Dave Hyde: One more win means redemption.

Win, get Denver’s help, and redemption awaits Dolphins

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — There’s a reason this day feels so important for the Dolphins, beyond the 9-5 record, beyond the playoff implications, beyond even their playing in a place where so many dreams have died through the years:

People care more about the Dolphins than they have in years. Adam Gase has won back a lot of fans with his manner this season. This is a chance to win South Florida completely back. This is one of those weekends — and they haven’t come along very often — when this team can move fully from the wrong side of the tracks if things break right for them.

In late December, the Dolphins are the South Florida team playing a game of consequence, and the Heat, who have been the team of record for a while around here, appear already to have one eye on next season.

Finally, after all these years, the Dolphins have the stage and the spotlight to themselves for as long as they can hold it.

“We’re going to keep playing until they say we’re done playing,” first-year coach Gase said this week.

This weekend will go a good way toward deciding whether that will extend into the postseason. The road to the playoffs is simple to understand: The Dolphins need to win one of their final two games and have Denver lose one of its final two games (the Broncos play in Kansas City on Sunday night); or Miami needs to beat both Buffalo and New England in these final two games.

To say it won’t be easy is to say Buffalo won’t be warm. But this would be a final measure of change in a season full of it. This year, the Dolphins collapsed in September, when there was time to recover, and not in December, when they typically have.

The last time they blew it in December, Rex Ryan was on the other sideline, just as he will be

today. It was the final game of 2013. Ryan was the Jets coach then, and his quarterback that day, rookie Geno Smith, had a dismal 56.3 rating.

Ryan still made the Dolphins join his Jets out of the playoffs that year in the same manner he’ll try to today. It’s Stone Age football, the only kind he knows. The Jets ran for 154 yards, intercepted Ryan Tannehill three times and sent the Dolphins into one of those off-season crises that put general manager Jeff Ireland out of a job.

This Bills team is better under Ryan than that Jets team. It ranks fourth in the AFC with a plus-44 point differential. It leads the league in rushing (5.5 yards per carry), which is a principal concern for the Dolphins’ 30thranked rush defense.

The Bills (7-7) have a top-10 scoring offense. They give up the same 22.4 points a game as do the Dolphins. The only thing Ryan’s team doesn’t do well is what the Dolphins do best: win.

The Dolphins are 5-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less; the Bills are 1-4 in such games. That’s the shortcut that explains why the Dolphins are playing for something important and the Bills aren’t.

“Something about this team, we expect someone to make a play that changes the game,” Dolphins safety Michael Thomas said. “Someone usually does, too.”

This is the way Dolphins fans want the movie to end again today, with Walt Aikens or Kenyan Drake or Matt Moore doing something heroic. That’s part of the charm of this team, the unknown making himself known.

Now they come into another place full of ghosts for Dolphins fans. They’re not all distant ghosts, like owner H. Wayne Huizenga greeting the team with handshakes at the locker room door after a playoff loss that was Don Shula’s final game.

As recently as 2013, they lost to the Bills in the second-to-last game when a win meant making the playoffs.

“We’ll regroup and be ready next week,” coach Joe Philbin said then.

The next week they lost to Ryan’s Jets.

So much feels different about these Dolphins. They’ve won eight of nine games. They have people caring again. But this game is a good chance in the cold to bring a franchise completely out of the cold. They’re relevant again. Now we see if they can stay relevant into January.

“[W]e expect someone to make a play that changes the game.” Dolphins safety Michael Thomas

Dave Hyde