The Miami Dolphins can't afford to lose any of the next five games with how fierce the AFC is

It was a wonderful bye week for the Miami Dolphins in terms of many AFC teams losing but it only reinforced the idea that the Miami Dolphins can't drop any of the next very winnable games.

I say they are very winnable because the Dolphins will be playing barely average teams, regardless of what their record is, who are quarterbacked by, mostly, bottom-dwelling QBs. Miami will be seeing Aiden O'Connell, Zach Wilson twice, Sam Howell(a very solid player) and Will Levis.

Though plenty of teams lost yesterday which helps the Dolphins. Because of many of those wins, it made the margin for error in the AFC even more razor-thin.

The Kansas City Chiefs are only two and a half games up on the current 11-seeded Raiders. That's wild stuff. We knew the AFC was loaded this year but I think we thought a few more teams would be excelling. But what has happened, thus far, is that there are many teams that are right around the same level.

Sure, we're in the middle of the season and many of the teams, especially, in the AFC North, are going to eat each other. But that division plus the upstart Houston Texans are making the end of the season look very interesting and by interesting impossible to predict who will come out on top.

Yes, we will watch the games and let the chips fall where they may. But all this screams that the Miami Dolphins needed to be as locked in as they can every week, especially, against the next five games where they will be favored than and are actually better than because anyone can beat anyone any week. I know we say that kind of stuff all the time but in the AFC, it is extremely true.

The Dolphins have the Raiders this week and even though Miami is a 10-point favorite, the Raiders are flying high with Antonio Pierce as their coach. They're smoking cigars and having a great time right now and it would be perfectly on brand if the Raiders went across the country to Miami and hung around and won in the end. I wouldn't be surprised by that at all.

So, the leaders of the Miami Dolphins, and I imagine they are, are keeping the team highly focused. They need to be drilling into the everyone in building and they need to bring 110% effort on Sunday and on every Sunday for the rest of the year.

It should be a ton of fun going forward. But, it will be much more fun if the Miami Dolphins TCB(take care of business) over the next five weeks and get to 11-3. Then the big boys are up on the schedule.

By the Way- I realize it's pretty obvious that the Dolphins can't lose games because losing games isn't good. I know that.

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