Faint hope for playoffs seems likely to end soon
Yes, it’s still possible but history isn’t in 5-7 Dolphins’ favor.
DAVIE — The Dolphins looked great against Denver last Sunday. Now all they have to do is play great enough to win the last four games of the regular season, including a Monday nighter against New England, and they’re, what, a remote playoff possibility?
Truth is, the reality of the situation is even tougher than that sounds.
No Miami team has ever gone from 5-7 to a playoff appearance. The only thing that comes close to that is 1995, Don Shula’s final season, when the Dolphins were 6-6 after 12 games and rallied to claim the AFC’s final wild-card spot at 9-7.
It was a struggle all the way, with Bernie Kosar starting a couple of midseason defeats at quarterback while Dan Marino was dealing with an injured hip. Three wins in the last four games earned a playoff spot, but the spark was quickly snuffed by a 37-22 loss at Buffalo in the opening playoff round.
The Bills led that one 37-0 through three quarters, which is a fair indication of how these things usually go when a flawed team barely reaches the playoffs and is matched against one of the league’s best. Today’s Dolphins, in comparison, have more flaws than the 1995 version, so it really is silly expecting anything spectacular to happen for them now.
Since 2000, no AFC team has qualified for the playoffs with fewer than nine wins.
One of the most disappointing memories in recent franchise history was the 2013 season, when Miami was almost there but ran out of gas.
Wins over Pittsburgh and New England raised hopes for those Dolphins, who improved to 8-6 in the process. Then came a 19-0 loss at Buffalo and a 20-7 loss at home to the New York Jets.
Kerplunk — Joe Philbin missed the playoffs by a game at 8-8. The only good news is that Ryan Tannehill somehow got through it in one piece after leading the league with 58 sacks.
Adam Gase’s 2017 Dolphins have demonstrated the same tendency to curl up into a ball for long stretches, getting shut out two times and very nearly a third. Until there is mathematical elimination, however, there will be talk of turning things around.
However, when a team is 5-7 and there are so many other teams bunched just above, you can’t get there from here.
What’s up with Parker? The enigma known as DeVante Parker isn’t any closer to being solved now than it was when the Dolphins drafted him.
Now in his third season, Parker continues to be cast as a wide receiver with tremendous potential who just hasn’t put it together yet. Last year was supposed to be the year. Then this year was definitely supposed to be the year.
But here he is with two straight games of one catch for 5 yards. Parker, who was out three games with an ankle injury, is fourth on the team in receptions (36), third in yards (414) and has one touchdown. His longest play of the year was a 31-yard grab.
“We just haven’t been able to get him back in that rhythm like we had him early in the season (before) he got injured,” Gase said Monday. “We just keep working to try to get his confidence back to where it was.”
The upside, according to Gase, is that Parker has continued to do the right things in terms of preparing and taking care of his body. There were issues with that last season, but that problem appears to be fixed. Whatever is hindering Parker now isn’t related to those issues.
He opened the year with four catches for 85 yards against the Chargers and looked like the type of aggressive receiver the Dolphins have been hoping he’d become. Over his first three games, he averaged six catches for 76.7 yards.
The last three weeks, however, have been brutal. Parker has been the intended receiver on five interceptions, and at least two looked like he could’ve done more to prevent them.
There were two interceptions his way against Tampa Bay on Nov. 20, and he finished with four catches for 26 yards in that game. Matt Moore targeted him just three times against New England two weeks ago, and Jay Cutler threw his way four times in Sunday’s win over Denver.
“I thought he had a really good week of practice,” Gase said of Parker’s work leading up to the Broncos game. “I really felt going into the game that we had all three guys in a good place, plus the tight ends and the (running) back. I was feeling good about it. We just couldn’t get anything to DeVante this last game.”