Dolphins off-season has some fun facts

The Miami Dolphins off-season can be understandably slow for news. That doesn’t mean you have nothing to talk about. Taking a look at the team can reveal some interesting facts.

Whether it’s historical facts or just some odd observations that come with a little soap box standing, there is always something to dig into. Here are a few of those unusual factoids that may have gone unnoticed…or forgotten.

The last game that was a blackout was also during a playoff season.

It was the sixth game of the 1998 season, with the Rams visiting (week 4 was a bye week). The game itself was a 14-0 blowout in favor of the Dolphins to put them at a 4-2 record. They would go on to finish with a 10-6 record losing badly to Denver in the Divisional playoff game. Although there has been numerous past bad losses in playoffs, to their credit at this point it was the second playoff season in a row of five total during the Johnson/Wannstedt era.

Jason Jones agreed to terms on May 13th.

Many into superstition and or horror movies might have picked up on this one. May 13th happened to be a Friday which plays a big part in superstitions (Friday the 13th). For the most part hotels or large buildings have no 13th floor and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Friday the 13th is also a horror movie franchise in which the main character started out with (Jason) Voorhees as the main antagonist. Let’s just hope this season doesn’t turn out to be a nightmare (bad pun).

(South) east coast bias

This term has a notation that varies depending on the location you live in. I have seen arguments made that favoritism leans toward east cost teams. Outside of the 1PM starts that may favor the Dolphins anything else is not translating this far south. And even this one thing can be debated as not that much of a factor if one wants to dig out the chart of stats on it.

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The latest example on this is the “story” that Laremy Tunsil has a “pre-arthritic” ankle condition, and also the rebuttal from the dolphins via Mike Tannenbaum. The teams that passed on Tunsil that may have wanted him might be trying to covering their tracks should he turn out to be the pro bowl caliber player that many project him to become.

Lastly there are the bad calls that can turn out to be costly enough to prevent a win or wins during the season. Looking back at last season these happened a lot at near crunch time with the outcome of the game on the line. One that stands out the most was a home game oddly enough in which Ryan Tannehill had a pass completed short left to Jarvis Landry for 2 yards (TD called back) penalty on DeVante Parker: Offensive Pass Interference, 10 yards (no play) 6:12 in the 4th quarter down by 10 points. The defender on Parker went out of his way to run into DeVante Parker.

One other misfortune was the rematch game at buffalo were every time Suh would be getting after Tyrod Taylor there were bogus calls popping up. At one point in the game Suh had Tyrod Taylor like a rag doll with no in the grasp call (do those exist anymore?) and you could tell he didn’t know what he should do. Suh could have tossed him into his coach on the sideline had he wanted to. This game ended with a wide point margin but the score was close early when this started taking place and can really swing the momentum in the game.

Granted there was a lot of legit penalties that proved costly as well. As good as Olivier Vernon was last season he also had the most penalties called on him overall league wide. Bad calls seem to happen every season remember Ben Roethlisberger’s so-called goal line TD some seasons back? Favoritism seems to happen to the favorites in the league and not being in the playoff going back to 2008 I wouldn’t be looking for any anytime soon. This teams needs to rise above it and be that good where it won’t factor into their win totals