If misery loves company, the Miami Dolphins had enough for a commiseration party, once. Fins fans were not alone in mourning an NFL playoff winless streak so long it was a memory challenge to recall the last postseason victory.
It was December 30, 2000, for Miami, by the way, 23-17 over the Indianapolis Colts. American Beauty won the best-picture Oscar that year. U2’s Beautiful Day won Grammy song of the year. And Bill Clinton was near the end of his presidency -- with a controversial Florida recount and ‘hanging chads” in the news to determine who’d succeed him.
The Dolphins have not won a playoff game since, the 23-season drought now leading the NFL.
And the company has left. Buffalo had a 24-year drought and Cleveland’s was 22 years, but both finally won in the postseason in 2020. Detroit, once King of Misery with a 31-year postseason lapse, at last ended that just last season in ‘23.
Miami’s ongoing drought is not only now the worst in football, it is second worst among the combined 124 franchises in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB.
Thank you , Cincinnati Reds, for being even worse, with a 28-year void dating to that club’s last postseason advance in 1995.
In this updated Fan Base Misery Index, we judge a team in its current city only. As an example, the Raiders’ franchise playoff-win drought is 21 years, but folks in Las Vegas have only suffered the past four years. With that in mind:
▪ Bottom five playoff-victory droughts in current consecutive seasons — 28 MLB Cincinnati Reds; 23 NFL Miami Dolphins; 20 NBA Charlotte Hornets; 20 NBA Sacramento Kings; and 19 MLB Chicago White Sox.
▪ Bottom five championship droughts in current consecutive seasons — 75 MLB Cleveland Guardians; 66 NFL Detroit Lions; 59 NFL Cleveland Browns; 59 NFL Minnesota Vikings; 58 tie, NFL Buffalo Bills and Atlanta Falcons. [Note: Dolphins at 50 years (last in 1973) surprisingly ties for only the 17th-longest drought.]
▪ Bottom five championship-appearance droughts in current consecutive seasons — 66 NFL Detroit Lions; 58 NFL Cleveland Browns; 56 NBA Atlanta Hawks; 56 NHL Toronto Maple Leafs; 55 NFL New York Jets. [Note: Dolphins at 39 (last in 1984) have the 13th-longest such drought.]
▪ Bottom 10 teams in overall Fan Base Misery Index (number of combined seasons since a team’s last playoff victory, championship and title game appearance, current) — 132 NFL Detroit Lions; 123 NFL New York Jets; 120 NFL Cleveland Browns; 115 NBA Atlanta Hawks; 113 NHL Toronto Maple Leafs; 112 NFL Miami Dolphins (23-50-39); 110 NFL Minnesota Vikings; 99 MLB Milwaukee Brewers; 98 NBA Washington Wizards; 98 MLB Pittsburgh Pirates.
Teams in the Big 4 sports that have not won a championship, played in a title game, or won in the playoffs for at least the past 20 straight seasons in all three categories:
Charlotte Hornets, Cincinnati Reds, Miami Dolphins and Sacramento Kings.
That’s it. The company we keep.
One more to put the Dolphins’ 23-year playoff-win drought in perspective: The average current such drought in the Big 4 sports is 5.50 years per team in MLB, 5..06 in the NFL, 4.43 in the NBA and 4.13 in the NHL. That means Miami’s current postseason performance is around four to five times worse than the norm.
I suppose I should apologize for quantifying our grief — one that every Dolfan of long standing needs no numbers to know and feel.
I do so because I have lived it, too.
And I do so because this is King Franchise in South Florida. The one that made us champions. The one that lifted us.
I was 11 when the Dolphins became a team in the then-AFL in 1966. I had a team pennant on my bedroom wall. Collected the player cards that Royal Castle gave out. This team was the reason my Dad and I played catch in the backyard, became closer. We were at the Orange Bowl that very first game, for Joe Auer’s kickoff return.
When Don Shula arrived in 1970 everything changed. The Dolphins got good fast, Made history. Fashioned “The Perfect Season” in 1972, and won a second straight Super Bowl in ‘73. I wanted to be Paul Warfield. My Dad would stand in our living room and roar approval when Larry Csonka burst with brute force and carried safeties on his back.
Bear in mind, the Dolphins were it back then. All we had, really. Miami Hurricanes football wasn’t good yet. The Miami Heat wasn’t born yet. The Florida Marlins and Florida Panthers were a couple of decades away.
By the 1980s we had Dan Marino, and the Heat had arrived, and the Canes were national champions, and on TV “Miami Vice” told America what an exotic, sexy, interesting place this was.
But it all started with the Miami Dolphins, and so for many of us there is a visceral pain in no playoff wins in 23 years, in no Super Bowl appearance in almost 40, and in no championship parade since that crazy-distant time when Richard Nixon’s Watergate and the Vietnam War both were blessedly coming to an end.
Don Shula died at age 90 in 2020 just as the pandemic began surging.
Dan Marino turns 63 in a couple of weeks.
Those of us to whom those two names remain magical have grown up, and old, waiting and wishing for the Miami Dolphins to be great again.
Since fate turned me a Herald sports columnist who writes often about the Dolphins, the latent fandom of my boyhood is mostly kept hidden. (No cheering in the pressbox!) But I won’t deny it or wish it suppressed. Because that fandom helped raise me.
Today the Dolphins are good again, fast and exciting. Tyreek Hill is electric. Mike McDaniel is a fun coach and a good one. The roster isn’t perfect (hmm, that offensive line?), but mostly really solid. With Tua Tagovailoa’s continuing good health and some luck, this could be the year.
Tagovailoa is a “freakish learner” (McDaniel’s words) and is poised to further blossom off a Pro Bowl year in his fifth season. The quarterback called former coach Brian Flores a “terrible person” in their soured relationship on the “Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz.” Now Tagovailoa has a new contract, dynamic receivers and a coach who believes in him.
I’m not shouting Super Bowl, but a playoff win (and the angels sang, Hallelujah! ) should at long last happen. The historically lowly Bills, Browns and Lions all ended their long droughts recently; it is Miami’s turn, Miami’s time.
Much of that hope relies on a home playoff game, likely requiring an AFC East crown. That means strong finishes unlike McDaniel’s first two seasons. In 2023 Miami was sailing at 9-3 but after that finished 2-4. Last season the Fins were 8-3 then crumbled to finish 1-6. Two wintry road playoff losses resulted. Cannot happen again.
Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is 84, an age when long-range hopes give way to right now, please.
“We have to win on the field. We haven’t gotten to that Super Bowl,” Ross said last week. “I want to win this year. If we stay healthy, I certainly think we’re a contender for the Super Bowl.”
Legions of Miami Dolphins fans have grown up, and old, trying to remember and keep alive this franchise’s ever-distant glory days ... and wishing for the gift of that feeling once again.
Hope is eternal. To the desperate, it’s what is left.
Local Miami, FL
Most Popular
Comments / 0