After an awful Week 1 loss, Dolphins must practice levelheadedness
Don’t get too high or too low.
It’s a mantra that often gets repeated in football circles. The meaning is simple: play the middle because highs and lows are when focus often tends to break. And after Sunday’s 33-8 drubbing by the Indianapolis Colts, the Miami Dolphins’ focus will surely be tested for the week.
“The positive is that it was a miserable experience,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said of the loss. “It was embarrassing. Flat out.”
As the Dolphins begin to shift focus to Week 2, the importance of levelheadedness cannot be understated. Miami will host their first home game and AFC East game Sunday against a New England Patriots team that, after also losing their season opener, will also be hungry for a win. The worse thing that can happen then will be to still have some lingering thoughts about the Colts.
“It’s very important because when you get too high when you’re winning, that win can get you unfocused on other things,” rookie defensive tackle Kenneth Grant said Monday. “But when you get too low, the Colts could beat us twice. That’s what we like to say: they could beat us twice.
“We have to rest our clock and on to the next because it’s the NFL: we don’t want two losses in a row.”
That said, McDaniel pointed out the obvious: it was just one of 17 games.
“Right now, we have one loss,” McDaniel said Monday afternoon. “Our job is to learn from both good and bad but to continue to progress so that you can play meaningful football that actually matters and win those games down the stretch of the season.”
For fans, however, it’s difficult to not overreact. It had been roughly nine months since the Dolphins last played a regular-season game, and the result was not only the same, it was arguably worse than the 32-20 loss to the New York Jets. At least then you could say the loss was to a future Hall of Famer in Aaron Rodgers rather than Daniel Jones, a quarterback who has thrown more interceptions (13) than touchdowns (11) since 2023.
McDaniel, however, understood the reaction from Dolphins and NFL fans alike, both of whom used various social media platforms to post jokes and memes as the aqua and orange became the league’s running joke.
“We have to improve from the last performance, but we have to improve in general like every team does, or we get left in the dust,” McDaniel said. “I think one of 17 is one of 17, and if that type of game doesn’t show up ever again, that’s the only way you make it worth it because otherwise it’s just miserable for miserable sake.”
The key to remaining levelheaded, McDaniel said, will be to “utilize history and your experiences.” He recalled his time as an offensive assistant for the Atlanta Falcons during the 2016 season when the team went to Super Bowl 51 – after a 31-24 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to open the season. Or when the Dolphins started off the 2023 season 3-0 just to lose their final two games and subsequently get bounced by the Kansas City Chiefs in the wild card round.
In both situations, the goal remains the same, according to McDaniel.
“You’re trying to get people connected to their game and develop it and grow the overall collective football as the season progresses,” McDaniel said.
How the Dolphins grow from such an awful performance will be paramount. Some tough decisions will have to be made if this trend continues. While it might be too soon to hit the panic button, something needs to change before it’s too late.
“We don’t want to overreact but we don’t want to underreact with what the performance was like,” quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said Sunday afternoon. “We got to go look at the film. But I’m definitely curious to see. ‘Okay, I came in on Tuesday, I’ve seen these guys on Tuesday, last week.’ I want to see if these same guys are watching film on Tuesday this week. I want to see how everyone goes about their process. I mean, same for me. But then outside of their process, how they go out there and execute what they need to do to be able to turn this thing around for Week 2.”
