MADRID, Spain - There they were, Tua Tagovailoa and Laremy Tunsil, standing in the middle of the field in Madrid facing one another for the overtime coin flip.
The reason for the rebuild (Tagovailoa) and the mechanism that provided a massive assist (the Tunsil trade) served as a reminder that seasons and talent are too often squandered in Miami.
Their presence encompassed the past seven Dolphins seasons, the beginning of general manager Chris Grier’s rebuild, and seeing Tagovailoa and Tunsil standing together felt like being doused with a garbage bin full of ice water.
It was a shock to my system that convinced me these two recent wins and Miami’s seemingly easy stretch in the final six games will be nothing more than fool’s gold.
These are the Dolphins, so they know how to tease.
This franchise knows how to sell hope, getting its fan base and sometimes the media to ignore reality and overlook two decades of dysfunction.
Seeing the coin flip was the moment the winner of this sloppy game, which turned into a 16-13 Dolphins overtime victory after Jack Jones intercepted Marcus Mariota’s first overtime pass and Riley Patterson kicked a 29-yard field goal to end it, became irrelevant to how this season ends.
“We are not searching for perfection. We are searching for conviction,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said of his resilient team, which clearly has not quit on McDaniel and his coaching staff.
That is admirable.
But entering 2025, my standard was a winning season, and the consequences of not achieving it were the royal flush.
That has not changed.
To even be comfortable with the status quo, McDaniel’s team needs to win at least five of the final six games to reach nine wins.
But then what for this foundationless franchise?
In fairness to the Dolphins, the team has a younger and cheaper (for now) left tackle than Tunsil. Patrick Paul might be just as good as Tunsil, a five-time Pro Bowler, in a year or two.
Paul, De’Von Achane and Jaylen Waddle are the singular building blocks the franchise’s next decision-maker should build around.
Center Aaron Brewer and inside linebacker Jordyn Brooks are solid players as well, but next offseason they will both have their hands out for raises as they enter the final year of the respectable but manageable contracts they signed as free agents before the 2024 season.
As the Dolphins’ fight song played after the win, declaring that the Dolphins are “the greatest football team,” all I could think about was how far this franchise is from a Super Bowl.
It might as well be the distance between Madrid, where the game was played, and Miami.
In 2019, Grier traded away the team’s top players, including Tunsil, Kenny Stills and Kiko Alonso, to purge the roster and make it younger and cheaper.
That was the “Tank for Tua” season, and six years later Dolphins fans cannot help but conclude that the people in power picked the wrong quarterback, because Justin Herbert was taken one pick after Tagovailoa, his former backup at Alabama (Jalen Hurts) is a Super Bowl winner, and it is difficult to argue that Jordan Love is not ahead of Tagovailoa in terms of skill set.
Tagovailoa was supposed to be special, clutch and a franchise-changer based on what he did for the Crimson Tide. But the mobility he lost, for whatever reason, and the fact he shrinks when the Dolphins need him to be big is crippling.
In Miami’s game against the injury-decimated Commanders, who have now lost six straight games, the two things Miami did that resembled a winning football team were running the ball effectively and avoiding turnovers.
However, if Matt Gay makes his 56-yard field goal, McDaniel’s team would be sitting on its fourth fourth-quarter loss of 2025.
“I saw guys not wink or waiver. That’s an important part of football, and I’m not sure guys were equipped to do that earlier in the season,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said.
It is time to come to terms with who these Dolphins are and what they can do.
The Dolphins are consistently inconsistent. South Florida’s NFL franchise is 4-7 and running out of excuses.
We can firmly conclude that 11 games into the season, with seven losses on the ledger.
The Dolphins are two losses away from producing a second straight losing season, and there should not be a debate about how things should end if that happens.