The season is over and I feel really good heading into the off-season. The Dolphins won their last game but then Xavien Howard was arrested. Other teams are exactly where Miami was a year ago. They’re firing coaches, looking to hire new ones. Miami, for a change, seems to firmly know what they’re doing even when it looks like they’re flying by the seat of their pants. Even if I think there was a different philosophy between management and the coaching staff, based on some things that were out of their control(Tua getting hurt thus sliding a bit in the draft) and Flores getting more out a bunch of third-stringers then anyone thought possible. The entire organization, I’d like to think, know that they may very well have something here. Something that hasn’t been a part of this franchise for many years. This thing wasn’t even truly here even when Gase and Sparano made it to the playoffs in their first year. That thing is a dangerous thing while also being possibly the greatest of things. I’m talking about hope.
Now I know that the Dolphins have been hopeful in other seasons such as the ones I already mentioned. But color me naive, but this feels different. It feels different because instead of a coach overachieving with an average roster, the coaching staff overachieved with one of the worst rosters in history. That can’t be refuted. The Dolphins were designed like the Cleveland Indians from Major League, and all though they didn’t win the pennant, they won five games, two against playoff teams. That’s wildly hard to do regardless of what Omar some Dolphin’s beat writers say. There’s truth to the idea that every team is built to go 7-9, but not this one. This one was designed to go 2-14 or worse.
Miami went 5-4 in their last nine games and would be the “team nobody wants to play” if they were in the playoffs. I can see where that might be a stretch, but I’m sticking to it. All their grinding and plugging in guys off the street came to a major culmination by doing something that they haven’t done in 11 years.; beat the Patriots in New England and preventing them from getting their obligatory first-round bye. The ruining of the Patriots streak of getting a first-round bye is alright but I honestly don’t care. I care about winning. I’m not going rub it in any Patriots fans faces because once they say what about the Super Bowls, there isn’t much to say to that. Anyways, let’s enjoy this wonderful victory and seemingly positive offseason.
UPDATE: Well, upon writing the end of this blog the Dolphin’s offseason just got flipped upside down.
See, this is why being a Dolphin’s fan is a 24/7 job. You think everything is going good, you beat the Patriots in their building, there finally seems like there is a culture swing in the building with the young guys leading the squad and then boom, your best player, Xavien Howard gets arrested for domestic battery.
Here’s the story of the incident:
And here’s his mug shot:
Looks like a scared dude here. Obviously, it’s to early to determine guilt here. I’ll let the legal process run its course. But if this true, fuck Xavien Howard. There is simply no excuse for ever putting your hand on women like this, and yeah, I’m aware of self-defense so don’t even bring that up. The league will do their own investigation and I pray that this is somehow a big miscommunication. Either way, this will be dealt with by the league after Howard was arrested.
Also, the thought of Flores and the team cutting bait with Howard is very real. Flores has spoken many times about high character guys. This is the opposite of that. A major decision will have to be made regarding Howard regardless of the outcome. This sucks every which way.
