Dusk turned to dark on the game and the Miami Dolphins’ season here Sunday, the cloudy sky spilling rain an apt metaphor for gloom. Because the overarching bottom line is plain and beyond debate: Another Fins season ended too soon, and another NFL playoffs begins now with Miami a spectator yet again. Left behind. Again.
New year, same as the old year. I get that. I get every bit of cynicism that has hardened like scar tissue in so many Dolphins fans.
And I get that Tua Tagovailoa, in ending his Year 2, did little to inspire faith in his doubters. Not with a mere 109 yards passing. Not with Miami starting out fast and then pretty much hanging on to win.
This harshest reality of no playoffs and lingering doubts in Tagovailoa doesn’t tell it all, though. It doesn’t tell enough. It doesn’t have the power to demand how Dolfans should feel about their team moving forward.
The season-ending 33-24 home victory over longtime nemesis New England for a 9-8 final record meant Miami’s first back-to-back winning seasons since 2002-03, and the sixth consecutive win at home is the most since 2001-02..
That isn’t nothing.
“Very proud of this team, their fight and resilience,” Dolphins coach Brian Flores said. “Lot of ups and downs. Certainly a season I’ll remember. There’s certainly some things I’ve learned. Hopefully I’ve grown a little bit. I hope that’s the case for everyone. ”
The Dolphins allowed the fewest yards per play of any defense in the league since Week 9 — Sunday’s effort on D punctuated by Xavien Howard’s 37-yard interception return touchdown.
That isn’t nothing.
“Momentum changed when we scored a touchdown on defense,” Howard said. “We stuck together this season. At 1-7 we could have quit. Ended up finishing on a good note.”
Two sacks enabled the Miami defense to tie the club record for season sacks with 49, set in 1983 and previously tied in 2005.
Even with the one added game, that isn’t nothing, either.
Jaylen Waddle set an NFL rookie record for catches in a season with 104, one of them a 7-yard TD followed by his silly-charming Waddle dance in the end zone. The record had stood since 2003, when Waddle was 5. Just as Jaelan Phillips set the Fins’ rookie record for most sacks in a season (and had a key fumble recovery on Sunday).
That isn’t nothing.
Flores getting the better of mentor Bill Belichick again (including trickery on a successful fake punt) meant the Fins’ first season sweep of the Patriots since 2000.
That isn’t nothing.
“That’s the head man. We follow his lead,” said Christian Wilkins of Flores. “He held us together.”
Mike Gesicki, Emmanuel Ogbah, Chrsitian Wilkins, Jerome Baker, Jevon Holland. All really good, too. And Duke Johnson, a late breath of needed fresh air who is enjoying a career rebirth and starred in the 75-yard drive Sunday that gave Miami breathing room at 24-10.
That isn’t nothing.
Oh, and Tagovailoa ended a season of clear overall improvement, though not dramatically so, and underwhelmingly on Sunday, going 15 for 22 for 109 yards, but that one TD.
That certainly isn’t good enough. But it isn’t nothing. The needle on his potential still pointing up — that is is the most essential something of all.
“I thought he played well,” said Flores of Tagovailoa. “Some big runs in critical situations. He made some good passes. I can tell you he’s grown a lot this season. From a leadership and command of the offense standpoint.”
Tagovailoa was enjoying himself as the team hit a point total that should be common, not a high-water mark. They have topped matched 33 only one other time, and only hit that Sunday with a last-second interception. After Tagovailoa’s 23-yard third-down run led to a field goal, he gave it a finger-gun first down point as the crowd roared. He totaled 38 yards on five scrambles.
At one point late a “Tua” chant broke out in the stadium. It was brief. But it happened.
“I personally didn’t hear the chants. Only after the game when I was going through the tunnel,” the young quarterback said. “I mean the season’s been up and down, for me and the team in general. We wanted to end with a bang, so that’s what we went out there and did. We’ll see what the offseason holds for us.”
Offense remains this team’s problem, though. It is where the adding and building must be focused.
Our optimistic tone here is not to excuse the no-playoffs bottom line. That Miami made made a run at it despite that 1-7 start is its own slice of remarkable. But when you stand third in the AFC East and watch ascending Buffalo and the good-again post-Tom Brady Patriots both in the postseason, you have nothing to say except, “We are not good enough.”
But neither is this the time, or the occasion, to panic and reach for a reset button. To do anything stupid. Two straight years out of the playoffs in this league can make it too easy to overreact. Two years totaling a 19-14 record, with a lot of good going on, are reasons to not overreact.
And that thinking should steer the path forward regarding the most important position.
The offseason starts now — heck, it started the minute Sunday evening’s game ended — and it is an offseason that should find the Dolphins believing in Tagoaviloa enough to build around him and ditch the notion of spending at least three first-round draft picks and a lot more to trade for Deshaun Watson. (And in doing so betray every syllable ever uttered about building a culture here, about character mattering).
The past two seasons have told us this Dolphins team is not good enough, but that it is not far from that.
The coming couple of months will tell us much more about this Dolphins management, as reports out of Houston indicate the Texans hope to strike a trade for Watson by the March 16 start of the new NFL calendar year and free agency.
We will see if the Dolphins panic and do something stupid.
Or we will see if the Dolphins trust in the growth potential still ahead for Tua Tagovailoa and build around him and the foundation in place.