Dave Hyde: Bring it on! Miami Dolphins start season with new hopes, same goal — and an irrepressibly happy face

Hi there. Feeling good today? Do you find yourself walking around with a smile on your face — and not just because when you smile the whole world smiles with you?

Because this is the day you’ve been waiting for.

Because this is the upbeat, put-on-a-happy-face manner the Miami Dolphins open their season of high hope and serious expectation with Sunday in Hard Rock Stadium against the Jacksonville Jaguars .

Because two years of marginal winning, five years of sometimes-painful building and 24 years of insufferable waiting for the Dolphins’ next playoff win kick off in a new season with a good vibe and obvious question:

If not now, when?

If not this year, then what year?

Their lineup is built. Their young players are grown. Their veterans aren’t too old, even if in a game of survival they have the league’s oldest roster. And their stars are happy, meaning they’re paid — man, are they paid, one after another this offseason getting new deals, from quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to coach Mike McDaniel to cornerback Jalen Ramsey on Friday becoming the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback.

“I’m happy organizationally for everything we’ve done this offseason because I think it fits what we’re about,” McDaniel said.

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A happy team makes a winning team. That’s what they’re organizationally about. Smiles, everyone.

“Ready to roll,” veteran tackle Terron Armstead said.

They’ve been a fun show with little to show for it in McDaniel’s two years. They led the league in scoring last season. They made the playoffs the past two seasons. But just when you thought they were on the way to something special, they became marginal. Just when you thought they could be a viable contender, they became a repeating question against the raised stakes of December and January.

Those struggles are now considered a signpost on the road to greatness, a lesson most good teams need to digest. This offseason was spent, “working to be ready — to be physically, mentally, emotionally ready for the big moments,” Armstead said.

“We know we have a talented team, know we’re going to win games,” he said. “Now it gets to winning those big games, winning those big moments, the games that we’re not necessarily supposed to win, all that good stuff.”

McDaniel, everyone knows, will come into Sunday with a surprise, some sleight of strategic hand, for his offense. He added more speed to the league’s speediest offense. He signed tight end Jonnu Smith to the high-scoring offense that got no scoring from the position last season.

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He also redefined some traditional ideas not just with his novel motion on offense but in the larger universe of the NFL offseason work . He rotated players on rest days like no other team, didn’t rely on football staples like wind sprints or blocking sleds and ran a camp that the players’ pipeline defined as “easy,” according to veteran Calais Campbell, even if the veteran defensive tackle said they took “more practice reps” than other teams.

For a team facing two games in the opening five days of the season — Jacksonville on Sunday and Buffalo on Thursday — being ready for the start matters. As does watching the hamstring of Ramsey, who had sat out practices for a couple of weeks before being “limited” on Friday.

“Man, you’re looking at Mr. Load Management,” said McDaniel of the practice of giving players proper rest.

Maybe the Dolphins Way sets the NFL’s future course. Some team had to be the first to allow water at practices in the 1960s when it was considered a soft idea. Winning probably will go a long way toward taking McDaniel’s ways mainstream and the challenge starts against a similar Jacksonville team.

Jacksonville, like the Dolphins, has a new defensive coordinator breaking in a new system that might not be fully operational Sunday. Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence, like the Dolphins’ Tagovailoa, signed a bank-breaking contract this offseason but still has to completely define who he is as a player.

Jacksonville, again like the Dolphins, lives in the Florida heat. But no one does hot like the Dolphins , as bettors know. Jacksonville is 2-3 against the spread in the past two seasons in games over 80 degrees.

The Dolphins are 10-2 in such games. They average 33 points and seven yards a play. Tagovailoa is 11-0 with a 116.2 passer rating. Tyreek Hill has 96 catches, 10 touchdowns and 1,597 yards.

It’s expected to be 91 degrees at kickoff Sunday.

Does that put a smile on your face? Or is it just pasted there right now, knowing the new year’s party of Dolphins football is about to start?