Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Patriots are still Dolphins’ 800-pound gorilla
It’s less than two weeks to Miami Dolphins’ training camp. Everyone’s plotting their return right now, winding up vacations, starting to focus thoughts. I once asked Dave Wannstedt how much he thought of football on his brief time away — if, say, he thought of the New England Patriots.
“Every day,” the former Dolphins coach said in 2004. Same question to Tony Sparano. “Yeah, you do,” he said in 2010. Only Joe Philbin said he didn’t. He wouldn’t. Maybe he should have, of course. But here, now, in the deep recesses of summer when nothing is happening, it’s perhaps the best time to take measure of this, what — obsession? Fixation? Frustration?
Pick your word, though remember coach Adam Gase has only a one-year ride at the end of this timeline. He’s still building. It’s just that the Patriots are the constant measure of success for every team in the AFC, much less the bar of employment for every coach in the AFC East.
Bill Belichick has outlasted coaches in the division, including six Dolphins coaches. No local team has anything like this. The Heat? They’re looking up right now, but Cleveland doesn’t occupy a throne like New England. The Marlins, the Panthers and the Hurricanes football team haven’t won enough lately for rivals of consequence.
Still, if there’s one working question behind Gase’s influence and what a playoff appearance means as another season comes into view, it’s this one about the Patriots. The Dolphins have done their best to side-step it. There’s not much value in word, especially in June or July. But sometimes the truth comes out.
“New England’s won the division 14 of the last 16 years, something like that?” Jarvis Landry said earlier this summer to MMQB’s Peter King. “It’s ridiculous. It’s a problem. We cannot let that happen anymore.”
He went on to say the Dolphins would sweep the Patriots this year. “It’s time for a change,” he said. “I have all the respect in the world for the Patriots, and I respect Tom Brady tremendously. But they’re not our big brother anymore.”
It’s fine to tell your truth, of course. And Landry has earned the right to say whatever he wants as long as he accepts the consequences. But it’s fair to say this, too. The Patriots don’t exactly worry about the Dolphins. Why would they?
New England swept Miami last year. They won their fifth Super Bowl in the Belichick era. As good an offseason as the Dolphins had in signing their own players and filling some defensive holes, the Patriots had a better one.
When they weren’t signing prime-time stars this offseason, the Patriots were raising glasses, enjoying the king’s life, showing their Super Bowl ring with 283 diamonds (touting that 28-3 comeback against Atlanta).
Except for Belichick, of course. At the Patriots’ ring party in June, Belichick wore his five AFC Championship rings from the years they lost the Super Bowl. The grump. The inspired, motivated, forward-thinking grump.
Belichick has had 17 years to assemble this Patriot culture — one that’s become a full civilization by now. Gase has had one season. Year 2 is about to start. We’ll see where it goes. But in the calm before camp, it’s not just the Dolphins obsessed by the Pats. Yeah, we media are, too. “We have many games prior to [the Patriots] that are going to be big focuses,” Ndamukong Suh told ESPN this past week. “But we understand that New England is at the top of the East right now. We understand that we need to have certain particular game plans for them, as they do for us.
“Taking that into account, I think one of the great things about Miami and this team, we’ve never been scared of the New England Patriots. We never will be. So, with that being said, when we play them late in the season, we’ll be prepared.”
That’s a good answer from another veteran who can say whatever he wants. But scared and prepared aren’t the issue. Suh knows that. Even from the view of July, it’s all about outcomes.