After this disappointing and trouble-filled year is over, there will be wonderful opportunities waiting for the Dolphins if only they can, after nearly a decade of failing, finally string together two or three good decisions.

It has been a long time since that happened, hasn’t it?

Fans of this team so inclined can turn the past decade into a sad trivia game of failed franchise-defining decisions that would surpass just about anything comparable in professional sports.

You remember those decisions, right?

Remember the league-wide search for a general manager in 2004? The Dolphins interviewed all the up-and-coming stars in the personnel field, including Ted Thompson, but somehow picked in-house candidate Rick Spielman.

Thompson eventually got the general manager job with Green Bay and has built a budding dynasty.

Remember the coach searches in 2005, 2007 and 2008?

The Dolphins interviewed, among others, Mike Tomlin, Rex Ryan, Chan Gailey and Dom Capers ...

… And hired Nick Saban, Cam Cameron and Tony Sparano.

The first group has gone on to win three Super Bowls, and reach three AFC title games and one NFC title game. The second group yielded two coaches that were fired and one that lied before skipping town.

The club’s grand search for a chief executive officer in 2004? Then-owner H. Wayne Huizenga hired a search firm headed by Joe Bailey. And Bailey, having searched far and wide for the new executive, convinced Huizenga only one man was capable of filling the job.

Joe Bailey.

Bailey’s greatest success would be a nightly radio show. The show was unlistenable and unrated, but it was Bailey’s greatest success nonetheless.

The Dolphins also had countless opportunities to fill the void left by quarterback Dan Marino’s retirement in 2000 but seemingly signed or drafted everyone and anyone as long as they weren’t named Drew Brees.

Are we seeing a trend here?

Over the past decade, the Dolphins have had ample chances to set a course for success and every single time have instead steered into a concrete wall. And the frustrating thing is those wrong decisions were rarely made by the same people, so it wasn’t one individual’s blunders that hurt the franchise but rather failure on an institutional scale.

So isn’t it time the law of averages kicked in?

Don’t Dolphins fans get a break eventually?

The timing is now perfect for that because in the coming months this franchise has a grand opportunity to fix, well, everything.

The team will hire a new coach at a time proven, Super Bowl winning coaches, hot coordinators and brilliant college coaches are available.

The team might hire a new man to oversee all football operations.

The team will draft or sign a potential franchise quarterback in a year where franchise quarterbacks seem abundant in the draft, and Peyton Manning might be available in free agency.

With Tom Brady getting no younger and questions still hovering over Mark Sanchez and Ryan Fitzpatrick, the AFC East will be a wide-open division in the next few years and there’s nothing that says it cannot belong to the new Dolphins.

But only if these guys finally pick the right people.

Owner Stephen Ross has to get this right. If he’s going to hire Carl Peterson to head football operations as NFL sources are insisting, these two can’t just fill the coaching vacancy with a future fired coach that will eventually top off the Wannstedt-Saban-Cameron heap.