Don’t Slow Down, Slowik

Don’t Slow Down, Slowik

I remember it pretty clearly, even now. January 16th, 2000. The day Jimmy Johnson called time on his coaching career and resigned as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.

The two-time Super Bowl champion had become frustrated by everything: most notably, his feuds with the media; his failure to win a title in South Florida despite his pledge to do so; and his disagreements with Dan Marino — to the point where he’d even considered benching him, a union so precarious that you wondered if every throw the great quarterback made would be his last. Their respective careers ended with the most lopsided NFL game in twenty-three years and the most comprehensive postseason loss in fifty-nine.

Twenty-six years later, it remains the biggest playoff defeat in the Super Bowl era.

But there was an aura about Johnson, just as there was with Nick Saban. In fact, there has to be a book in why two of the greatest coaches in football history went 53–48 in Miami, with two playoff wins and no AFC East titles.

That’s for another day.

He, Johnson, was a winner, a man so obsessed with football that he once said the game was a thirteen-month-a-year job when you worked for him.

In September 1992, seven months after he won his first Super Bowl, the columnist Gary D. Cartwright, a sort of Lone Star cousin to Hunter S. Thompson, wrote a profile of the then Cowboys coach for the brilliant Texas Monthly magazine. In it, he wrote:

“Nobody really knows Jimmy Johnson. He has no close friends, no hobbies, no life apart from football. As a coach, he is the logical extreme of what football fans—especially those in Dallas—have come to require: an ascetic whose single-mindedness and devotion to winning give them hope and comfort. They don’t really care what he does with his private life. Johnson’s predecessor, Tom Landry, was devoted to winning, but not as devoted as he was to religion and family. In his early years as the Cowboys’ coach, Landry even maintained an insurance business in the off-season and was extremely active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Landry’s detractors called him “plastic man,” but at least they conceded that he had an image. Off the field, Johnson has no discernible personality. There’s nothing to like or dislike.”

That was the kind of guy I wanted coaching my team. Eat, sleep, breathe the Miami Dolphins. A relentless pursuer of success.

Of course, I would have hated to have been coached by him, but that didn’t matter. I was in my twenties, “popping zits on my funny face and jerking off with the lingerie section of the Sears catalogue”, to steal a line from Gary Busey’s Angelo Pappas. I just wanted to win.

When Johnson resigned, it felt like winning was suddenly a long way away.

He was 55, and he’d had enough. At the hastily arranged press conference, then-owner Wayne Huizenga told the media — whom Johnson so despised — exactly what had happened.

“He does not want to be under contract. He does not want a job. He does not want any day-to-day position,” Huizenga said. “He just wants to fish.”

Then, accompanied by his wife and Yorkie, Johnson departed for his boat, leaving Huizenga to deal with the wreckage.

Two names shot straight to the top of the shortlist to take over. The first was the ol’ Ball Coach himself, Steve Spurrier. The “National Champion at needling people”, as Bobby Bowden once called him. A swaggering, sharp-witted innovator who played the game with a smile, coached it with an edge and never seemed especially interested in doing things the conventional way. Part gunslinger, part showman, part football obsessive — much like Johnson — he was everything I wanted in a head coach.

But it was more than that.

In 1988, the director Michael Tollin released a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the USFL’s Tampa Bay Bandits, then coached by Spurrier. I’d watched, mesmerised, as the former Heisman winner brought Bandit Ball to the masses. He believed in attacking, throwing the ball and putting points on the board, and he brought an unmistakable confidence to everything he did. His teams didn’t just want to win; they wanted to make you look silly trying to stop them.

I was obsessed. I wanted Spurrier at the Dolphins like a fat kid wanted cake.

The other name on that shortlist was Dave Wannstedt. Anathema to my coaching dream.

He’d spent six seasons as head coach of the Bears and compiled a 41–57 record, finishing up with back-to-back 4–12 seasons and a 1–11 record against their biggest rival, the Packers. Under no circumstances, I thought, was this to be the guy. He was 0% fat Greek yoghurt for the obese. No thank you.

