‘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