The Miami Dolphins spent part of Sunday's season finale honoring iconic former coach Don Shula, the franchise's Patron Saint of the Good Old Days, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The Dolphins spent the other part of Sunday's home game demonstrating how far this franchise still is from augmenting those halcyon memories with something new -- like, maybe something from this century?
The juxtaposition of what Shula represents and the club's latter-day struggles was somehow fitting. No NFL franchise celebrates its distant past more than Miami, perhaps because few clubs exceed the Dolphins for recent futility.
Sunday's 30-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers commenced the latest wait-'til-next-year for the Dolphins and their fans, Miami's dejection underlined by the insult-to-injury sight of thousands of Terrible Towels whipping through the crowd.
Not to mention the injury-to-insult of quarterback Chad Henne getting knocked out of the game with blurred vision, and then backup QB Pat White being carried off on a stretcher after an even harder hit.
