Miami Dolphins need to continue recent success in December

The Miami Dolphins are now in December, a notoriously bad month for the team but in recent years, Miami has bucked that trend. Now they need to continue it.

Over the last two seasons, the Dolphins have played seven games in the month, last year they had their bye week in December. The Dolphins have won six of those seven games with their only loss coming in 2020 against the Kansas City Chiefs at Hard Rock Stadium.

This month, the Dolphins will play 4 games total in the month. This includes three road games in a row to kick it off. In the previous two seasons, the Dolphins only played one road game in each. This will mark the first time since 2019 they played three road games in December. In that month, they played five total games in the month and won only one of those on the road, a season finale against the Patriots in New England.

Ironically, that season featured back-to-back road games in the same city. Miami traveled to New York to face the Jets and then the Giants. The Dolphins opted to return home after the Jets game. They will remain in California after the 49ers game on Sunday. Needless to say, the Dolphins lost both of those road games.

This week the Dolphins will face off against the number one NFL defense. It will be a battle of wills as Miami’s top-five passing game will be put to its biggest test this season. The return of Mike McDaniel is also a big storyline for Sunday’s game.

Miami is in a great position heading into the final two months of the season with January giving Miami two more games to wrap it up nice and neatly to make the postseason but these next three games will give us a much better idea of how great this team really is or if they are just good.

It’s December and in the NFL, the playoff push doesn’t begin until the calendar rolls over into it. It rolled over.