From The Heart

Dolphins vs. Bucs: Tough call
Jimmy Johnson had a more lucrative offer to coach Tampa Bay but chose Miami instead. The Bucs are more appealing in many ways.
1995 record	9-7	7-9
Picks in top 50 of 1996 draft	1	4
Significant 1996 free agents	DE-Marco Coleman	WR-Horace Copeland
	LB-Bryan Cox	DL-Santana Dotson
	WR-Irving Fryar	LB-Hardy Nickerson
	RB-Terry Kirby	DL-Mark Wheeler
	G-Keith Sims
	CB-Troy Vincent
Projected 1996 NFL salary cap	$42,000,000	$42,000,000
Current 1996 cap obligations	$38,164,969	$26,796,214
Estimated 1996 draft cost	$2,000,000	$3,700,000
Total 1996 projected cost	$40,164,969	$30,496,214
Money left for free-agent signings	$1,835,031	$11,503,786
Bad contracts (with 1996 cap figure)	DT-Steve Emtman ($2,150,000)	QB Trent Dilfer ($1,762,500)
	TE-Eric Green ($2,108,333)
	S-Gene Atkins ($1,790,000)
	LB-Chris Singleton ($895,000)
	T-Ron Heller ($600,000)

Last Saturday, three days after the fact, Jimmy Johnson still had trouble believing how quickly things had unfolded in South Florida when he chose to coach one Florida team (Miami) over another (Tampa Bay). Here was Johnson now, in the sprawling Stadium Club of Texas Stadium, looking down upon the field he once ruled, preparing for his last Fox TV appearance. Slowly, the dizzying events of Wednesday were sinking in. In four hours the charisma of Dolphin owner H. Wayne Huizenga had charmed the charmer. Coach the team? Thought you'd never ask. Heck, I'll park cars at Joe Robbie Stadium if that's what you want. That's how eager Johnson was to end his exile from the sidelines and begin a honeymoon with his new favorite owner.

"Ask anybody in the league," Johnson said, the field below bustling in preparation for Sunday's NFC Championship Game between Dallas and Green Bay. "The smart decision would have been to go to Tampa Bay. But my decision wasn't logical. It was a decision of the heart, not the mind."

It may be stretching things to say the Dolphins of 1996 have as many problems as the Cowboys of 1989, the year Johnson began his NFL career. But not by much. Miami has huge salary-cap worries and could lose as many as six premier free agents. Some players have little respect for authority, a fact Johnson found out when two were late for his first team meeting. The Dolphins are soft on defense. Johnson loves to build through the draft, but Miami has only one of the first 50 picks in April.

Had he taken the vacant Tampa Bay job, he would have inherited a team with better young talent and with more than $11 million to spend in a free-agent market that has a good crop of players. The Buccaneers also have four of the first 41 selections in the draft. But in the end, four factors led Johnson to spurn an offer from Tampa Bay, and, according to The Dallas Morning News, a lucrative deal with the Cleveland Browns to replace Bill Belichick:

1) Dan Marino;
2) Miami, which is his adopted hometown;
3) Huizenga, who blew Johnson away with the promise of the keys to the Dolphin empire; and
4) His championship timetable. Johnson believes the Dolphins can be Scotch-taped together for the quickest Super Bowl run. (Debatable, but we'll get to that later.)

To understand how Johnson reached these conclusions and bucked football logic required a trip to the Florida Keys, to Johnson's channel-front home in Tavernier. It was the day before the meeting with Huizenga, and Johnson was under a self-imposed house arrest because the media had already put him in Don Shula's still-warm coaching chair. A newspaper and a television station were staking out the house, and Johnson was on the phone, debating whether to cancel a face-to-face interview with SI that had been arranged the previous day. "Yesterday," he said, "I left the gate open, got a knock at the door, and there was a TV crew, already shooting. I said, 'What is this, Hard Copy?' " Johnson ultimately agreed to meet with SI.

Later that day Johnson donned his reading glasses and sat on a big leather couch, looking over a salary-cap comparison between Miami and Tampa Bay. "Miami's in tough shape, huh?" he mused. The Bucs have a big advantage in draft choices and cap money, both of which are hard currency in today's NFL.

The phone rang. It was Nick Christin, Johnson's agent. "Spurrier's going to announce he's staying at Florida this afternoon," Christin told Johnson. Scratch Steve Spurrier off the Tampa Bay list. The Bucs had met with Johnson on Dec. 27 and offered him complete control of football operations and more than the $3 million a year the Philadelphia Eagles had anted up last winter. The Tampa Bay offer was still on the table.

Back to the salary-cap sheet. "All this would make it tough," he said, taking off the glasses. "Tampa's young and hungry, with a lot of picks and cap room. Miami's got some problems. But the one overriding thing is Marino. For my sanity, it would be best to go to a place where the quarterback is a Hall of Famer, not a guy [the Bucs' Trent Dilfer] I don't have faith in."

But the lack of '96 draft picks could cripple a big dealer like Johnson. Dallas made 33 trades involving draft choices from 1989 through 1991, the years when the team was crafted. Now, some of the players he might want to dangle for draft picks carry big salary-cap baggage. That's because Miami, so desperate in '95 to build a champion in the twilight of Shula's career, signed some players to hauntingly stupid contracts. If the Dolphins want to dump tight end Eric Green for draft choices or release him, for instance, they will have to charge the rest of his prorated signing bonus, $2,916,667, to the 1996 cap. "We won't front-load contracts unless I'm absolutely sure about players physically and mentally," Johnson said. "I think I'll avoid some of the contract mistakes they made."