2019 survival guide
Embrace the pain? #TrustTheTank? Wait for Tua? Here are 20 rules for fans to follow to get them through this season with the Dolphins.
For the past two decades, Miami Dolphins fans typically leave a season shaking their heads and wondering what happened. They should enter this one feeling that way. It will be different, strange and test your pain tolerance.
My suggestion on the edge of training camp is to embrace that pain. Or medicate it.
And, with that in mind, here are 20 handy rules for Dolphins fans to survive the season.
1.
There’s no need to make a final decision in July or August on Josh Rosen’s future. Give Rosen the full year, if he earns that much. Opinions, analyses, guesses, random disclaimers — that’s possible along the way. But the final decision on him as a franchise quarterback might not come until December. And speaking of keeping an open mind …
2.
Kill this #TankforTua* hashtag movement. #TrustTheTank* fits better. No one had Kyler Murray or Baker Mayfield as the top pick of the past two drafts. Things change. Names rise and fall. Don’t lock your mind and miss new information this season.
Maybe Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa is the best quarterback next draft. Maybe Oregon’s Justin Herbert or Georgia’s Jake Fromm is. Maybe the Dolphins don’t even need one of them if Rosen is chosen.
3.
And, yes, understand the coaches and players won’t be tanking. They’ll be doing their darnedest, just like players and coaches have since the last playoff win in the 2000 season. But look at the glaring issues on this roster, the shifting of money and draft picks to next season and understand what’s playing out this year.
4.
On particularly painful Sundays, even if the Dolphins play in a state where it’s legal, marijuana is not an observance-enhancing drug.
5.
The over-under for your optimistic friend who predicted nine wins to drop into a comatose state is three games.
6.
Understand the daily weight of this rebuilding falls on new coach Brian Flores. You can judge his smallpicture ideas, words, strategies, culture-building and team comportment. But the big picture of judging his win-loss record is over the horizon.
7.
Save your compassion for the Dolphins-crazy friend who for years has worn a throwback helmet and painted his bare torso aqua and orange. By November, you’ll find him quietly weeping in a closet on Sundays.
8.
If you #TrustTheTank, understand the challenge ahead. In the past 15 years, only Arizona (2018) and the St. Louis Rams (2015) had as many as three wins and earned the No. 1 pick. Seven teams that drafted first had two wins the previous season. Three had one win (including the 2007 Dolphins). Two went winless.
Losing that much would be a feat by these Dolphins in a schedule with bottom-dwellers Washington, Cincinnati and the New York Giants besides the annual two games against mediocre AFC East rivals Buffalo and the New York Jets. Think they’re up for that?
9.
Don’t get mad at your crazy uncle for saying for the 20th straight year of Sundays he could pick players better than the Dolphins do. He’s been proved right most years.
10.
Go ahead and buy your Xavien Howard, Laremy Tunsil, Minkah Fizpatrick and Bobby McCain jerseys and feel safe they’ll be around for years. But for too many others, demand a discount.
11.
It’s fair to wonder what would cause more pain: Ryan Tannehill leading Tennessee or Adam Gase leading the New York Jets to the Super Bowl.
12.
Quit watering down the tailgate drinks when your friend starts telling you for the thousandth time how shortterm pain will lead to long-term gain.
13.
There’s one Dolphins game in prime time (at Pittsburgh on Monday night, Oct. 28). It’s fair to think it’s overexposure.
14.
Remember your neighbor has the cellphone ready to video your weekly red-faced, expletive-filled, Achilles-tearing jump at the television over the Dolphins’ lack of a pass rush and put it on every social media platform.
15.
If by November you’re throwing a football in the parking lot and someone who looks remotely like a NFL scout asks if you’re a quarterback, don’t laugh. It might be real.
16.
Take solace in the fact that the special bottle you put on the shelf, waiting for a Dolphins playoff win, will age for another year.
17.
If you’re getting old enough to wonder if the Dolphins will make a Super Bowl before you die, remember how quickly the Rams, Eagles and Falcons turned it around.
18.
Oh, and eat your vegetables.
19.
And exercise daily. One more thing.
20.
Set a clock counting down to 8 p.m. on April 22, 2020. That’s the next game of consequence for this franchise — the NFL draft.
The city in Nevada where it’s held? Paradise. You can make it there.