With ghosts of glory days watching, Miami Dolphins showed inept effort in 3rd straight loss | Opinion
The Miami Dolphins lead the league in nostalgia — if only they approached that accomplishment on the football field again — and the weekend of celebrating the good ol’ days in the rear-view continued on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium.
This was wrapped around a performance by the current Dolphins mostly so bad and boring it would have put caffeine to sleep. They warn you before every NFL game, “No cheering in the press box.” They don’t say anything about no sleeping or snoring.
Miami lost, 27-17, to the Indianapolis Colts. Who were 0-3, by the way. The Dolphins moved the ball as if it were a boulder on an incline until a late awakening and two fourth-quarter touchdowns made the final score almost respectable when little about this result was for Miami.
“We played bad across the board,” coach Brian Flores put it bluntly -- and accurately. “Offense, defense, kicking game, penalties, turnovers -- across the board. There’s a lot of things that are not connecting. Lack of focus. Lack of concentration. Lack of attention to details...”
The Dolphins continue afraid to throw downfield. Miami’s meager 203 total offensive yards came mostly on those two late drives. Dropped passes and penalties are hurting. Indy showed mercy at the end, three times kneeling from the Fins’ 3-yard line.
The locals have now been outscored 62-17 in two home games. This third straight loss means Miami is facing a 1-3 start to this season, with a trip to champion Tampa Bay on deck.
The Dolphins have not one but two offensive coordinators. For this!? If they had none, at least there’d be an excuse.
Right tackle Jesse Davis, what was the postgame lockerroom like?
“Probably not somewhere you want to be right now,” he said. “No. 1 thing is, we gotta stay together. Biggest thing is, don’t be pointing fingers.”
The stadium was full of former Fins players from better days there for Alumni Weekend, and for festivities honoring the memory of the great Don Shula. Every one of them, and that includes the ghost of Shula, had to be a bit embarrassed by what they were seeing. And hearing — with booing by home fans getting louder as the game, and ineptitude, dragged on.
There were 64,571 tickets distributed. The actual crowd was noticeably less.
Through three quarters I was hoping Shula might appear as a jaw-jutting apparition and start berating coaches and players on the Dolphins sideline.
At one point during halftime events honoring Shula, Nat Moore, the former great receiver and now a club vice president, said to the disgruntled crowd, “Wow! What an amazing weekend of events!”
Yes, lacking only a credible performance by the latest iteration of a Dolphins franchise that, for about the past 20 years, has done little but disappoint and fail to generate excitement about new glory days ahead.
The honorary captains for the pregame coin flip were 1972 Perfect Season stalwarts Larry Csonka, Bob Griese and Larry Little, joined by more recent heroes Dan Marino and Dwight Stephenson. (“More recent “ is a relative term. Marino just turned 60.)
Dolphins cheerleaders wore jerseys numbered ‘72. The midfield logo and end-zone were expansion-era late ‘60s designs. White towels waved, from the way-back machine.
The choir from St. Thomas University, where the heyday Dolphins trained for 23 years when it was Biscayne College, sang the national anthem.
Shula’s family and former players took the field for the halftime ceremony honoring the iconic glory days coach who passed away at age 90 in March 2020. A commissioned painting of Shula was presented to the family. A separate, pandemic-delayed Celebration of Life event for Shula had been held at the stadium Saturday, but when you win a record 347 games, you deserve a weekend, not just a day.
Nothing wrong with any of this. The opposite. It’s good to have good old days to feel good about.
We get the same thing across town from Hurricanes football rightly celebrating its own more recent but ever-distant glory days. If you got the trophies in the case, make sure somebody’s in charge of dusting and polishing to keep them appearing new.
For the Canes and Dolphins both, though, we grow weary not of celebrating the past — but for the void of anything in the present worthy of high fives or hope.
This may be too gloomy on my part. After all, the Dolphins were 10-6 last season. And, yes, maybe Tua Tagovailoa will prove to be good, after all, as Jacoby Brissett continued Sunday to work in Tua’s injury absence.
But nothing excuses Sunday’s mostly putrid effort, and that includes a backup QB.
Indy was winless and full of injured players and on the road — and yet dominated a home team that should have been desperate after two straight losses and dare say inspired by the ghosts of Dolphins greatness all over the place.
They didn’t show any of that until the too-little-too-late spark. Whatever the Dolphins did to somehow win 10 games last season has run away and left them grasping at air, and for answers.
This story was originally published October 3, 2021 at 4:13 PM.
