolphins will meet either criteria. The savvy move would be to terminate Ireland and Sparano before the final game of this season.

This might be a bit insensitive, but football is a business, and at minimum, Miami should be free to pursue the coach that might end a streak wherein Miami has only made the playoffs once in the last nine seasons.

Finally, any doubt that Miami needs to make a change should have been answered by the playcalls on Miami's two last-ditch drives. With the ball on the Buffalo 31, Miami inexplicably called a Wildcat play on second-and-10 after Chad Henne had moved the Dolphins down the field with several completions.

On third down, the playcall was a short checkdown pass that, even if a covered Davone Bess had hauled it in, wouldn't have converted the first down.

Dan Carpenter missed the resulting 48-yard field goal attempt. Then, with just 41 seconds left in the game and still needing just a field goal to tie, the Dolphins took the ball at their own 20 and ran a series of plays that couldn't have possibly gotten them into range for another game-tying attempt.

Yes, Ricky Williams needs to get off bounds on the game's penultimate play. Yes, Chad Henne needs to throw the ball accurately down the field. But the problem is bigger than that.

Miami is now 1-6 at SunLife Stadium this season. Miami plays the Lions at home in a week, and if you thought the stands were empty today, wait 'til next Sunday.

Simply put, the coaching needs to get better, and the guy picking the players needs to be better before the players perform better.

All aboard the Bill Cowher bandwagon.