Last updated on

15 Questions: Tom Edwards

With the Arizona Buccaneers taking a tumble in the overall franchise standings in recent years, this GM has moved his club into the upper echelon of success. The Miami Dolphins are now the 4th best team in all-time franchise wins, behind Buffalo, Denver, and Washington. Tom Edwards has been at the helm of the mighty Dolphins since the beginning, including four Super Bowl trips and three USAFL Championship trophies.

"Tom is the epitome of a USA Sports member," says USA Sports founder Andrew Lewis. "He is always ready and willing to lend support and personal time to help make the league better. He has served in numerous capacities throughout our history."

Heck, for those of us who were around in the early days of the USAFL when we tried to run our drafts through the ICQ group chat utility. UGH - what a horrible mess that application was. Without Edwards joining the league, who knows what kind of shape the league would be in today.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MIAMI DOLPHINS GM Tom Edwards

1. Wow, you are coming off a tough 45-9 first round thumping at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens. How surprised were you at how well the Ravens handled their first place schedule this season? And what happened in that first round game?

Odd to have my interview start off by talking about another team. I think the Ravens are a good team, and a team that a lot of us probably looked past the last few seasons. It seems to happen a lot recently, but that's just part of the rebuilding process. When you draft players, generally no matter how good they are, they still need a few camps before they become starters. So, no matter how bad a team might do in the league, they're taking their draft picks and putting them through the camps they need. As long as they follow that through, they end up having these great players that everyone has forgotten about. Add that onto a weaker division, and you have the makings of a team that was "nothing" the season previous to a world beater. It happened with Baltimore, just the same as it happened with Cleveland and Minnesota a few seasons back. If you didn't have a Ricotta in the NFC West, you'd probably see that with Houston. Am I surprised that Baltimore did what they did this season, including what they did to the Dolphins? No. The Ravens have a strong team, a very solid base to work around, and they haven't been hit by free agency. As for the playoff game with us, the Dolphins team I had wasn't a playoff team. This wasn't the team that was supposed to contend for a championship this year. The fact that they made the playoffs was a pleasant surprise. I expected less from them.

2. It's amazing how competitive the USAFL has become of the past several seasons. We typically see only 4-5 teams in the entire league that suffer a losing season. How have your routines and methods changed during this time to keep your Dolphins in playoff contention?

I really haven't changed that much, in regards to scouting. I think, to be honest, it's a little bit easier now with the competitiveness of the league. Not necessarily to win, but to do what you feel that you need to do with your team. You've got more people to trade with, and if you have a need, you can generally get it from another team, which wasn't as possible in the past few seasons. So, outside of having more people to trade with, I really haven't changed my approach too much. Maybe I should; I could use a string of good seasons.

3. You should be fairly happy at your prospects for 2033, with only two starters retiring. But it looks like you will probably get a lot of attention in the free agency market. With the opening of the market only a couple of days away, can you give the USAFL fans a hint at what the Dolphins will do this off-season?

I haven't looked into who is available on the free agent market from other teams, but I know who is eligible from my side, and I don't see us having any problem. The free agency system has been totally turned upside down. In the past, I probably would have worried about losing players. Now, I have no doubt in my mind that I'll be fine with free agency. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

4. Our guess here is that the Dolphins need to improve the offense. Your offense's Time of Possession this past season was 26:13, fourth worst in the history of the game. Not to mention you gave up four safeties. Is this a reflection of the K-Gun offense? Or the ability of the players running it?

Your guess would be wrong. The offense that needs to be "improved" was the fourth highest scoring offense in the league. Sure, it would be great to be first, but we weren't in a position to do that. Sure, I think our offensive line could have played better, and we had way too many interceptions from our quarterback position, but considering it was our first season running the K-Gun, I thought we did pretty good. You have to remember that the K-Gun is a very quick moving offense. The goal of the K-Gun is to move quickly downfield, leaving your opponent little time to make substitution and adjust to your attack. If we held onto the ball for a long time, we wouldn't be using the playbook effectively.

5. You have another important job at USA Sports outside of the USAFL. You currently run the USARL, the other half of USA Sports. What has been going on in the USARL lately, and how have things changed since the USARL first started?

