On Monday night, the eyes of the football world will focus on Ground Zero of dysfunctional pro football, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Miami Dolphins. Until two weeks ago, the Bucs (and their then-equally-winless state brethren in Jacksonville) seemed to have the title of Most Toxic Franchise sewn up—and it seemed like a matter of time before Greg Schiano was finally shoved aside.
Today, the Dolphins envy their in-state rivals' stability and professionalism.
They might envy their record after Monday night, too. Never have conditions been more favorable for a Bucs win. The Dolphins made a loud, albeit nauseating, show of togetherness last week as the hazing/bullying scandal spread—but they still take the Raymond James Stadium field without two offensive line starters, the eyes of the storm, guard Richie Incognito and tackle Jonathan Martin. The stench of the locker room might finally catch up to them outside of the room.
It didn't seem as if any locker room needed fumigation more than Tampa Bay's—literally. Three Bucs players have been infected with MRSA this season, their home site has been investigated twice, and their visiting facilities in the Georgia Dome was infamously taken over by a hazmat team after thier loss to the Falcons last month.
Figuratively speaking, coach-player relations were pretty rank, too, epitomized by the clumsy handling of what should have been a simple quarterback benching but which eventually led to the starter and former first-round pick, Josh Freeman, given away for nothing.
The 0-8 Bucs' circumstances are infectiously bad. But the Dolphins' entire headquarters need to be bug-bombed, striped tent and all. And the sooner the better.
Again, going back two weeks ago, before Martin bolted from the Dolphins and Incognito became a household name, the Bucs seemed the odds-on favorite to change coaches before season's end, as Schiano's overbearing ways and arrogant ineffectiveness soured his remaining players and kept the team going in the wrong direction. The experiment of bringing in a supposedly hard-nosed college coach to inject discipline into a too-casual locker room, had failed, and it was a matter of whether the owners, the Glazers, and general manager Mark Dominik would acknowledge the mistake before the end of the season or after.
The top-to-bottom toxicity of the Dolphins' situation makes the Bucs' problems seem petty and insignificant, though.
It likely will be months before everything is known about what happened to whom, when it happened, who knew it and when they knew it. Both players, the Dolphins and the NFL have lawyers crawling over every inch and into every crevice. But no one needs to wait that long to begin the organizational purge that is badly needed. The person who must start it now is owner Stephen Ross and, unfortunately, no one is sure of his share of responsibility for this, either.
Incognito and Martin are almost sure bets never to wear the Dolphins uniform again, but there still will be any number of players left behind who either looked past, ignored, enabled or joined in as one teammate clearly tormented another. They predictably circled the wagons last week, in favor of the player to whom they constantly deferred and gave power and authority.
Their defense was that what went on among them, and between Incognito and Martin, was all in the name of unity and team, proving that their grasp of the real meaning of the words is so poor that they individually don't need to be in any NFL locker room, much less all together in one.
But even if all the enablers are expelled, those who enabled them must go first. General manager Jeff Ireland assembled that roster—and, reportedly, instigated things further with his suggestion that Martin "punched" Incognito. Head coach Joe Philbin's role in this is still hazy, with his mix of declarations of accountability and claims of ignorance. The coaches and front office were complicit in adding Incognito and his tainted history, covering up for him in an assault complaint at a team golf outing, and handing him the reins of locker-room leadership.
The Dolphins are lucky they're even 4-4 in the face of the thickheaded behavior taking place behind the scenes.
Yet the buck stops at the man who will be in charge of washing it all clean and starting over: Ross, the owner. Little in his track record indicates that he's capable of doing it the right way, if only because he put the pieces of this mess together in the first place.
Still, before any official verdict is reached and blame portioned out, enough poison has seeped into his franchise that he can start making changes immediately.
After all, his team can't sink any lower as it stands now. It's fallen below a winless team with a despised coach in his own state already.