Do the Dolphins lack professionalism, as Vic Fangio suggests?

As the crummy little secret of the Miami Dolphins’ crummy little finish plays out, the lingering issue isn’t how some players thought departed defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was stubborn and uncompromising. Fangio is Joe Philbin or Adam Gase at this point. He’s gone from view.

Any thoughts on him don’t matter anymore as they get set to hire his replacement, just as some of Fangio’s thoughts on this team don’t matter. Fangio, for instance, wasn’t shy about stating this offense didn’t carry its weight at the end of the season, as the coaching staff heard. And heard. But, again, that doesn’t matter now. What might matter is Fangio’s public shot fired by proxy.

“There were some players on that defense that didn’t want to work,” said Fangio’s friend and NFL veteran, Ron Jaworski, this week on Philadelphia radio station WIP. “Didn’t want to put the time in, didn’t want to put the effort in, didn’t want to make the commitment to be successful.

“Guys like to party at night, and South Beach is really a great place to party. And Vic tried to get those guys and push those guys to become harder workers and better athletes and more committed to their team. And he couldn’t get through to those guys.

Those were the guys that Vic was pushing, and they’re the guys that are whining right now.” Is Fangio right? Is there a problem with either partying or professionalism on part of this team? That’s the question coach Mike McDaniel and general manager Chris Grier have to ask. They can’t just write it off as the rantings of a 65-year-old leaving town, considering he’s had a front-row to this team’s insides and is one of the league’s great defensive minds.

So, just ignoring Fangio’s words aren’t what smart organizations do. Answering them is. It could be real easy, too. McDaniel and Grier could find they don’t have any problem.

They could decide Fangio was the problem, just as this franchise once decided everything was the problem of another old-school coach who had trouble playing with others in the sandbox, Brian Flores. There was some truth there. Ask quarterback Tua Tagovailoa about that.

It wasn’t the full truth, though, when you look at the won-loss records. Fangio’s words, even coming from Jaworski, cut different, though. They were about the professionalism at the foundation of any team. They even got odd reinforcement in the wake of his departure from social-media posts by safety Jevon Holland and rookie cornerback Cam Smith that essentially said: Good riddance.

Is that the definition of unprofessional? Two players who haven’t won anything dismissing a veteran coach? A rookie who Fangio said all year wasn’t trusted to know the defense essentially pushing blame elsewhere? Tagovailoa showed the proper way to handle such doubts. Work hard. Believe in yourself. And play well enough to prove the previous guy wrong as best you can.

McDaniel solved Tagovailoa. Can he solve this? Because let’s not pretend Fangio’s way didn’t work, too. The defense ranked fourth in the league in Week 17. It gave up 14 points to Buffalo in the must-win season-finale. It kept them in the playoff game at Kansas City. He’s thought of so poorly it took him 30 seconds to be hired by Philadelphia.

For all the problems bubbling inside this defense, its play was fine most games, too. Yet there’s that complained box full from players in the secondary. Was it Fangio who was amiss? Or the secondary? The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Fangio, old saw that he is, was surely less-than-cuddly if players need that.

But it sounds like he wanted the kind of accountability that Tom Brady defined in a talk this week: “If your coaches test you and your teammates test you, you can beat your competition,” Brady said. “If they’re not testing you and you’re waiting until game day to figure things out, you’re at a disadvantage.

“I loved the fact that I was pushed every day to be my best, and I loved that I had the ability to push my teammates to be their best. When I did that, I knew there was accountability back on me that I was expected to go be my best.” Was Fangio holding players accountable? Or using the outdated methods of a one-room schoolmarm? That’s the question McDaniel and Grier have to answer.

If Fangio wasn’t right, nothing he said through Jaworski matters. If Fangio was right, though, hiring a new defensive coordinator is just a first step this offseason. McDaniel and Grier need to confront the problem. They can’t be, as the playwright Eugene O’Neill said, leaders who, “let themselves off easy by encouraging some poor guy to go on kidding himself with a lie.”