Not too many seem to remember that the USARL is the reason the USAFL currently exists. When Andrew said he was bringing back the USAFL, it was on the condition that everyone in the USAFL be part of the USARL, which was his sim racing league idea. Since then, the sim has been shut down and brought back, and it ended up in my hands. We had enough interest at one time to have two separate leagues, the GCS and DGN, and had a third projected. But we couldn't get enough interest.

I think one of the problems USARL runs into is that there is nothing like it on the Internet. It's pretty hard to explain to people who aren't in a league such as the USAFL. I've trolled the NASCAR-type boards, looking for people who might be interested in joining, but they don't seem to understand the concept that there are no NASCAR drivers in the sim, and that they aren't doing the actual driving themselves. There are a lot of leagues currently out there that use the Papyrus NASCAR series sims, but they are actual driving sims, where you control one of the cars and drive against other drivers. People can't seem to get past that. I think that if there were more leagues like ours, we wouldn't have a problem getting people to join. But for now, we're relying on word of mouth.

6. There were some rumors that you were looking to bring a baseball simulation to USA Sports. Has anything come of that? Can we count on seeing maybe a USABL in the future?

A little over a year ago, I bought a baseball sim called "Out Of The Park 4". It was, quite frankly, the best baseball sim I had ever played. It was detailed, it was realistic, and I found myself playing it all the time. It was also more friendly towards running an online league, by generating a lot of HTML that could be used for leagues.

I ran a couple of baseball leagues in the past, one using the Sierra BBPro sim, and the other using 3DO's High Heat Baseball. Both had their flaws. BBPro wasn't overly realistic, and it just didn't produce the results I would have liked. High Heat, while being more realistic for my own tastes, wasn't online friendly at all, and the league that I ran with it took a LOT of work. It was a fun league, but it burned me out quickly, and ended up dying as well.

I had talked with a few USAFL GMs about their possible interest in a baseball league using the OOTP5 sim. Their interest was overwhelming, and it made me look into it more. I'm not going to rush into it, and I've started to do the research into other leagues to see what they do right and wrong. A baseball league generally runs a lot longer to sim than a football league, with 162 games to be simmed, which consists of a "real time" sim period of a little over six months, not including playoffs. In addition, injuries and other factors can make lineup changes necessary throughout the season. Finding a way to "keep it simple" while still managing to keep the realism and depth that the sim has is keeping me from definitely saying that there will be a baseball sim in the future. Most OOTP5 people will say that to properly run a league, you need to have all of the GMs own a copy of the sim, but with that not likely, I'm looking into other options.

7. You joined the USAFL near the end of the league's first run, coming back for its second, and now its current one. How did you find out about the USAFL? What made you interested in the league?

I was in one of the IRC chat rooms that I frequent when Dave Aiello started talking to me about a football league that he was in. He mentioned that it was the USAFL, and that he was running the Green Bay Packers. He kept asking my opinion about moves he was making, and he got me really interested in the league (although with a few others, including current GM Joe Malloy). Eventually, we signed up to be on the waiting list for the USAFL, and became AGMs. In fact, we were the first AGMs the league had ever had. I ended up being the AGM for the Oakland Raiders, learning under Garritt. By the time I got to have my own team, I got the Detroit Lions. I had them for one season before the league shut down the first time. I've been here ever since.

I think the thing that attracted me to the USAFL was the amount of effort all the GMs put into their teams. The draft reviews and previews, the season previews, it was all really interesting, and this was the first type of "sim league" that I had ever seen. I was hooked.

8. In 32 seasons, you've managed to have a record .500 or above 27 times. What contributes to your consistency? How do you prefer to obtain players?

Well, obviously, #1 is the draft. If you think you can get a good team without drafting well, you're going to be in for a rude awakening. I used to build through the draft and fill holes through free agency, but since it's almost impossible to acquire players through free agency now, the draft is even more important. The supplemental draft is especially important, because you can pick up a lot of good players through there. Immediate starters aren't as likely, but the players who look weaker on draft day just have more room to grow. There's nothing like picking a player who you just wanted to fill your roster with, and watching him pull two +25 camps in two straight seasons. It's those players that make you win championships.

9. In our league, there are several different levels of competiveness. Describe your competitive spirit when it comes to the USAFL. What keeps you involved?

