Sports Update Monday: The Miami Dolphins. Different Year, Different Team. Same Result.
The saving grace is that the NFL is a league built mostly for parity, and there are so many flawed teams in the AFC that one of them will be not so terrible enough as to sneak in as the last playoff qualifier. And the Dolphins, losers of six of their past eight outings, are still alive in that fateful chase to make a postseason appearance even while not actually deserving to be in the postseason.
So cheer up, Dolphins nation, your team is inconsistent and often struggles to finish games. It cannot hold big halftime leads, and the coaching staff doesn’t necessarily instill confidence. But that’s OK because there are a bunch of other teams fighting the same uphill battle. One of them or perhaps the Dolphins is bound to win that fight —even if that victory happens because everyone else slipped on a bar of soap in clown fashion and knocked themselves out.
But step back from all that. Let us be honest here, folks. We all know how this is going to end. We know this season that began with such promise and a seemingly different vibe is headed in the wrong direction even if it somehow by sheer happenstance ends in the right place. We know something is wrong. We know this team doesn’t have it. And the reason we know is we’ve seen this same sad act this year and for years before that. And that suggests the same problems simply don’t get solved.
The Dolphins blew a 16-6 halftime lead on Sunday and lost 20-16 to the Carolina Panthers. Did that not look a lot like the loss to New England five weeks ago when the Dolphins held a 17-3 halftime lead and lost 27-17? The Dolphins failed to score a touchdown in the fourth quarter against Carolina. We’ve seen that before, too. This game was the seventh consecutive game the Miami offense failed to score a touchdown in the fourth quarter.
And this game once again uncovered the Miami defense as a unit unable to shut down the opposition when the game was on the line – kind of like what happened against Baltimore and Buffalo and so many other times in the past few years. This team is like a terrible rewind of Groundhog Day, reliving past experiences, trying to solve the same old problems, while never deviating much from the 7-9, 8-8, 9-7 course of the last decade. The course to irrelevancy.
Receiver Mike Wallace should have been enjoying a fine game. He caught five passes for 127 yards and a touchdown. He caught a 57-yard pass and was open deep on three others that showed great potential for the days ahead. But instead of enjoying an exclamation point of a day, Wallace had to explain the one big drop that might have given Miami the lead with 10 seconds to play – a 60-yard heave by Ryan Tannehill that, tough as it was to catch, could have been a crowning moment for Wallace.
Wallace is a dynamic player. He is proven, having done great things in Pittsburgh. But here in Miami, for some reason, there’s always something that doesn’t click. Sometimes he’s open and quarterback Tannehill underthrows. Sometimes Wallace is open but the offensive line protection doesn’t hold up. Sometimes Wallace drops the certain touchdown. And we saw this exact same thing with Brandon Marshall, who was better in Denver than he was in Miami and is better now in Chicago than he was in Miami.
Why is it great players come here to underperform? Tannehill, by the way, is increasingly getting attention as a player we’ve seen before as well. He has a great arm. He works later and longer than anyone. He prepares, he listens, he wants to be great. But something’s missing.
Every year the Dolphins try to find the answers and right the wrongs. But instead we get the same result year after year, game after game and play after play.