Belief Is Snowballing In Miami
Photo Credit: Jim Rassol via USA TODAY Sports
We’ve all heard the tired old sports cliches. You know the ones: about being a family, believing in one another, blocking the outside noise, etc etc. We’ve watched athlete after athlete stand at the podium and go to the “nobody believed in us” script. It all generally feels rather generic and corny. But while the public tends to roll their eyes at the played out sports-isms, locker rooms truly believe them.
Locker rooms are unique places. There is so much time, energy, and sacrifice put into a professional sports season that it would be impossible for the team’s gathering place to not play a role in their identity. It’s the locker room where players build a belief structure about who they are and where they’re going. We’ve watched pre-game speeches, and post-game celebrations that seem to truly indicate a team’s temperament and personality.
The belief fostered in locker rooms is why you so often see teams snowball and grow to live out their own existing narratives. If a team loses two close games in a row because of bad late-game penalties, you can sure bet in their next close game they’ll be thinking about those flags. Conversely, when a team musters a couple of last-minute comebacks, they quickly develop an attitude that carries them through future nail-bitters.
Last year‘s Minnesota Vikings team is a perfect example. Kevin O’Connell’s group, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been much better than average (and ultimately they were proven to be just that in the playoffs by the New York Giants). But early in the season they developed a knack for never being out of games. The defense would create clutch turnovers at just the right time, while the offense always seemed to come up with unbelievable fourth-quarter moments. It happened all year long as they went an NFL regular season record 11-0 in one-score games. They completed the biggest comeback in NFL history against the Indianapolis Colts and gave the NFL the best regular-season game of the year with their incredible come-from-behind victory against the Buffalo Bills.
So, what does this have to do with Miami? It’s simple. Just three games into the 2023 season, it’s easy to see that something exceptional is brewing in Miami’s locker room. And not just in an ability to win or lose. In their shared belief. The way they view themselves and the world around them.
Tyreek Hill leaving the Kansas City Chiefs to prove he could elevate another offense to an elite level, and then doing exactly that. Tua Tagovailoa being left for NFL mediocrity early in his career, now proving that he’s not just efficient, he’s electric. Mike McDaniel, an eccentric young play caller scheming up concepts that the best coaches in the league are duplicating the week after he employs them. Young stars and their swagger are everywhere you look. Heck even Vic Fangio, an old school former head coach, feels like he has a remarkable edge to him as he tries to revive a forgotten defense.
It’s rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘60s. It’s hip-hop in the ‘80s. It’s baggy shorts on the Fab 5. It’s different. It’s special. The Miami Dolphins are the future and they know it.
I’m not here to guarantee that Miami is about to march through the season and run all the way through the Super Bowl. But I am here to tell you to pay attention. This is about to be special. The 2023 Dolphins have the vibe of the 1998 Randy Moss led Minnesota Vikings, the Rams’ Greatest Show On Turf, and the 2007 Patriots. Those teams forever left their mark on the league offensively. The Dolphins are about to do the same.
So get your popcorn, kick your feet up, and enjoy what is about to be the sort of season you’ll tell your kids and grandkids about.
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