Miami Is Avoiding The Snowball Effect
Syndication: Palm Beach Post
An NFL season is like a roller coaster — if you focus too hard on every twist and turn, it can leave you feeling woozy. Even the best teams in the league will experience some ups and downs, but part of what makes them the best is that they maintain an even keel.
The Miami Dolphins are about to find out which kind of team they are, and if last week was any indication, fans have plenty of reason for optimism.
The Dolphins’ 28-27 loss at home to the Tennessee Titans on Monday Night Football was by all accounts a disappointment. The Dolphins were playing a Titans team starting a streaky rookie quarterback in Will Levis who didn’t have much of a supporting cast around him outside of Derrick Henry and DeAndre Hopkins, not to mention the fact that star defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons was inactive.
Everything was set up in Miami’s favor, yet they ended up playing down to their opponent early in the game, thus giving Levis enough time to get acclimated. The Titans overcame a 14-point deficit with less than five minutes to play in the fourth quarter against a Dolphins team that fell asleep at the wheel. The Dolphins had a chance to keep pace with the Baltimore Ravens in their pursuit for the top seed in the AFC, but that loss set Miami back.
The Dolphins could’ve easily let that loss to the Titans create a snowball effect that negatively impacted their play moving forward. Instead, they overcame adversity and ensured they didn’t repeat the same mistake of playing down to an inferior opponent twice. The result culminated in a 30-0 blowout against a hobbled New York Jets team that is in complete disarray.
Following the Dolphins’ win over the Jets, Mike McDaniel talked about how he felt after the loss against Tennessee and his feelings on how the team responded against the Jets:
“I can’t overstate how much it was a punch to the gut last week, and it was a situation where it wasn’t because of lack of effort or details. To go into a game with all these question marks all week and nobody batted an eye.”
McDaniel continued:
“What has given me confidence is how they’ve responded to adversity after each loss. There is a lot of character in the locker room and a lot of character in the organization.”
Beating the Jets at this stage of the season is not an overly impressive feat by any means. However, there are three things that the Dolphins did on Sunday that are in line with what good teams do on a regular basis.
The first thing good football teams do is take care of business against teams they are supposed to beat. The second sign of a good team is not compounding mistakes following a disappointing loss. Finally, good teams have a tendency of blowing out bad teams. This isn’t the first time Miami has flat-out decimated out an opponent; they did it against the Denver Broncos in Week 3 when they dropped 70 points on the Broncos defense.
The next three weeks will tell us a lot about this Dolphins team and where they stand. Miami is set to play the Dallas Cowboys, the Baltimore Ravens, and the Buffalo Bills to close out the season. If they win those games, there’s a strong possibility that the Dolphins run away with the No. 1 seed in the AFC and the first-round bye that comes with it.
Additionally, the narrative that the Dolphins are frauds because they don’t have a statement win against a true contender will be washed away. However if they lose, people will continue to doubt the Dolphins’ playoff viability — and they’ll have to play in a Wild Card game. For a team dealing with multiple injuries, that is less than ideal.
Either way, it’s clear that this Miami Dolphins team is a lot more composed than last year’s version that lost the last five games of the regular season and finished 9-8 after starting the season with an 8-3 record. Last week’s win against the Jets is a perfect display of how Mike McDaniel and this Dolphins team have grown. That should be applauded regardless of how things shake out down the stretch.
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