Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross after the team's loss to the Jets on Sunday emerged from a back door at a Sun Life Stadium locker room, "looking lean and beaten down" after an 8-8 season, and "basically announced no one’s job is safe," according to Armando Salguero of the MIAMI HERALD. Ross "wasn’t ready to say anyone ... would be back" in '14. Ross: "I’m disappointed. What else can I tell you? For everybody, you know? I have a lot to think about. I’m going to look at everything. When you’re disappointed you don’t make decisions on the fly" (MIAMI HERALD, 12/30). In Ft. Lauderdale, Dave Hyde writes, "There is no team besides the Dolphins that could have a season like this, a season of bewildering underachievement on the field and staggering embarrassment off it, and not expect a change at the top." Ross "has two paths to take now." One would be to sit team GM Jeff Ireland and coach Joe Philbin "in a room, tell them he's giving them one final year to make the playoffs or else they're fired next season." A case can be made for "patience and organizational stability," because "really, starting all over is in some ways the last option." Hyde: "But what do you do when the last option is also the necessary option? When your season underachieved because the names at the top of the flow chart did?" (South Florida SUN-SENTINEL, 12/30). In West Palm Beach, Greg Stoda writes Ross "should fire somebody ... or risk being labeled as stay-the-course blind to the Dolphins' myriad problems" (PALM BEACH POST, 12/30).
