I remember exactly where I was the last time the Miami Dolphins won a playoff game. The game was blacked out in Miami and we were too broke to buy tickets. It was December 30, in the year 2000, so you couldn’t watch the game on a pirated live feed on your phone. A friend and I went to Sandbar in Coconut Grove thinking sports bars wouldn’t be blacked out as well. Unfortunately, the rules applied and they could only play the audio. But when the game against Peyton Manning and the Colts went into overtime, they figured a way to turn on the video and we watched Lamar Smith run into the end zone. I don’t think there were drinks on the house, but there might as well have been as everyone cheered with joy.
As a Dolphins fan I’ve been chasing that high ever since. No team in the NFL has gone as long without winning a playoff game as our Dolphins. We’ve had 4 presidents, a plague, 9/11, and 16 models of iPhones since that last postseason triumph. Some suckers think this year will be the end of that drought. Those believers undoubtedly have the leases for a few bridges in their back pocket.
For the third season in a row, the Dolphins are coached by Mike McDaniel, who has been touted by the media as a genius in spite of underachieving the last couple years. McDaniel has the aura of a Silicon Valley conman. He and his publicists keep touting how innovative he is, but investors wait for years and still see no results. McDaniel says by being a compassionate, empathic leader he will guide his team to victory in a game where the players have to knock each other to the ground.
What inevitably happens is when the weather is warm this Dolphins team does well. But when the weather gets cold and it is more difficult to pass the ball, the team falls apart.
Entering his fifth year, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has shown himself to be a McDaniel kind of player. Against crummy opponents when the sun is shining, Tua is a world beater. When it gets cold and the opponent is tough, he shrinks. It was really disappointing and revealing to hear Tua in an offseason interview whine about how his former coach Brian Flores was too mean to him. If words can hurt him what about the sticks and stones of the pass rush of the Baltimore Ravens or Kansas City Chiefs?
Who knows? Maybe McDaniel and Tua can reinvent the wheel
and win with a kinder, softer approach than the toxic masculinity that Bill Belichick, Vince Lombardi and Don Shula preached, but I definitely wouldn’t bet on it as long as football remains a contact sport.
If the Dolphins do make it, it’ll have to be on the backs of their wide receivers. Tyreek Hill was recently voted by his fellow players as the best player in the NFL at any position. Jaylen Waddle isn’t a shabby #2 either. Last year’s running back corps of Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane were beasts as well.
But what scares me is who the Dolphins lost. Their center Connor Williams opened so many holes and is now gone. More alarming is on the defensive side of the ball. Defensive tackle Christian Wilkins and linebacker Andrew Van Ginkle were shown the door. Both made so many big plays over the last few years.
Disappointingly defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was exiled. His old school, no-nonsense football mentality where he’d say things like, “As they say in the maternity ward, don’t tell me about the pain, just show me the baby,” wasn’t appreciated in the McDaniel locker room where all sharp corners are taped over.
I’d love for McDaniel to make me eat my harsh words. I’d love to learn that positivity and powerpoints can overcome 100 years of football history that show the meanest and the toughest are the ones that win.
My prediction after looking over the schedule is a repeat of the last two seasons. The Dolphins will feast while the weather is nice against a soft schedule and start 6-1. Then around Thanksgiving with a series of tough opponents and cold weather road games, they’re going to fall back to earth and end the season at 10-7. They’ll depend on the kindness of other teams on whether or not they make the playoffs to lose a postseason game in a frigid Baltimore, Cincinnati, or Buffalo.
