Are the Dolphins’ struggles against good teams overstated? What recent history shows
The Dolphins enter their bye with a 6-3 record and sitting in first place in the AFC East. The first half of the 2023 season has largely been a success for Miami. The team has the No. 1 scoring offense in the NFL and a defense that, at full strength for the first time this past weekend, had an encouraging performance.
However, the Dolphins’ 21-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Frankfurt, Germany — a defeat marked by mistakes and miscues down to the final snaps — continued what has been a discouraging trend this season.
Each of the Dolphins’ losses has come to teams with a winning record, prompting many to question the merits of their accomplishments so far and their status as contenders in the AFC.
After the defeat, McDaniel acknowledged the public perception of his team.
“The narratives of how we lose games or the types of teams we lose to, there’s one way that will change,” he said Monday. “I don’t think that’s unfair and I’m very comfortable with that and I think all the players understand that.
He added: “I think what the feeling of the locker room is, is that when we lose, we beat ourselves. And it so happens I think in this season, that when we have beaten ourselves, there’s been three teams that have really taken advantage of that and they all have winning records. Correlation, causation? The bottom line is we’re finding different things out that have nothing to do with our opponents, in my opinion, as much as they deserve credit.”
Narratives can often be extreme, but the reality for the Dolphins is that there has been a disparity in performance when facing good teams and then when going up against subpar opponents. Miami’s strength of victory — 0.275 — is not only the lowest mark in the conference but in the entire league. Strength of victory refers to the cumulative winning percentage of the defeated teams, and none of Miami’s wins have come against a team currently with a winning record (The Los Angeles Chargers, whom the Dolphins beat in Week 1, are 4-4).
There is something to be said about winning games you are expected to and the Dolphins have done that. All of Miami’s games against .500-record-or-worse teams have resulted in victories.
But what does recent history say about performance against winning teams and success in the playoffs?
Win percentages against teams above .500 is an arbitrary stat. A 9-8 team isn’t nearly as formidable as the No. 1 seed in the conference — and the Dolphins have lost to both of those teams, the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, this season.
For this experiment, though, the Miami Herald looked into the records of the last two season’s conference finalists against teams who ended the regular season with a winning record. In each of the last two years, all but one of the final four teams — the 2021 Los Angeles Rams, who won the Super Bowl — had a winning record in the regular against teams who finished above .500 (The 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won the Super Bowl, also had a losing record in the regular season against teams above .500, finishing with a 1-4 record in such matchups).
In 2022, the Chiefs were 5-2 against above-.500 teams and the Cincinnati Bengals were 4-3. In the NFC, the Eagles were 7-1 and the San Francisco 49ers were 4-1.
In 2021, the Bengals were 4-3 against teams with a winning record and the Chiefs were 8-3. In the NFC, the Rams were 3-5 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 6-3.
The Chiefs (3-1), Baltimore Ravens (4-1) and Jacksonville Jaguars (3-1), the other division leaders in the AFC this season, have multiple wins against teams with a winning record.
For reference, the 2022 Dolphins were 4-5 against teams that finished the season with a winning record and 2-5 against teams that made the playoffs.
Context is needed in all situations, though. Each of the Dolphins’ games against teams with a winning record so far this season has come on the road, where Miami’s timing-based offense has struggled with crowd noise and pre-snap penalties. The Dolphins lost road matchups to the Eagles and Buffalo Bills and then a neutral site game in Germany, where the crowd leaned pro-Chiefs.
The Dolphins should have multiple opportunities for “measuring stick” games at home toward the end of the season, likely against the Dallas Cowboys (5-3) on Christmas Eve and then the Bills (5-4) in the regular-season finale. Miami will also face the Ravens (7-2) in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve. And those matchups land in the final month of the regular season when McDaniel has said he wants the team to be at its best, not in early November.
With a team that is getting healthier and a defense that has steadily improved since the start of the season, there is reason to believe that the Dolphins haven’t reached their peak. However, the bye week will be key to address several areas of improvement, specifically an offense that hasn’t traveled well, ahead of the second-half push.
“I think the main thing we learned is we’ve got the potential, but we just have to keep putting the work in,” inside linebacker Jerome Baker said. “We’ve got to keep believing in what we’re doing, believing what the coaches are saying and we’ll be alright. I think throughout the year we just kept getting better and better. I think this is the right time to take a little break and come back full force and go on a little run.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2023 at 2:19 PM.
