‘Auld Lang Syne’ and anxiety

Game against mediocre Patriots has an all too familiar feel for fans

Let’s start the new year with a good ending. We don’t do that often enough around the Miami Dolphins.

We get odd endings, angry endings and sometimes even oddly angry endings like last year when Brian Flores was fired, a historic lawsuit followed and events cascaded until … well, here we are.

Dolphins versus New England. In Foxborough. For the season.

OK, that’s overstating it considering the Dolphins can lose their fifth consecutive game and still make the playoffs with a win over the New York Jets in their regular-season finale next week. They can win Sunday, too, and not be in the playoffs if the Jets win in Seattle.

No matter, this is the type of game for the Dolphins to prove their fantastically wonderful November wasn’t the greatest head fake in team history. This is a chance to rekindle the idea of who they still can be this year.

It matters that starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is out Sunday with a concussion, as Las Vegas said, with the betting spread going from 1 ½ points for New England to three points.

It just won’t excuse a potentially nightmare finish for the Dolphins. Former coaches Joe Philbin and Adam Gase would even wake up with sympathy shivers if Mike McDaniel loses a fifth game in a row with a sixth one on the table.

Those are the real stakes no one expected from this Sunday a month ago. Even after last week’s Green Bay loss, McDaniel’s first words were he didn’t expect to be in this position. Sunday’s game has become the unfortunately big game that keeps the Dolphins from an unfortunately bigger finale.

For most of the past two decades have the Dolphins

looked longingly at the Patriots in hopes of becoming them one day. Now they are. These two seasons are a similar shade of mediocre right now.

Each has stunk of late (the Patriots have lost four of their past five games). Each has similarly bland records (the Dolphins at 8-7, the Patriots at 7-8). Each needs this game to make the playoffs and to stave off a cold offseason.

Each has quarterback concerns, too. Here’s the perspective on that: Reserve Dolphins quarterback Teddy Bridgewater is the better quarterback than New England’s Mac Jones. He has the far better team around him, too, starting with receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle.

Jones is suddenly the target of former Patriots like Vince Wilfork and Tedy Bruschi in a manner that would amuse Dolphins fans if they weren’t wallowing through their own December.

That’s another shame of how December played out. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady aren’t just long divorced, but each struggling at this point. That would be another marker of change if the high of the Dolphins’ November continued.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft also can be expected to act disappointed at going into another offseason without a playoff win. This will be Year Five for the long-suffering Patriots owner. It will be Year 22 for the Dolphins. The last time there was a really good ending to an old year for the Dolphins came on Dec. 30, 2000. Running back Lamar Smith picked up that team and delivered its most recent playoff win. Forty carries, 209 yards.

“We needed every one of them,” coach Dave Wannstedt said after Smith’s 17-yard touchdown beat Indianapolis in overtime. “Now we’re moving on to see what more we can do.”

Twenty-two years later, they’re still trying to move on. They just keep moving in place, Eight coaches, 28 starting quarterbacks and occasional blips of relevance since then.

November was a blip. Is that all it was?

The Patriots are beat up in the secondary to the point if their pass rush doesn’t get to Bridgewater or Belichick doesn’t have some magic left it should be another big day for Hill and Waddle.

And the Dolphins defense? The Patriots offense should be the solution to this defense’s road problems. Jones is a mess. Their system is firstgrade fundamental. Their numbers are trending to be the ugliest of late in Belichick’s 22 years at New England.

Remember when Brady left the Patriots and we warned them what happened when Dan Marino left the Dolphins? Belichick is completing his

22-year cycle from brief mediocrity to

17 years of a dynasty and back to mediocrity again. That’s what Sunday is really about.

Two mediocre seasons.

One team gets relief. Dolphins fans, bless them, haven’t got much the past two decades. It’d be nice to start the new year in a new way.