Tag Archives: Miami Dolphins

Sports

Football…

Today, Sunday the 7th, marks the 18th and last week of the regular season of Football and the final game (I don’t believe there is a Monday night game, no?) of the season which will be aired features my Miami Dolphins against the Buffalo Bills, starting at 8:20pm Eastern time.

The Dolphins are already in the post-season but the Buffalo Bills need to win this game to get into the post-season and I expect they’re come in and play as hard as they can.

My Dolphins have been such a roller coaster of a team to watch. When they’re good they’re so damn good but when they’re bad…

Part of it has to do with the amount of injuries the team has sustained. It has been, frankly, ridiculous. There was also at least one game, the one they played against the Philadelphia Eagles, where the referees and the penalties they laid out (all against the Dolphins, none against the Eagles) that was IMHO very questionable.

Understand: I’ve been watching Football since the early 1980’s. There are going to be games where calls go against you and there are going to be games where you get the calls. I get that.

But that was the first game where I have to say I think the Refs were blind to the actions of one team.

Either way, it happened and its done and now we’ve got this one game to either show we’re tough against the “hard” teams (that’s been the story it seems all year: We take care of the “weak” teams but have trouble against the “good” ones).

Let’s see what happens…

Sports

The Dolphins and the NFL

I’ve been around now and again and less than I’d like, so forgive me if I go over some older stuff.

After the latest season in the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins, the team I root for (though, given their record for the past twenty some years I wonder why) fired head coach Brian Flores despite having a pretty good run during his three years run.

To be clear: It wasn’t a spectacular run, but given the fact that the first year the Dolphins essentially unloaded every player of any worth they had, he has managed to overachieve with regard to the teams he’s had to work with.

This last year began pretty badly. While they won their first game against New England, they then went on to lose 7 games in a row, including losses to such “lesser” teams as Jacksonville.

But then, starting on November 7th and against the Houston Texans, they had a stunning turn around and wound up winning 7 games in a row, a tough feat to begin with, and achieved a record no team had to date: To lose 7 games in a row and win 7 games in a row in a single season!

Alas, those early loses would figure into their playoff chances and truthfully they had no margin for error in their last two games. They had a chance, certainly, but they needed to beat the Buffalo Bills in week 17 and simply could not. The Bills, much as I don’t like to admit it, are a powerhouse and they look to have a very bright future, even if they didn’t make it to the Superbowl this year.

Anyway, by the time the next, and last game of the season rolled around, it didn’t matter if they won or lost. They beat The New England Patriots once again and finished the season with a decent 9 and 8 record, slightly above average but clearly not enough.

What was surprising was that Brian Flores, whose ultimate record after three years as Head Coach was 24-25, was subsequently fired.

Then, things got ugly.

Brian Flores, after a few interviews with other teams, came out and stated the owner of the Dolphins, Stephen M. Ross, offered him $100,000 each game lost. He also presented some damning tweets between he and New England Patriots head coach Brian Belichick.

In those tweets, Mr. Belichick mistook Mr. Brian Flores for Brian Daboll and congratulated him on getting the New York Giants head coaching job… when Mr. Flores was scheduled to -but had not yet had- an interview with them!

In other words, Mr. Flores claimed this proved that the Daboll hiring was a done deal and the interview to come with him was a sham, a way of getting around the Rooney Rule (which forces NFL teams to interview minority coaches) when they had absolutely no intention of hiring Flores for the job.

Anyway, Jomills H. Braddock II and Alex R. Piquero have a good article regarding this whole affair here:

What the case of fired Dolphins coach Brian Flores says about the NFL today

Now, some of the accused, including Stephen Ross, have denied any wrongdoing and deny Mr. Flores’ accusations.

Other than being a fan of the team, I have no knowledge of the ins and outs of the organization other than watching them play their games during the season.

Yet I will say this: The Dolphins have, unfortunately, been a team that has all too consistently in the past few years been a disappointment, a huge turnaround considering that during the 1970’s they were a powerhouse, winning two SuperBowls and having their “Perfect” season, and during the 1980’s they were a consistently upper tier team under Dan Marino and Don Shula.

It seems like things went downhill pretty quickly when Don Shula was replaced with Jimmy Johnson -who came off a terrific run with the Dallas Cowboys but who seemed overwhelmed and uninterested in running another team- and when Dan Marino retired.

Watching Marino during his golden years was like watching magic. I loved those years, even if in the end they only reached the SuperBowl once… and lost to the San Francisco 49ers.

That match up, way back in 1985, was the last time my beloved team went to the SuperBowl. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s 37 years ago.

Yikes.

Anyway, now we have Mike McDaniel being hired to coach the team. He previously worked with the San Francisco 49ers and there may be something, I don’t know, weirdly interesting in that particular hiring, given the 49ers were the team that defeated us the last time we were in the SuperBowl.

Will he do well? Will controversy continue to follow the team and/or will Brian Flores’ lawsuit gain traction?

I don’t know.

Regardless, its a tough situation for me, a fan of the team.

I do wonder if, within what’s left of my lifetime, I’ll ever see my beloved team once again in the SuperBowl.

Sports

Well, that was painful…

This feels like something someone says at one of those meetings devoted to making you sober. The first step is usually admitting your problem:

My name is E.R. Torre, and I’m a Dolphin fan.

The rest of the people in the meeting room react with extreme horror. There are limits to helping people, and clearly I’m in need of a lot of help.

Today, of course, was the first Sunday of the 2019 Football season and for those that don’t know, my Dolphins played the Baltimore Ravens and got their asses totally pounded. The final score was 59-10 and it was every bit as bad as that score implies.

There was no offense. There was precious little defense. The team is a mess… and it was pretty much designed to be that way.

See, the Dolphins, since the departure of Don Shula and, a little later, quarterback Dan Marino, have been in this unrelenting funk. When Shula was coach and Marino quarterback, the Dolphins were a year after year SuperBowl contender. They were always in the playoffs and always seemed to be a legit candidate to make it to the big game.

But that was a very long time ago. The Dolphins, since Marino’s departure, seem to always be 7-9 to 9-7. There are a few exceptions, including a season where they went a ghastly 1-15, but they seem to always be stubbornly mediocre. Just being cut out of the playoffs and being just good enough so that their draft picks usually amount to not all that much.

Its been a sad state of affairs and, it seems, the owner and new Coach decided it was time to stop being mediocre and start the team from the ground up. To purge it of everyone and built it up again, younger and through the draft.

Which means this year, for all intents and purposes, is a season where they’re not expecting to win all that much.

Thing is, there’s a point where you’re not very good and where you’re purposely become horrible.

Maybe this first game is an aberration and they wind up winning a few games, say 3-4, in the season. Still wind up at the bottom and get good draft picks which they use to build themselves up.

At this point, though, and based on this first game, it sounds like they’re be lucky to do even that.

As I mentioned above, the Dolphins once went 1-15.

This year, there’s a very real chance they go 0-16.

How many fans remain after that?