Cote: Dolphins, beware. Super Bowl signals rise of Patriots 2.0 dynasty | Opinion
Like most football-worshiping Americans I watched seven hours straight on Sunday as the New England Patriots and then the Seattle Seahawks both won to advance to the Feb. 8 Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Cal. (It will be the 60th edition, or LX to those of you still living in Ancient Rome and using those numbers.)
My first thought on the newly minted matchup: Deja vu. Sure enough, the same two franchises played for the King Sport crown 11 seasons earlier, Patriots winning 28-24 when Seattle failed to give the ball to Marshawn Lynch in late short-yardage and threw an interception.
My second thought involved the Miami Dolphins, which makes this maybe the first time in more than 40 years that “Dolphins” and “Super Bowl” have appeared in the same sentence.
Imagine you are stuck forever on the block where you live, where fate has rather randomly placed you. You don’t like the area. You hate your neighbors. But you cannot move. You’re trapped.
This is how the Dolphins and their fans must feel imprisoned in the AFC East by the crapshoot of the NFL’s division system. If only they could work a trade into the NFC South, for example, where no team had even a .500 record this season.
Instead Miami, beginning its latest reboot with new coach/general manager tandem Jeff Hafley and Jon-Eric Sullivan, remains in AFC East purgatory. It is the crux of the curse, the gist of the jinx: the Dolphins and Don Shula were gifted the best team in football for the first half of the 1970s, won two Super Bowls in a row including the one-and-still-only Perfect Season. And the Fins have won nothing of note since.
Not saying that Shula sold his soul to the devil or anything, but not even the great Dan Marino could break the curse. It is why Cam Cameron was hired. Why Ricky Williams quit in his prime to search for his soul. Why “Bullygate” happened here. Why an offensive line coach was caught snorting cocaine off his training camp desk. Why Tua Tagovailoa was drafted, not Justin Herbert. The curse.
That brings us back to this Super Bowl matchup, and the Patriots being in it.
Marino retired as the new millennium began, and what was waiting to greet Miami was Tom Brady and an epic run of New England dominance, with six Super Bowl crowns from 2001 to 2018. The Pats were landlord of the AFC East. Not coincidentally Miami won its last playoff game — its last to this day — in the 2000 season just as New England’s rise was dawning.
Finally, mercifully, the Bill Belichick/Brady era ebbed and ended. South Florida celebrated. The wicked witch was dead! Was the Dolphins’ curse over as well?
No.
Along came Josh Allen and a new nemesis, the Buffalo Bills. Their death grip atop the AFC East lasted five years ... until New England returned to power to end it.
Now: Patriots 2.0.
Belichick is now played by Mike Vrabel, who on Feb. 8 can become the first man to win a Super Bowl as both a player and head coach with the same franchise.
And Brady is now portrayed by Drake Maye, who on Feb. 8 will be the second-youngest quarterback to start a Super Bowl. The only younger was Dan Marino to cap the 1984 season in what is Miami’s most recent SB appearance.
(“Thank God for the Dolphins at least there’s us,” said the AFC East’s bottom-dwelling New York Jets.)
A New England-Seattle Super Bowl from a Miami vantage most obviously signals the foreboding New Rise of the Patriots, who with a great QB only 23 years old may themselves be a budding dynasty, or at least the new boss in the AFC East. This sudden new reality is why the Bills panicked and just fired coach Sean McDermott despite his 106-58 record in Buffalo. And why the Dolphins fired Mike McDaniel.
So is there anything positive for Dolfans to discern from a Patriots-Seahawks SB?
For fans in a hopeful mood, sure.
New England is proof rags-to-riches is still a thing in the NFL. The Pats were a dreadful 4-13 each of the previous two seasons. The idea of Miami boomeranging from 7-10 to make the playoffs next year and maybe even end that playoff-victory drought is not be crazy. But the Pats’ turnaround happened because they hit a home run drafting Maye and struck gold hiring Vrabel.
Hafley may or may not prove to be a home run hire, and he inherits QB upheaval at the moment with Tua Tagovailoa, Quinn Ewers, Zach Wilson and maybe free agent Malik Willis to choose from. But...
Seattle making the Super Bowl is proof you can get there without a top-tier quarterback, as few have ever called Sam Darnold that across his journeyman career with the Jets, Panthers, 49ers, Vikings and now Seahawks. Super Bowl-winning QBs have included Jim McMahon, Doug Williams, Jeff Hostetler, Mark Rypien Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson and Nick Foles. Because all of their teams had strengths greater than the guy taking snaps.
Heck, the Dolphins reached a Super Bowl with David Woodley passing back in 1982 B.M. (Before Marino).
Seattle getting this far might also encourage Dolfans by reminding that an NFL head coach with no previous experience at that job can succeed — as Miami hopes Hafley will. The Seahawks have done that with Mike Macdonald, who replaced Pete Carroll in 2024 as a rookie head coach and has gone 26-10 with Geno Smith and Darnold at QB. And the Seahawks are early 4 1/2-point favorites to make Macdonald, at 38, the third-youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl.
What’s it all portend for Miami?
Brighter days might be ahead, particularly if he Dolphins can swing a trade into the NFC South, or luck into a great quarterback, or the curse finally ends, or Drake Maye abruptly retires from football to join a monastery.
