Turns out this Miami Dolphins team isn’t different after all
By Brian Miller
We have heard it said all year long, this Miami Dolphins team is different. The addition of Tyreek Hill and Mike McDaniel changed it all. In reality, nothing changed.
We can hope. Hope that the Dolphins slip into the playoffs this year but let’s be honest, this team isn’t a playoff team. Far from it. They are not just playing bad football, they are playing football like most teams do under a new head coach and that isn’t good enough.
Entering the month of December, fans knew that the schedule would be a critical stretch. Three consecutive road games, two on the west coast and one in Buffalo. A home game against one of the best QBs in the NFL. The game-by-game predictions made way back in August had these four games circled as critical. Miami lost all of them.
Miami still controls their own destiny in the playoff picture but does anyone truly believe the team will rebound to beat the Patriots in New England next week and the Jets in the final week of the season? They should have beaten the 6 win Packers on Sunday. Tua is incredibly inconsistent over the last month and the defense isn’t making any strides in getting better.
Miami has made two playoff appearances since 2008 when Tony Sparano led the team to an 11-5 turnaround with the Wild Cat. Not only did he not return to the playoffs, he didn’t have another winning season over his next three years.
Adam Gase took the Dolphins to the playoffs in his rookie season, just like Sparano. Miami squeaked in on a 10-6 record and like Sparano’s Dolphins, lost in the first round. Also like Sparano, Gase never returned to the postseason and did not have another winning record.
Miami built up home last season that Brian Flores was leading the team to the playoffs but a monumental loss to the Titans in December, ended any real chance of making it. A seven game losing streak and a seven game winning streak did nothing more than help Miami get to a 9-8 record.
The Dolphins stormed out of the gate under McDaniel and it appeared everything was going to go much better than expected. The Dolphins entered the month of December holding the number 2 seed in the AFC and the top spot in the AFC East. Four losses later and the heartache in Miami has reared its ugly head again.
Miami fans are used to disappointment but this year was supposed to be different. It felt different. It started different. In reality, it is ending exactly as we all should have thought it would. Not much different at all.
The Dolphins have two more games to prove, that this season is, different.