Morning in Miami

January 15, 2000: Jacksonville Jaguars 62, Miami Dolphins 7

A team that had, the previous week, gone into Seattle, making the NFL’s longest trip, and won a playoff game (this is so long ago that Seattle was in the AFC), took one of the NFL’s shortest trips and managed to lose by 55 points.

Two Hall of Famers, Dan Marino, and Jimmy Johnson would never play or coach, respectively, again.

In the 20 years since, the Dolphins have played in 5 playoff games, winning 1. And 3 of those 5 were in the 2 years immediately following the Jacksonville debacle, the last gasps of breath from a once model franchise.

And that’s what they were. A model franchise. It’s been 20 years of futility, so it’s tough to remember, but from 1970 to 2002, the Dolphins made the playoffs 21 times and missed it only 11 times. They won 2 Super Bowls and played in 3 others. This was the franchise worth emulating. Since 2002, they’ve missed the playoffs 16 of 18 times and haven’t won a playoff game.

Likewise, the Dolphins spent 30 of their first 34 years as a franchise led by future Hall of Famers. Since then…we know the names: Dave Wannstedt, Nick Saban, Cam Cameron, Tony Sparano, Joe Philbin, Adam Gase. Futility, thy name is Dolphins.

In the 1930s, Winston Churchill said of France:

Thank God for the French Army. France is not only the sole great surviving democracy in Europe; she is also the strongest military power, I am glad to say, and she is the head of a system of States and nations.

That was the Dolphins. The proudest, the best, and then poof…in an instance gone in the same manner that the France fell over the course of a few months in 1940.

Darkness Had Descended on the Dolphins Empire.

Through bad luck, bad decisions, an ownership change, churn in the front office…the Dolphins have been on a hamster wheel to nothingness. Even the right decisions ended up wrong.

• They hire the right coach in Nick Saban, and he elevates to one of the finest coaches in football history. In college, at Alabama.
• They medically evaluate two QBs and select the one that seemed healthier. The Dolphins end up snake-bit with Daunte Culpepper while the Saints (previously known as the “Aints” and famous for having fans wear paper bags over their heads) win the Super Bowl with Drew Brees.
• The Dolphins (finally!) use a Top 10 pick on a QB, Ryan Tannehill, and he somehow ends up not being great AND not busting…walking the tightrope between maybe good enough, perhaps not good enough, resulting in years of mediocrity.

But the context worsened things. Not only were the Dolphins seemingly going nowhere, but the Patriots turned into the best franchise in the NFL. Since the Dolphins last won a playoff game, the Patriots have won SIX Super Bowls.

The combination of the Dolphins’ mediocrity and the Patriots’ excellence over an absurdly long period of time robbed the Dolphins of the one thing that all fan bases have: hope.

South Florida is famous for short, violent thunderstorms intermingled with brilliant sunshine. That’s also how the NFL works. You stink to get a high draft pick (thunderstorm), and then you get the sunshine, which at the very least hopes that the pick will elevate the franchise to championship status.

The Dolphins had none of that. Perpetually overcast. No franchise-changing player to be excited about, and no realistic chance to compete with the menace in Boston. 

And so the Dolphins tried a new strategy.

They hired a coach from the Patriots.

They tanked for the generational player in the form of Tua Tagovailoa.

Everything was going according to plan.

And then it wasn’t. The Dolphins history of making the right decision and having it blow up in their face seemed to be repeating itself. Hiring a good coach and attempting to hand him the number one pick should be a good thing. But it’s the Dolphins, so of course that coach does TOO good of a job, and the Dolphins somehow win 5 games.

Fire up the hamster wheel!

Except a funny thing happened on the way to the mediocrity jamboree. It turns out that one of those 5 wins ruined the Patriots season, sent them into the Wild Card Round, and was the death knell of the Patriots empire. Tom Brady has resorted to walking into the wrong people’s houses as a member of the Buccaneers.

Okay, so a silver lining. The Patriots are (FINALLY!) going to rebuild but the Dolphins still blew Tua.

But wait, there’s more. Tua’s injury caused him to fall to Miami.

Had the Dolphins gone 0-16, they likely still would have coveted and taken Tua, but Brady might still be in New England. Maybe the Patriots would have a 7th Super Bowl. We’ll never know. Had the Dolphins won any more games (the Chargers took a QB right after them), they would have lost out on Tua.

But this time, that didn’t happen.

Somehow, the franchise that had been cursed for 20 years, that did things correctly and watched them fail so many times, managed to hit that sweet spot where they won just the exact right number of games, and the specific games, to hasten the end of the Brady Era in New England and still get the player they were tanking for, while also not having to eradicate a culture of intentionally losing from their locker room.

After 20 years of everything going wrong, of suffering, not under the stench of poor play, but under the weight of hopelessness, the Dolphins had it break their way. At this moment, the Miami Dolphins have the brightest future in the AFC East.

For the first time in 20 years, the clouds are breaking, and the sun is shining through. Back to Churchill, as he addressed a defeated, hopeless French nation in 1940:

Good night then: Sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. brightly it will shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.

It took more than 20 years, from that fateful capitulation in Jacksonville to Roger Goodell announcing that the Dolphins had selected Tua, but morning has come for the Dolphins. Brightly does it shine on the brave and true fans who suffered through decades of hopelessness. Hope has returned to Miami.

The dawn is shining.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports and generally covers the Miami Hurricanes. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003