One

Also: The number of wins the Miami Dolphins have earned in the 2025 season so far.

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I thought about posting yesterday when the UGA Bulldogs came from behind to find a way to win against the Tennessee Volunteers, but I held off so I would have to write something here about today's Dolphins game. As nervous as I was about the outcome for UGA, I really, really enjoyed watching the Bulldogs play. The Dolphins, not so much.

Of course, the Bulldogs are a good football team with excellent coaching and talent. The Dolphins, not so much. Their defense is truly awful*, and their finesse offense will never be able to compensate enough to overcome their flaws. I know they're not going anywhere, so there's nothing to get excited about.

In fact, it felt like a bit of a chore to wake up early and watch the Dolphins. None of the players have vivid personalities that make them worth cheering for. The coaches seem to care less than I do, and I don't even like looking at the team's current logo or uniforms.

I can't even get excited about the fact that the Dolphins might be so bad that they'll end up in a position to take a high draft pick. The last time they looked this awful was was the 2019 season, when their motto was "Tank for Tua." Well, they even fucked that up, but still traded a bunch of resources to draft Tagovailoa, who has proven as durable as cotton candy and can no longer differentiate Dolphins receivers from his opponents. I don't know which player the Dolphins will waste their pick on in the 2026 Draft ("Death March for Arch"?), but I've come to believe that they're equally doomed.

Obviously I'm not alone in feeling frustrated. Earlier this week, after Josh Gad publicly bailed on the Dolphins season during an appearance on Seth Meyers' late night talk show, another guest encouraged NFL fans not to push their young children into fandom "because that's how you end up with Dolphins fans." Today in Miami the remaining Dol-fans seemed to agree; the stands were never more than half full for the home opener against a division rival. Maybe financial pressure will force the team to do something other than just suck all the time, but at this point, until there's a change in ownership, I'm not going to hold my breath. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

* According to CBS: "The Dolphins have allowed points on 13 straight drives dating back to last season. That is the longest streak by any team since 2000." For the record, that streak came to an end when the Patriots knelt on the ball to go to halftime. So maybe "awful" isn't a strong enough word.

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Not so long ago, qz.com reported a statistical analysis of broadcast NFL games revealing that an average broadcast of 3 hours and 12 minutes contains only 11 minutes of actual action. One hour of the broadcast is commercial breaks, about 20 in all with a total of 100 commercials.

So about two full hours of NFL broadcasts are players just standing around. Somehow, that was the best part of watching the Dolphins lose their opening week game 33-8 to the Indianapolis Colts.

It also bears mentioning that the Colts hadn't won a season opener since 2013, and even more impressively, according to ESPN, no team had scored points on all 7 of their offensive possessions since 1978. (The last team to do it? The Baltimore Colts.)

Another year, same old shitty Dolphins.

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The annual NFL Draft starts tonight. Who will the Miami Dolphins select? It doesn't matter. They'll still be the Miami Dolphins.

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In 2020, Tua "If It Ain't Broke, Break It" Tagovailoa fell to the fifth overall pick in the NFL draft because scouts decided he was fragile after he broke his hip at Alabama. He missed 6 games in 2020 because of that hip and a busted thumb, 4 games in 2021 with broken ribs, and 4 games in 2022 with some pretty serious concussions. Last year was the first year he made it all the way through the too-long NFL season without missing any full games, and the Miami Dolphins, for the most part, looked pretty darn good. (At least until it got cold. Dolphins hate the cold.) If this was the new Tua, things were looking up.

Well, perhaps you've heard: in just the second game of the 2024 season, Tua had another severe concussion that left him stiffly lying on the field like... well, a player who's had a severe concussion. Nothing looks quite like the fencing response. Trust me, once you've seen it, you'll recognize it forever. And Dolphins fans have now seen it multiple times from Tua Tagovailoa.

In hindsight, "fragile" might be a polite way of putting it.