Less than 24 hours after the worst defeat in franchise history ended Johnson’s fourth season in Miami, Wannstedt signed a three-year contract as his successor.

I was not obsessed.

Finding out this news back in 2000 didn’t involve my phone or the internet. I heard it on Armed Forces Radio, which was where I got all my NFL news. And I’ll admit that I spent at least a week fixating on whether Wayne Huizenga would wake up from his tragic mistake and actually fire Wannstedt before we even took to the field that season.

Just consider that for a moment: I was a 25-year-old adult male working for the biggest, most powerful broadcasting organisation on the planet, wishing a coach would be fired before he’d even done any coaching, believing that some how, some way, I could will it into existence. I even considered penning a strongly worded letter to Mr Huizenga.

Fast-forward twenty-five years, and Miami hired Bobby Slowik as its new offensive co-ordinator, having spent the previous season as the senior passing game coordinator.

Once again, I was a little less than obsessed with the hire.

But my own personal history made me understand. It also made me less resentful when people messaged me on Twitter, asking the very same thing I’d asked myself way back in 2000: could he technically be fired before he’d coached a minute of an actual game?

Could he?

This, of course, is just some strange footballing allegory. Slowik was obviously never going to be fired, just as Wannstedt wasn’t. But you could sense the frustration in the fan base when Jeff Hafley made the hire, just as you could when Johnson walked off towards his boat with a 12-pack of Heineken. After all, this was a man who had been canned in Houston following a major offensive regression during the 2023 season, when the team finished 22nd in total yards and 19th in scoring, compounded by pass-protection issues and a tame playoff exit.

His season as senior passing game coordinator under Mike McDaniel was a bum steer. The team toggled through three quarterbacks, all of them bad, suffered key injuries to star receivers and never recovered, averaging just 185 passing yards per game (25th overall), finishing 30th in attempts and 24th in passer rating.

And 2026 didn’t start too brightly either, albeit in pretty rare circumstances: three of Miami’s top four receivers were rookies, their star back played two games, and their new QB had six career starts to his name. Early on I was concerned about some of the play-calling, some of the alignments and the spacing. But as the weeks progressed, there was light at the end of the tunnel. I dug into that great 2023 season he had in Houston and saw so much of the future in Miami. I also saw why he loved those condensed alignments, with rarely any receivers on or outside the numbers. It simply allowed C.J. Stroud the chance to attack the grass outside the hashes. Here I was thinking he wasn’t stretching it out pre-snap, when all he wanted to do was fill it post-snap.

That was clear with the game-winning Caleb Douglas play on Sunday. A classic 2023 Houston Texans score if ever I saw one.

Suddenly, I could see the vision, especially in the run game. Despite losing De’Von Achane, Slowik was generating different run profiles from multiple backfield alignments each week. Not necessarily as the basis of the entire running game, but as wrinkles sprinkled through specific drives to unbalance defenses.

Miami are currently 13th in the league in rushing yards and seventh in rushing yards per game. Ollie Gordon is on course for 960 yards this season and is currently averaging 4.7 yards per attempt. Malik Willis is the second-leading rusher among NFL quarterbacks, behind only Josh Allen.

And yet all this is happening despite the fact that teams know Miami want to run the ball and have no real outside threats at either receiver or tight end, especially with Caleb Douglas missing three games. Slowik is mixing in duo runs, counters, iso and power. As Nate Tice pointed out on social media, he’s allowing the offense to change the attack points and angles for the defense to deal with. Slowik even rolled out some Wing-T stuff against the Jets, yet another evolution of the run game, and to devastating effect.

In Houston, he designed so much off the success of that run game, notably fake tosses into tunnel screens in the red zone, that I’d expect to see a few of those moving forward.

After a couple of games in third gear, Slowik is revving up this Miami offense, especially as the unit and the young players become more comfortable. Hell, before it’s all said and done, I half expect to see the T, the veer and even the Wishbone. Malik, after all, is a bit of a dead ringer for Jamelle Holieway, so you just never know.

The wider point to all this is that, just like the offensive players, the coaches also needed time.

Much like Dave Wannstedt, we may not always like it, but it’s the least they deserve.