Predicting the Miami Dolphins used to be easy

The NFL released the schedules last Thursday, and everyone started breaking down the projected results. So as springtime has now arrived, and as hope springs eternal yet again, let’s look into the 2016 season ahead and get ready for a fantastic year of Miami Dolphins football!

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Schedule release day always reminds me of when I first fell in love with football, because I used to break open the New York Daily News and New York Post (What, I didn’t tell you I’m a Dolphins fan from New York?), and with tabloid ink accumulating on my fingertips, I’d scan the schedule chart, and start writing in my check marks for wins, X’s for losses, and question marks for the “who knows” games.

In the days of the Killer B’s and Dan Marino, it was always an easy eleven-five, twelve-four season, especially when we got to play the pre-Manning Colts and Steve Grogan Patriots four times a year. Throw in a split with those Wesley Walker Jets, and two tough games with the Red-Gun Bills, and our projected division record would be a consistent 5 check marks, 1 X, and 2 question marks. Half the schedule was predictable. Add in check marks for all the contests against teams that couldn’t ball control and run the clock (Marino’s kryptonite), X’s for games against Dan Fouts’s Chargers and those Lester Hayes / Mike Haynes Raiders, and you could easily figure out how Miami would do each season.

As a Knicks fan during the Patrick Ewing era, and then during the later Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston and “Grandmama” Larry Johnson days, I saw firsthand what great, transcendent players do and don’t do. They don’t guarantee championships. The ringless fingers of Marino, Ewing and Don Mattingly taught me that early. Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor reminded me that later. But what those types of players seem to do is push, pull and (I hate to say this cliché) WILL their teams into contention. They defeat all the bottom feeders, day in and day out. They rarely lose to the midrange teams, and they compete against the eventual champions. So in the course of each game, season, and career, they put their teams in a constant state of consistent success. Their losses become anomalies, historically significant games that get rewinded and rewatched, sometimes to their fans’ continued dismay, and always with the feeling of missed opportunity. Miami’s ’85 playoffs loss to the Pats, Ewing’s missed finger roll, and Ken Griffey going from 1st base to home plate to send Mattingly home in his first and only playoff series, those are the types of losses that haunt the great players and their fans.

All that to say that when a team with few or zero transcendent players looks at its season schedule, its sees a lot of question marks and X’s. It sees difficult home games, trap games, and unfairly scheduled road games. I see games like weeks 1 and 2, on the road at Seattle and New England, and wonder if after a start like that, I can even put a check mark next to a week 3 home match with the Browns. Miami fans look, after that start, and see match-ups with at least four other 2015 playoff qualifiers and wonder from where all the wins will come?

And in comparing a Marino or a Taylor Miami team to this year’s edition of the Dolphins, it becomes apparent that the opponents are not the mystery, but the mystery is this team. Who is this team? Who are its stars? Who is its leader? Because as anyone at any level of organized sport or any organized endeavor knows, if you look around and don’t see a leader, either it’s you, or there ain’t a leader there to be found.

This year is a proving year for a lot of the players, and for the new coaching staff, and the reorganized management structure. It is going to be a lot of fun to watch. Ryan Tannehill should be happy that nemesis Mario Williams will be chasing Tyrod, Fitzpatrick and Brady instead of him this year. Jarvis Landry may get a juice boost from a healthy DeVante Parker at the other wide receiver spot. The hope is that the awesomely named Kiko Alonso can take advantage of the dirty work done by perennially double- and triple-teamed Ndamukong Suh to get free rush lanes to the offensive backfield. And of course, effective leadership from the new head coach Adam Gase might be the missing link between the talented players and the on-field success for which the fans and the team have been waiting. We will watch and see.

Watch for my next article as I breakdown the upcoming season and the draft. Until then, peace to Phife Dawg of a Tribe Called Quest, and Fins Up!

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