What the heck happened to us!? Where did it all go?
Better question: How do we get it back?
Frustration reached a boil now after the team (and its fans) suffered particularly disheartening weekend loss.
You saw it Monday as non-committal comments by Dolphins coach Joe Philbin and a willing media combined to manufacture a quarterback controversy (even if one doesn’t yet actually exist).
This was fun. At Dolphins camp the media demanded that Philbin confirm Ryan Tannehill as the starting quarterback and Philbin chose instead to say what he’d said after Sunday’s game: That everything is under review, that they’d pick the best 46 players, et cetera.
This is NOT the same as saying Tannehill’s job is in peril, although Your Friend the Media sniffed blood and sort of started running with it like that. Even though offensive coordinator Bill Lazor, asked if he had had any doubts Tannehill would start Sunday in London, said, simply, “No.”
It would be radical and convey premature desperation to bench Tannehill three games in. Lazor chided the media for “questions based on panic,” saying, “There’s no panic.”
Likewise Philbin did not sound like a man about to make a QB change when he said he doesn’t view the offensive problems as “a one-man issue,” adding Monday, “I think it’s a little bit early to draw conclusions as to where [Tannehill] is in his third year.”
The media heat on Tannehill is very much in the context of what has befallen each franchise over many years. This doesn’t spring from one or two games. The malaise of the Dolphins is a Petri dish for unrest.
Seems most every year we get teased that each team’s elusive return to glory may finally be at hand, but just as fans prepare to strike up a chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” something happens to change the tune to a groaning refrain of “here we go again.”
It has been well over 10 years since the Dolphins mattered nationally. Dominance has lapsed to irrelevance.
Five Super Bowl appearances, back-to-back victories and the towering twin epochs of Don Shula and Marino have yielded to 14 consecutive seasons since the last that included an NFL playoff victory.
It is the Dolphins who have seen us to the mountaintop, and who are finding the climb back up so arduous. It is the Fins whose expansive, beyond-Miami followings are filled with fans reaching for torches and pitchforks.
The Dolphins opened the season with a bracing victory over New England but have rendered that mirage-like with consecutive 19-pointlosses. Philbin is now 16-19 in his third season, while Tannehill, also in pivotal Year 3, is losing support and heard booing in Sunday’s loss to Kansas City.
Clearly, Tannehill must reverse a career arc that lends itself to the nickname, “Ryan Downhill.” But clearly, too, Lazor must find a way to allow Tannehill to flourish. There was also off-the-record-sniping at the game defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle called Sunday. So consider Philbin coaching for his job as much as Tannehill is playing to validate his future, with increasing doubts dogging both.
“We have to circle the wagons,” Philbin said.
Mostly, they have to hope those wagons are filled with enough good players and coaches.
(Meanwhile, what did poor London do to deserve this week’s Miami-Oakland game? I thought Great Britain was an ally!)
The Dolphins playing the woeful Raiders may consider the next games anything but a desperate fight to survive.
That is the state of Miami football in 2014, with the Dolphins’ glory days now the distant past and a speck on the horizon for Joe Philbin to somehow reach again.
