Miami Dolphins owner “felt like a home crowd”

On Sunday, Miami Dolphins fans held an event they called “D.C. Shutdown”. The cadre of fans in the northeast Virginia and neighboring states poured into FedEx Field to cheer on their visiting team. The event was rather large as well planned ahead of time. The Miami Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross, was impressed.

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Following Sunday’s come from behind win, the owner spoke with media and called the atmosphere, “almost like a home game”.

"“It was unbelievable,” Ross said, via Mark Maske of the Washington Post. “Wasn’t it amazing? I mean, you felt it was almost a home game. At least on our side of the ball, it was great seeing all the green there. We’ve got another away game next week. So we’ve got some challenges.”"

The Dolphins have grown accustomed to large groups of fans arriving in mass to their away games. Over the last five seasons our friends at DolfansNYC have held their “Metlife Takeover” event and have actually broken group sales numbers in New York. In those events not only are fans spread a bit around the stadium but a large contingent of fans take up entire sections of the stadium.

Ross was right about the crowd in Washington. During the telecast, Dolphins fans could clearly be heard. Especially after the Rishard Matthews and Jarvis Landry touchdowns. The Dolphins fans have always gotten a bad reputation for their inability or at the very least their desire not to fill up home games but the fans not living in the Miami area are doing their part to make the Dolphins feel at home when they are away.

Ryan Tannehill also noted the fans presence as well.

"“It’s awesome,” Tannehill said. “You know, I always enjoy playing on the road and when you have the kind of fan base that we did out there today, it makes it even more enjoyable. I feel like our fans always travel well wherever we go in the NFL. I feel like we have a good number of fans. But that had to be probably the best road showing that I’ve seen from our fans.“They made an impact on the game. They were getting the Dolphins chant going throughout the game and making noise when we were on defense. And when you can do that in an away stadium, it’s huge.”"

The Dolphins are also very aware of their fan clubs out of state. Last year the team held a fan event weekend allowing fans coming from out of state as part of these clubs to take tours of the field and other events over the weekend. They will do this again in 2015 surrounding the Houston Texans game. In addition the Dolphins annually host members of the internet community who run Dolphins sites a full weekend of Dolphins football each season.