After Monday night collapse, can the Miami Dolphins be trusted?
Miami has gotten fat and happy beating up on bad teams. But after a monumental Monday night collapse vs. the Titans, what's next for the Dolphins?
The NFL season is a long affair, long enough for fans and the media to fall into, out of, and back into love with half a dozen different teams and players. Some early season chumps find their footing, and some September champions start showing their true mettle when the weather gets colder.
All of this is to ask: Look, are the Miami Dolphins frauds, or what?
The Dolphins, led by their sling-it quarterback, their catch-balls-in-orbit wide receiver, and their weird nerd of a head coach, were one of the early season’s best stories. They won three straight to start the season, culminating in that 70-20 evisceration of Denver — still tough to believe there’s not a typo in that score — and looked like they were primed and ready to blow apart the Kansas City-Buffalo-Cincinnati trifecta atop the AFC.
Since then, they’ve lost to every serious playoff challenger — the Chiefs, Bills and Eagles — while fattening up their record on cannon fodder like the Patriots, Panthers, Jets and Raiders. Meantime, the Broncos — the team Miami stomped into the mud back in September — are 7-3 since that debacle, a game better than the Dolphins’ 6-4. Getting 10 touchdowns dropped on your head apparently is clarifying; dropping 10 touchdowns on someone perhaps makes you a touch overconfident in your skills.
Miami’s record against losing teams prior to Monday night was 8-0. Granted, there’s no shame in that, champions win the games they’re supposed to win, but those kinds of empty calories don’t really prep a team to handle adversity. Plus, when you’re 5-0 at home and averaging nearly 39 points a game, you’d have to be feeling pretty good about facing a misbegotten 4-8 divisional caboose.
Which is exactly how you end up with a game like Monday night, where the Dolphins were tied with Tennessee 13-13 with six minutes remaining … reeled off two quick touchdowns to go up 27-13 with three minutes remaining … and then surrendered two touchdowns and a 2-point conversion to lose 28-27 when the clock hit all zeroes.
"Right now it feels terrible," head coach Mike McDaniel said after the game. "These types of losses can be very galvanizing, but it takes literally every person in the locker room and coaching staff."
Well, they have to if they want to go further. But can they? That’s the key question here. Monday night, the Dolphins were two-touchdown favorites over the Titans and their rookie quarterback Will Levis. But there was Levis, looking like the resurrection of Tom Brady as he orchestrated two touchdown drives that, combined, covered 139 yards in two minutes, 20 seconds.
"It’s not like the world ends because we lost this game," quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said, scrambling for perspective. "We’re human. We’ll continue to get better from this. This is the NFL; no one is perfect. That’s that."
Still ... had the Dolphins won Monday night, they’d be 10-3, tied with Baltimore, Dallas and San Francisco for the best record in the league. Instead, they’re left to reckon with a game in which their offense could not manage a single touchdown drive on its own without the benefit of a Tennessee red-zone turnover, a game where the defense couldn’t hold down a quarterback with all of seven starts in his pro career.
“It was a legitimate team loss. I think everybody had their hand in it,” McDaniel said. “It’s going to be tough to go to sleep tonight, including myself.”
The morning light won’t make things look any better going forward. The Dolphins draw the Jets at home this weekend, a game where Miami is already favored by 9.5. But after that, it’s a brutal trio to close out the regular season: Dallas at home, Baltimore on the road and a season finale against the sure-to-be-motivated Bills.
Miami still holds a two-game lead over Buffalo for the division, but the Bills have an easier schedule before that regular-season finale at Hard Rock Stadium: Dallas, at the Chargers, New England. A stumble before then, and Miami will be fighting for the division championship on that day, fighting to play its first playoff game at home rather than, say, chilly Buffalo or hostile Kansas City.
There’s still time for Miami not just to salvage this season, but get it back to full strength. But Monday night was a reminder that this isn’t yet a fully operational battle station; this Dolphins team has flaws that a good team — or a lucky one — can exploit in a hurry. It’s a shame the Dolphins couldn’t have stashed away a few of those Denver touchdowns for a rainy day; they could use them right about now.
“You think that you’re a good football team, but then each and every week you have to prove that on the field,” McDaniel said. “You can’t take anything for granted.”
