They misplaced it in San Francisco. They blew it in Los Angeles. They simply missed it in Buffalo.
They’ll put it aside at dwelling.
If the Miami Dolphins are who they imagine they’re, in the event that they’re the workforce we watched till a December street stretch, they finish this three-game dropping streak of their return Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday with a win towards Green Bay.
Everyone is stuffed with playoff paths for the Dolphins, from successful two of their ultimate three regular-season video games, to getting some assist if a few groups lose, to having a 78 % likelihood of creating the postseason getting into Sunday in keeping with the positioning fivethirtyeight.com.
Every sure path begins with a win Sunday. This recreation is a referendum on the Dolphins (8-6). Everyone’s seen how proficient they’re. This will inform how powerful they’re to discard this current dropping stretch and reclaim their season towards a 6-8 Green Bay workforce that’s within the backside half of all of the heavyweight statistics.
“It’s a big game, but they’re all big and look around,” working again Raheem Mostert mentioned this previous week within the locker room. “We’re going to be ready.”
There’s no obvious hangover from the tough street stretch, no apparent rigidity in the best way some groups have and others want to shut out a season. That’s not this workforce’s identification. Coach Mike McDaniel remained his regular self, proper all the way down to his reply about the perfect qualities of his former workmate, Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur.
“Styling his hair,” McDaniel mentioned. “It’s really good. Brushing his teeth, too. He’s got very, very white teeth.”
That mentioned greater than the intense reply McDaniel then gave, the one about LaFleur’s humility, his successful on an historic stage and the way, “He’s a great person, a great football mind, hard worker and I think he’d probably be in the top three most attractive head coaches in the history National Football League.”
McDaniel, you see, is staying true to his totally different self. Joe Philbin provided no management identification and misplaced an opportunity on the playoffs within the ultimate weeks in 2013 and 2014. Brian Flores was a tough-love man — a no-love man, actually — and his groups cracked at Tennessee with the playoffs on the road final season and Buffalo the 12 months earlier than.
Flores didn’t have a authentic playoff workforce both 12 months. McDaniel does. This workforce has expertise up and down the roster. It’s essentially the most dynamic offensive expertise with receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle because the Marks Brothers on Dan Marino’s Nineteen Eighties groups.
These Dolphins have the richest defensive expertise since Jimmy Johnson drafted two Hall of Famers (Jason Taylor and hopefully soon-to-be Zach Thomas) and two All-Pro cornerbacks who now coach the Dolphins, Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain.
“We know what we have to do,” guard Robert Hunt mentioned. “We just have to go do it now.”
There’s a sense across the Dolphins that they need to have crushed Buffalo after they had them down final Saturday. There’s a sense they’ve left this season a bit up for grabs in dropping the previous three video games on the street.
“Everything’s in front of us,” Hunt mentioned.
The recreation. The playoff path. Maybe some harm after that, too. This is the kind of recreation the Dolphins can use to shake off the earlier three video games and put all the things again on observe for a robust end.
It’s Christmas Day, too, a day that outlined this franchise for the primary time 51 years in the past. They beat an awesome Chiefs workforce, then went on to win their first Super Bowl. A extra parallel day got here in in 1994 when the Dolphins beat Detroit to cement their home-field playoff recreation.
“Big plays in big moments,” Marino mentioned after that recreation.
They’re at that time once more. Over the previous 20 years, the Dolphins had the texture an excessive amount of of an elevator taking place right now of 12 months. It nonetheless has the texture of 1 going up this season. They’ve proven their proficient sufficient, inventive sufficient and flat-out adequate to make the playoffs.
Now they’ve to point out they’re powerful sufficient to disregard the earlier three losses and reclaim their season.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com