Culpepper deserves better than this

By GREG COTE

gcote@MiamiHerald.com

The Dolphins' handling of Daunte Culpepper a year ago was bad enough -- ill-fated coach Nick Saban blindly wishing and allowing his mending quarterback into action before he was physically ready.

The Dolphins' handling of Culpepper under new coach Cam Cameron has been worse. Much. Bungled every which way.

We'd have thought it impossible for Saban to look good by comparison under any circumstance, but he does in this instance if only from the magnitude of wrong in the way Culpepper has been treated by the new administration.

It has been senseless from start to acrimonious end.

It has been grossly unfair to Culpepper.

It has levied a public relations mess upon the franchise.

It has worked on team chemistry like battery acid on flesh.

It has defied logic in terms of trying to make this team better.

We've questioned and doubted only one other major move of the Cameron regime: drafting receiver/returner Ted Ginn Jr. over quarterback Brady Quinn. In that case we'd at least admit it cannot be known for sure how wise or dumb that choice was until each man's NFL future has begun to define itself.

In this case we needn't wait to suggest the club's mishandling of Culpepper merits reproach on all fronts.

There was no surprise whatever in Tuesday's development in the saga -- the NFL Players Association filing a grievance against the Dolphins on behalf of Culpepper.

Leave it to the lawyers to figure out whether Culpepper's contract was violated when, on Friday, he reportedly was not permitted to practice with the team even after his and the club's doctors had cleared him physically to do so.

No law degree is required, though, to know the Dolphins would lose any grievance if the charge was a lack of simple fairness.

Culpepper has done enough in this league -- averaged 26 touchdown passes in his five healthy seasons -- to have merited at least a chance to win the starting job.

He has sweated enough in his arduous rehabilitation from his Oct. 30, 2005 injury to have damn well earned that chance.

Isn't competition at a position what makes teams better?

So why wouldn't you invite competition at your most important position?

Why would you hand the job to a man, in Trent Green, turning 37 and coming off a concussion-ruined season rather than make it an open battle between him and a man, in Culpepper, who is much younger, of a stronger arm, and so keenly motivated to prove all of his doubters wrong?

It's an affront to logic.

Maybe that's partly why FoxSports.com, in its new NFL rankings that put the Dolphins 27th of 32, calls Miami ``one of the more curious teams in the league.''

Even presuming Cameron knows more than the rest of us -- such as Green having a better grasp of the playbook, perhaps, or a conviction that Culpepper will never be as mobile as before -- why not see for sure across training camp and into the preseason?

Hey, you might be pleasantly surprised! Culpepper might be close to his near-MVP form of 2004. If not, at least there would have been the appearance of fairness. At least your players would be allowed to feel Culpepper was treated right -- that, in turn, they might be, too, if recovering from a serious injury.

Be assured that veterans on this team, locker room leaders, believe Culpepper deserves a chance. If only they would be brave enough to speak publicly as they have in private. If only the team's NFLPA representative, Jay Feely, had the gumption to say this situation smells -- that a player who toughs through some 20 months of rehabilitation, any player who does, deserves better than Culpepper has gotten.

The quarterback's frustration here is justified. You can understand his wanting his immediate release in lieu of a fair shot. You can even understand his trying to force that by threatening to make a trade all but impossible by refusing to renegotiate his contract.

After the way the Dolphins have treated Culpepper?

Any form of hardball coming back at the club -- the player's public noise, his threat to stop a trade, the grievance filed Tuesday, all of it -- is richly deserved.

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