A Dolphin No More
A Dolphin No More The Miami Dolphins continued to rid themselves of any connection to last year's 1-15 team by cutting kicker Jay Feely. Feely was 21 of 23 field goals last year, for a career-high percentage of 91.3. The only two kicks he missed were at 47 and 48 yards, the second taking place in the muck during the Wembley Stadium fiasco in London.

Still, Feely was special teams captain, and new coach Tony Sparano let the kicker know that a leader on a team with an abysmal record was automatically in trouble. Feely had been a vocal defender of the team and coach Cam Cameron, and new overlord Bill Parcells is known to prefer the old-school mantra that kickers should only be seen and not heard.

Feely will not have to look long for a new
job; his agent verified that six teams have already been in contact.

All four of the Dolphins' captains from last year have now been purged from the team. Trent Green, Zach Thomas, and Jason Taylor all left with vaying degrees of amicability, but they all left. Parcells and his underlings seem intent on ridding the team of any sense of the past, perhaps not a bad idea for a team so long from its last playoff game.

Dan Carpenter, a rookie from Montana, becomes the Dolphins' starting kicker. In the preseason opener Saturday night against Tampa Bay, Carpenter kicked field goals of 41 and 49 yards to score the only points for the Dolphins. Sparano asserted that Carpenter had outperformed Feely, and that all jobs were being awarded strictly based on performance in camp.