Happy To Be Here

On behalf of the Miami Dolphins, I would like to announce that we are (just) happy to be here, in the NFL22 playoffs. It would be nice to beat the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, and we, of course, hope for the best. But, truthfully, this season has been a huge success for us; we are totally satisfied with the results, and everything from here on is just a gravy situation. 

I saw somebody on a message board last night mocking our success with an announcement of a "Qualified-for-the-Postseason" Parade starting from the Dolphins' stadium parking lot this afternoon. I thought that was a pretty clever troll, but I actually do think this would be an excellent idea, and, in fact, I will be conducting a celebratory parade in my imagination all week long and all the way to Buffalo until noon Central Sunday. 

Go, Dolphins!

NFL19 Update

While the crew was filming, a Bengals employee noticed that the camera was focused on the sidelines for most of the first quarter and notified the media relations team. https://t.co/04fKDsMNtS

— NewsRadio 840 WHAS (@840WHAS) December 10, 2019

Before he was hired by the long-cheating New England Patriots in 2000, Bill Belichick's career record as an NFL head coach was 36-44. When he was drafted by the Patriots in that same year, Tom Brady was selected with the 199th choice. It would be interesting to know how successful these two might've been without all of the cheating. In an NFL explicitly engineered for parity and razor-thin competitive margins, would Belichick have been closer to the subpar NFL head coach his actual NFL record showed him to be before 2000, or would he have achieved the genius-coach status he has acquired over the last 19 years and the Patriots' multiple instances of exposed cheating and presumably many, many more instances of unexposed cheating? Would Brady have turned out to be the marginal quarterback prospect all of the NFL teams concluded him to be when he left the University of Michigan, or would he have still come to be widely considered as one of the league's absolute all-time greats? For that matter, what might've been made of the careers of the dozens of players and coaches who have excelled in New England but have proven unable to replicate those successes with other teams?

But, of course, we never will know, and that's a shame. What we do know is that cheating is wrong, stupid and no fun and that we don't have to pretend otherwise. So, anyway, this seems like an opportune moment to catch up on the race for the NFL19 championship.

AFC (five or six legitimate teams will qualify for the playoffs)

1. Baltimore Ravens (NFL00, NFL12 champ; NFL11* co-champ) 11-2
2. Buffalo Bills 9-3*
3. Kansas City Chiefs (NFL69 champ) 9-4
4. Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL74, NFL75, NFL78, NFL79, NFL05, NFL08 champ; NFL01*, NFL04* NFL16* co-champ) 8-4*
5. Houston Texans 8-5
6. Tennessee Titans 8-5
7. Cleveland Browns 6-6*
8. Oakland Raiders (NFL76, NFL80, NFL83 champ) 6-7
9. Indianapolis Colts (NFL70, NFL06 champ; NFL03*, NFL14* co-champ) 6-7
10. New York Jets (NFL68 champ) 5-6*
11. Denver Broncos (NFL97, NFL98, NFL15 champ) 5-8
12. San Diego Chargers (NFL07* co-champ)  5-8
13. Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL97*, NFL17* co-champ) 4-9
14. Miami Dolphins (NFL72, NFL73 champ; NFL85* co-champ) 3-9*
15. Cincinnati Bengals 1-12

NFC (six teams will qualify for the playoffs)

1. San Francisco 49ers (NFL81, NFL84, NFL88, NFL89, NFL94 champ) 11-2
2. Green Bay Packers (NFL66, NFL67, NFL10 champ; NFL97* co-champ) 10-3
3. New Orleans Saints (NFL09 champ) 10-3
4. Seattle Seahawks (NFL13 champ, NFL14* co-champ) 10-3
5. Minnesota Vikings 9-4
6. Los Angeles Rams (NFL99, NFL18 champ) 8-5
7. Chicago Bears (NFL85* co-champ) 7-6
8. Dallas Cowboys (NFL71, NFL77, NFL92, NFL93, NFL95 champ) 6-6*
9. Philadelphia Eagles (NFL04*, NFL17* co-champ) 6-6*
10. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (NFL02 champ) 6-7
11. Carolina Panthers (NFL03* co-champ) 5-8
12. Atlanta Falcons (NFL16* co-champ) 4-9
13. Detroit Lions 3-9-1
14. Arizona Cardinals 3-9-1
15. Washington Redskins (NFL82, NFL87, NFL91 champ) 3-9*
16. New York Giants (NFL86, NFL90 champ; NFL07*, NFL11* co-champ) 2-10*

*Losses against cheaters don't count; wins do.