I don't mean to kick Tua while he's down. It's been proven in recent years that he gives the Dolphins their best shot at winning games. But winning really isn't everything. If it was, I wouldn't still be a Dolphins fan

I'm no doctor, and I'm certainly not getting paid $53 million a year to sacrifice my body for public spectacle, so I won't even pretend that I'm in any position to tell Tua what to do. What I will do instead is quote an infamously six-fingered man: "If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything." It's good advice no matter how many fingers you see.

UPDATE 09/17: Tua has been placed on Injured Reserve, which means he will miss at least 4 games because of this latest concussion. That's 8 full games (plus parts of 4 others) over the course of 2 calendar years (39 games) for concussions. That's a very, very bad trend.

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Back on December 12, I wrote

It is starting to look like 2023 will be yet another year where the Dolphins have a pretty good record heading into December only for the team to lose games they should win and flame out before the playoffs.

Final update: yep, they lost. After yet another December flame out, they lost their shot at winning the conference (last accomplished in 1984) and then their shot at winning the division (last accomplished in 2008). Once again, they backed into the playoffs as a wild card and then lost their shot at winning a postseason game (last accomplished in 2000).

Last year they lost to the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo in 28° weather. Last night, it was an even less competitive game, a dull 7-28 against the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City in -28° wind chill weather. I'm a little worried about what the temperature might be in next year's loss (in Cleveland?). Oh, well. That's the price you pay for not winning enough games to avoid away field disadvantage.

(To be completely fair to the Dolphins, for the second year in a row, by the time they got to December, the roster was devastated by injuries. It's hard to win at any temperature when you have no first- or second-string linebackers [although the real fail in the late season was an inability by the offense to score, partly due to lingering injuries but also bad scheming, play-calling, and execution]. I don't watch each game with the expectation of winning a Super Bowl; I just like football, and I like the team I cheer for to play well. It's just disappointing when the team seems to always be playing its very worst when the stakes get highest.)

My bigger problem with the loss was that in order to watch it, I had to subscribe to Peacock. The Dolphins v. Chiefs game was the first ever NFL playoff game available exclusively on a streaming network which charged a subscription fee and still ran a shit ton of ads. Fuck you, NFL and NBC. I'm glad your game was a frozen turd, and I'm glad I watched on someone else's account so you didn't get an extra dime out of me.

Welcome to the future, where the playoff football is terrible and you have to pay extra to see it. Living in the past increasingly seems the better option. I hear that 1972 was a pretty good year.

UPDATE: The Detroit Lions have won their playoff game, which means they no longer are the NFL team that has gone the longest since their last playoff win (31 seasons since 1992). That honor now belongs to, you guessed it, the Miami Dolphins. Twenty-three seasons and counting! Woot!

And since we're on the topic, I might as well point out that the Miami Dolphins currently sit at #5 on the list of NFL teams with the longest stretch since appearing in a Super Bowl. It's been 38 years since Joe Montana beat Dan Marino. It's been 47 years for the Vikings and 55 years for the Jets but it could be worse; the Lions and Browns remain tied at "never." So, yeah, that's the bright side: it be worse.

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Wow, what a rough year 2023 turned out to be. Domestic political dysfunction, nonstop foreign wars, losing your starting wide receiver, starting running back, starting defensive end, and starting cornerback in a seven day span just before the playoffs in what was looking to be the most promising season since 1993... Ick. Less of all that in 2024, please.

As seductive as it can be to fall into despair, this is hardly the first time global events have seemed to be spiraling out of control. In such circumstances, it is always worthwhile to listen to voices of wisdom.

I'm reminded of one speech in particular:

There comes a time when we heed a certain call, when the world must come together as one. There are people dying, oh, and it's time to lend a hand to life, the greatest gift of all.

We can't go on pretending day-by-day that someone, somewhere soon make a change. We're all a part of God's great big family, and the truth, you know, love is all we need.

Honestly, it can't be said enough. We are the world. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can make the choice to start saving our own lives.