I've always liked the managerial aspect of it. I've never wanted to be the coach of a football team, but I always felt I'd be a good GM. With the USAFL, I've learned everyone in the league, and what kind of people they are. I know how much they want to win as well, and depending on who I'm playing, it makes me want to beat them more. I think if the people in the league didn't have the personalities that they do, it wouldn't be the same, and I might have already left by now.

10. What one feature of the USAFL would you say is by far, the best component to the league?

Not to stroke his ego too much, but I think the best thing that happened to the league was the arrival of Todd's playbooks. In the old days of the USAFL, you'd have these really ugly looking scores and statistics that were off the board. It really looked like a different sport, and you had to approach it that way. When people started making playbooks, they made things a little more realistic, but you had 28-30 different playbooks to choose from for both offense and defense, which leaves you with 900 possible combinations. When you saw a team win, you wondered if it was the team or the playbook. People guarded their playbook decisions with their lives, just in case they found the secret playbook that made them unbeatable. When Todd came out with the current playbooks, you eliminated the secrecy of the playbooks, and you put things on a more level ground. No longer was it the playbook that made the team. The team was the thing to beat, and the playbook just made the team run more smoothly. Plus, the playbooks made the stats look like an actual football season. Sure, the sacks are still a little high, but that's incredibly minor compared to how they were.

11. If you could have any ACTIVE player on your team right now, who would it be?

I'd have to say Keith Gunn, just so I can put him on my inactive roster, retire him, and have people stop saying "Keith Gunn" every time this question comes out.

Actually, if you want a real answer, I'll say QB Ed Williams from Baltimore. When Martin FPed him four seasons ago, I didn't know who he was. In fact, I remember being able to get Theodore O'Connell from the (then) Jets because Martin had picked up Williams from Cleveland that offseason. I thought he overpaid for him when he dropped a first round pick that season for him, but now I'd kill to make that deal.

12. Let's say you do make the Super Bowl this season, which team would you like to face?

Tough to say. I guess it'd be a toss up between Arizona, the Giants, and Houston. Arizona, because it'd be great to beat Fred in the Super Bowl AGAIN; the Giants, because then Joe would show some confidence in his team; and Houston, because I know how hard Pat's worked to get that team to respectability, and I just need to beat him, because I was never compensated for losing him as my AGM.

13. How many of your family/friends know that you are a hard-core USAFLer? Do you talk about it with them? Or are you a closet USAFLer?

Well, my wife Tara (of USARL fame) knows about the USAFL, and understands that every third Monday is a "draft thing". I guess you could say that I'm a closet USAFLer, because I don't have the patience to explain it to people. It' snot that I'm ashamed, it's just difficult to explain to people that you're the GM of a football team online, but it's not a fantasy football thing, and has nothing to do with the NFL.

14. Describe your environmental setting on a draft night. Do you draft from work/home? Do you order out for pizza/wings/etc? How much paperwork are you looking through to make your selection, or is all your scouting work done on the computer?

Well, Tara's an excellent cook (and she didn't make me put that), so if she knows there's a draft, she'll make dinner a little early, and we're usually done by 7. I'll have done all of my Excel spreadsheets before then (usually a few days prior), and I work from them. When I was working, I would sometimes print out stuff to look at, but when I'm in my home office (read: closet), I keep it all on the computer.

15. Which of the following would you rather have in your trophy case? One Lorne Sundby Cup, three James Maurer GM of the Year Awards, six AFC Championship trophies, four Bing Bennett Most Valuable Player Awards, five Tim Arkwright Rookie of the Year Awards, or ten AFC East Division Championship trophies?

I don't think anyone's said this yet, and it might come to a surprise to a few who'd think I'd want some GM awards after going 29 seasons before winning one, but I'll take six AFC Championship trophies. The Dolphins have made the playoffs 17 times, but we've only gotten to the Super Bowl four times, including losing ten times in the first round. We seem to have this reputation of being "good, but not good enough", and I think if we got the AFC Championships, we'd be in pretty good shape. Plus, we'd be playing the NFC in the Super Bowl. How hard would that be?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NEXT WEEK: Kansas City Chiefs GM Steve Harrison