NFL16: It Was a Good Season

The Miami Dolphins lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the playoffs today, 30-12, and that ended my favorite team's 2016 season. It was a good season. 

The Dolphins and I are about the same age. They've played 51 seasons, and I've been around for 49 of them. There are probably more loyal or avid Dolphins fans in the world, but, whatever, I've been a pretty big fan (these pictures are from my family's utility room) for pretty much the whole time they've been around. And I'm here to tell you that this was a good Dolphins season.

Miami won 10 games this season. That's a lot, I've come to learn. It really is. From the time I was 2 until I was 17, the Dolphins won at least 10 games in a season all but three times, and that was amazing. I was thankful while that was going on, but, in retrospect, I should've been even more thankful. It has happened only nine times since. There was even one season where they won only one game the whole season. So winning 10 or more times in the same season is quite good. 

I didn't get to watch all 10 of the wins this season, but I did get to pay attention to all but one of those wins while they were going on, at least for part of the time they were going on. It's really fun to win, so that's nine definitively fun experiences this season. And Dolphin wins always have an afterglow effect on me for at least three or four days following. So that's somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 days since August in which my mood and general outlook on life were lifted by a Miami victory. That's a lot. That's a good season right there.

Additionally, the Dolphins made the playoffs. Again, that's a great and not terribly common thing to have happen. Miami has failed to make the playoffs more often than it hasn't in our history together. This was only the 23rd time the Dolphins have ever made the playoffs. It feels like that number should be higher, but that's because they've had three five-year strings where they never missed the playoffs:

-- NFL70-NFL74 (my ages 2 through 6),
-- NFL81-NFL85 (my ages 13 through 17) and
-- NFL97-NFL01 (my ages 29 through 33).

Fortunate strings like that will start to trick a human into thinking he or she deserves fortunate things happening to him or her. It's a treat to get to go to the playoffs, and I'm thankful to have gotten to experience it again. You better bet that's a good season.

Now, of course, it would've been fun to win a game in the playoffs. Of course, it would've. That's happened only 12 times, where the Dolphins both advanced to the playoffs and actually won a game once they got there. It's really, really rare. The last time it happened was Dec. 30, 2000, and that took pretty much the greatest individual effort by any football player in any game ever.

Also, today wasn't even a particularly heartbreaking one-and-done loss (like the NFL74 "Sea of Hands" loss at Oakland, the NFL82 Kellen Winslow loss to the Chargers or the NFL83 Steve Largent loss at Seattle). The NFL17 Dolphins aren't as good as the NFL17 Steelers, and this game was in Pittsburgh, and we were missing our starting quarterback and a bunch of guys on the offensive line and in the defensive backfield. I mean, really, I'm not even sad that they lost, and it feels great to not be sad. I would've preferred that they won, but I would've preferred that they lost today to Pittsburgh today than potentially next week at the New England Patriots (who are allowed to cheat to win). And you might think that makes me a loser. That's fine. Go ahead; believe that if you want. Who cares? I'm 48 years old, and I know that this is nothing to be sad about, and I'm thrilled that it turns out I'm actually not sad. 

So, in conclusion, I just want to say, hooray for football! It was a good Dolphins season, and now I'll be rooting for the Texans (they play the Patriots next week); the Chiefs (for Go Heath); the Steelers (I've got a lot of friends who are Pittsburgh fans, and I think they actually could really beat the Patriots in New England, even with the Patriots getting to cheat in all sorts of ways); the Seahawks (for my favorite former college-basketball player, George Fant); the Giants (for beating New England); the Cowboys (my sister's a fan), and the Packers (they're adorable, and Matthew and I once went to Lambeau Field).