An Early Gift?
By Brian Miller
There is a giant Christmas wreath hanging over the main entryway to the Miami Dolphins training center in Davie. Icicle lights dangle in the breeze behind it on the arched entry way and over the etched logo on the 4 doors that take you inside the foyer, smaller wreaths hang around the Dolphins logos. Ahhh, the holidays.
A time for giving, a time for receiving, a time to smile and shake hands, nod and well…you get the idea. While visions of sugar plums dance in the heads of our children with 22 days until the fat guy visits, it’s the adults who are wanting that early gift. We tell our kids they can’t open that early present from Aunt Lilly and Uncle Zach, but we secretly want to open ours now. We want that victory in Toronto on Sunday.
The Dolphins will do one of two things this weekend. They will either extend the fans holiday season by giving them a victory and a continued chance at the playoffs or they will cancel the holiday festivities all together for them, relegating them to the real holiday season that is at hand.
The Buffalo Bills have been a struggling team of late but the reality is they were playing very good football a little over a month ago. It’s because of that and the fact this game is a division game that lets you know, anything can happen. The Bills are against the wall. Figuratively of course. A loss and they have no shot at the post-season. A win and they hang by a proverbial thread.
The Bills are suffering from an identity crisis that showed with an at home loss to the 49’ers this past weekend. It was supposed to be a game that they should have won. Perhaps they got caught looking ahead to Miami. In any case, for them, it’s do or die.
For the Dolphins it’s still about pride and respect. A team filled with the misfits of ’07 that won one game. Sitting a full 6 games ahead of last year, this team is in control of their own future and their own post-season dreams. While they too dream of a game in January, the team itself has one thought on their mind. Buffalo.
Ricky Williams returns to the scene of his professional resurrection. Toronto. The natives love Ricky Williams and Ricky loves them. It was in that injury shortened one season that Ricky somehow fell in love with football again. Somehow decided that returning to the Dolphins was for the game and not the money owed. Ricky will return to a stadium that could see local fans embrace him more than the Bills themselves.
For the rest of the team, it’s their trip out of the country, for some the second in two seasons. They will travel only a short distance further north than Buffalo, they will play indoors instead of in the elements despite the continued pleas from the Bills fans who find this to be unacceptable. They hope when they return for the “Great White North” that they have an 8 where the 7 is.
It’s odd really in this holiday season. The Dolphins fans want a gift of a win and a continued drive for the post-season. The Dolphins players want a win and a continued drive for the post-season, and here the game they need right now, is being played a heckuva lot closer to the North Pole where the jolly fat man decides who has been naught and who has been nice.