We are the ones who'll make a brighter day, so let's start giving our all and make 2024 a year to remember proudly.

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This time last week, despite winning zero games against teams with winning records, the Miami Dolphins were in position for the first place seed in the AFC, something they hadn't accomplished since 1984. If the Dolphins are the number one seed, they're guaranteed to make it to the first round of the playoffs and not lose for the first time since 2000... because they wouldn't play in the first round. Number one seeds get a free pass into the second round where they'll probably lose against a team with a winning record.

Then, last night on Monday Night Football against the 4-win Tennessee Titans, the Dolphins blew a 14-point lead in the last 4 minutes 34 seconds, something no team had done since 2016.

I've been watching football long enough that 2016 doesn't seem like such a long time. So far as I'm concerned, the Gold Standard for blowing a late game two-score leads remains the 2011 game where brand-new starting quarterback Tim Tebow led the 1-win Denver Broncos to score 15 points in the last 5:05 to eventually win in overtime... over the Miami Dolphins. It was the first time the Broncos had ever won in Miami. That game sparked the movement that would eventually become Tebowmania as he piloted the team to win their division and their first-round playoff game. Remember Tebowing? Yeah, that was the Dolphins' fault.

It is starting to look like 2023 will be yet another year where the Dolphins have a pretty good record heading into December only for the team to lose games they should win and flame out before the playoffs. I'm not mad about it. That's what the Dolphins do. If I wanted a different outcome, I'd cheer for a different team.

It could be worse. I could be an Atlanta Falcons fan.

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Tonight is the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft. I usually watch, but not this year. There's no point. The Miami Dolphins have no first round pick, all because their owner got caught cheating.

The jury is still out (by which I mean that an actual lawsuit is still pending) on whether owner Stephen Ross is a racist who tried to fix games, but the NFL decided that he definitely tampered with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021 by trying to steal their quarterback (just has he tried to steal the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers back in 2014). As punishment, the League took away the Dolphins' first pick this year (and their third next year).

This is actually the second year in a row that the Dolphins have no pick in the first round. Last year, the Dolphins gave away a boatload of picks to get Tyreek Hill. And while Hill made a big impression, he's hardly going to be a Fin for a long time. He's already announced that he plans to retire after the 2024 season, so it's a "win now" situation.

And they'd better win now. The Dolphins had a total of 4 picks last year, and they currently have 4 picks this year. It's awfully hard to build for the future when you only get to add 4 young players a year. Or, for that matter, when the quarterback you're building the team around is more fragile than a bag of potato chips.

The Dolphins still haven't won a postseason game since the year 2000, and if they can't do so soon, it might be 2040 before they have enough talent to try again. That of course assumes that Stephen Ross doesn't get in his own way again, which is no guarantee.

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On September 26, someone on this blog *cough, cough* wrote

"[T]he Dolphins haven't made the postseason since 2016, and they haven't won a postseason game since 2000, so I'll be happy just to get that far this year."

Well, despite losing 5 of their last 6 games and playing a 7th-round rookie at quarterback in replacement of Tua "Should Really Start Thinking About Retirement While He Can Still Think At All" Tagovailoa, the Dolphins have backed into the playoffs on the strength of their early success (and weak competition) after an 11-6 win over the hapless Jets (also playing their 3rd string QB, former Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco — how the mighty have fallen!).

And I find I am not happy about it.

The team has demonstrated that it cannot win without Tua, so there will undoubtedly be a push by those who care more about wins (read: $) than player safety to bring him back, ready or not, for next week's playoff game against the Bills. The same Bills who gave him his first concussion (of 3) on the season back in Week 3. The same Bills who beat him soundly in the fourth quarter during the Week 14 rematch.

Hey, Tua, it's not worth coming back for this. ESPN's only giving the Fins a 1.4% chance of winning the Super Bowl, and I think those odds are kind of generous given what I've seen from the team this year. Save yourself, man. Try again next season. So what if the team can only score field goals without you? That's their problem, not yours.

If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

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