Is it fair to say that all the gloating from those undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins stars has effectively cursed the franchise into oblivion? Perhaps not, but since winning back-to-back Super Bowls that year and the next, the Fins haven't won a Lombardi Trophy.
In fact, Miami hasn't even advanced to the AFC Championship Game since the 1992 campaign, nor to the Divisional Round since the 2000 season.
We're going on a quarter-century of futility, and about that long in search of a franchise quarterback anywhere near the caliber of Dan Marino.
Can Malik Willis be the one who finally turns the Dolphins into a winner? At the very least, he seems to "get it", which can't be said for his predecessor, Tua Tagovailoa. That will be explained momentarily.
Malik Willis expresses appreciation for loyalty of the Miami Dolphins fanbase
Willis spoke to NFL Network's Cameron Wolfe about a variety of topics, but his understanding of the Fins faithful was probably the most noteworthy takeaway of all:
"We keep hearing, the people of this city they want to win really badly, they want guys to play Miami football like it was back in the day. All we can do is work hard and give them what they want. These are the people that are behind us every day, and throughout the ups and downs, they are still here waiting.”
Whereas Willis appears eager to embrace the responsibility and opportunity of being a franchise quarterback, the longer Tua was in Miami, the weirder it got with the fans.
Tua played well enough to be paid a second mega contract in spite of a lengthy medical rap sheet, with multiple severe concussions. However, he's a rare case among top-flight QBs in that once he got paid, he seemed to just mail it in and/or lose interest in football. I mean, he effectively said football is a "part-time" job for him last week.
Anyway, even if Tua somehow stayed put with the Dolphins instead of getting cut for historic amounts of dead money to compete for the Falcons' starting job, I doubt he'd care about the history of the franchise or about the fanbase's suffering. He seems too self-absorbed for that.
And look, it's not like Tua is the first person who may have been changed thanks to money. To be fair, maybe all those concussions have given him the perspective that life is a lot bigger than football.
The thing with Tua is, he just doesn't know how to communicate with enough nuance to get that point across, if that was indeed his intention.
As for Willis, like this new regime, he's just a breath of fresh air that Miami needed from a leadership standpoint. The Dolphins seem more justified by the day to tear this thing down to the studs, while raising their ceiling with a significantly more talented, dual-threat QB.
Willis' upside is a lot greater than Tua's, and his capacity to lead seems a lot vaster. Or at least it just comes more naturally to him. The fact that Willis is already making an impression on that front with offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, among others, certainly bodes well.
Good on the new QB1 to shout out the fans for sticking in there through thick and thin. It may be a while before Willis can reward their loyalty with lots of wins, but at least he's not shying away from the task at hand, which is to get a serviceable product on the field as soon as possible.
Add us as a preferred source on Google