No must-win games this early. But opener at Patriots will test Dolphins rebuild plan
The Miami Dolphins season opener against the New England Patriots is not a must-win game.
Must-win games suggest contests of last resort, as in they breathe life or take it from a season with the result. This isn’t that.
This is a season’s beginning, not its potential end.
There will be life in the Dolphins after this one, regardless of the outcome. So this isn’t a must-win game.
But an important game? Even this early?
Yes, this is a very important game.
This one is important and all of important’s synonym friends such as meaningful and significant because this game will take an immediate measure of everything the franchise has done from the end of 2019 to now.
This game will measure Miami’s myriad roster moves and immediately judge them successful or something less than that. This game will measure Miami’s coaching staff and decide if the multiple firings, departures and restocking of that staff has paid immediate dividends or not.
This game, in short, will serve as a commentary on the Dolphins’ entire offseason.
The whole kit and caboodle is going to be judged initially by this game.
The Dolphins, 6.5 point underdogs among folks who measure such things, need to win to make the simple case they’re on a successful path this year after an offseason of much change to the roster and coaching staff.
A win could be offered as proof that the work done from January until now wasn’t in vain. A win proves that offseason work has already born fruit.
A loss?
Oy.
The Dolphins proclaim everything is new this year but we recall the 2019 team, huge underdogs to New England in last season’s regular-season finale, beat the Patriots 27-24 in December.
Those Patriots had a playoff bye riding on that game’s outcome. And they lost.
They had Tom Brady at quarterback. And they lost.
They had all those talented players who left the team in free agency this offseason. And they lost.
They had most of those eight other players who opted out of the 2020 season because of Covid-19. And they lost.
The Patriots had a stadium filled with fans. And they lost.
Now the Dolphins, supposedly upgraded, are going to the same venue with no fans, to face a team with no Brady, no Dont’a Hightower, No Kyle Van Noy, no Elandon Roberts, no Jamie Collins, no Patrick Chung, and no Marcus Cannon.
Miami’s going to that same place with an upgraded roster that includes former Patriots Ted Karras, Elandon Roberts and Van Noy. They’re going with representative talent that beat out some of the players from that 2019 team.
And given those added advantages, they aren’t going to win?
The Dolphins need to win.
The Dolphins better win.
Dolphins players say they’re better now than they were last year. They say they’re better on defense:
“We definitely – talent-wise, we definitely got better,” linebacker Jerome Baker said. “...Our expectations for whoever is in are high no matter who it is.
“That’s the one unique thing of even just rushing the passer. I might not have that much experience, but Shaq [Lawson] gets on me on how to do it. Kyle, he coaches me up on how to do it. The expectations do not change no matter who it is.
“Just having that, I think that raises everybody. It’s not just the individual player; but everybody in the room. It just raises your game. That’s one unique thing that truly I’m excited just to see, because it’s going to be a race to the quarterback. It’s going to be fun.”
The Dolphins say things now about their upgraded offense they didn’t say last year:
“We have a lot of talent on the offensive end and I think being able to utilize each guy, playing to their strengths and giving them some freedom to go out there and do what they do best, that will hopefully show up here as we get going,” quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said.
The Dolphins also have a pretty good feeling about themselves. It’s unquestionably better around this team than it was a year ago.
“There’s definitely a different feeling right now than there was last year at this exact time,” Fitzpatrick noted. “I think right now there’s a great vibe in the building. I think in terms of the personalities and the guys that have been on this team, with the guys that were added to this team, everybody is pulling in the same direction right now.”
So the Dolphins believe they’re going in the right direction. And some players believe they’ve got the right coach to set them on that course.
This game, you’ll recall, matches Dolphins coach Brian Flores versus Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Flores would probably never say this but he got the better of Belichick in that last meeting. His team was more enthusiastic and responded to in-game adversity better. The Patriots played sluggish and as if a win had been guaranteed to them in advance when it hadn’t been.
So the assignment for Flores now is to press his last advantage.
A pupil of Belichick after serving 15 years in the New England organization, Flores beat his mentor with an inferior team last year. Now the talent is better balanced and perhaps even weighted in Flores’s favor.
Belichick flipping the result could not be good news.
“I feel like Coach Flores has really grown, just as this team has really grown over the last year,” Fitzpatrick said. “Hopefully that continues and hopefully we start to see some results on the field.”
...Starting in Sunday’s already important game at New England.
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 9:07 PM.
