The Miami Dolphins are winning another NFL offseason, the second in a row. You don’t get a trophy for this mythical title, but you do get something very real for it, invisible yet powerful.
You get hope.
You get to believe in your franchise and the people running it.
You get to experience, almost as an epiphany, how different this feels. It is fresh air, this feeling, gusts of it blowing through the house, casting out what was dead and stale.
The transformation of this club has been a long time coming, now that light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger, a locomotive gaining speed. It is a franchise arriving. Fast.
It’s been more than two decades since the Dolphins last won a playoff game in 2020. Most of the current players were navigating grade school then.
The Fins’ twin, intersecting epic epochs — Don Shula and Dan Marino — are long gone. The great coach passed away at 90. The iconic quarterback is 61 now, time flying like that football did from his hands, once.
Dolfans have been waiting a long, long time for new glory days. Wondering if Miami will win another Super Bowl in our lifetime has become a somber truth for many of us. Fans have waited for this club to get beyond mere relevance and “pretty good.” To get back to excitement and the kind of talent that scares other teams.
It is happening.
If the only measure is winning a Super Bowl it hasn’t happened yet. But it is a work in undeniable and accelerating progress.
The latest happened this weekend. It was “Selection Sunday” in college basketball, but also in the NFL, because elite cornerback Jalen Ramsey selected the Dolphins. Chose them, wanted them, lobbied for them, and did so with such vigor the Los Angeles Rams had little choice but to acquiesce.
The Fins acquired Ramsey for a 2023 third-round draft pick and reserve tight end Hunter Long.
It was like getting the Mona Lisa for a couple of Thomas Kinkades.
“I prayed for this specifically for about a month and now it’s happening!,” Ramsey tweeted on Sunday. “@MiamiDolphins. LET”S GO!”
Ramsey, 28, will pair with Xavien Howard to give Miami arguably the best starting corners in the league.
Just like, a year earlier, a blockbuster trade brought Tyreek Hill to pair with Jaylen Waddle and do for the offensive dynamics what Ramsey has just done for the defense.
Not to mention the 2021 draft, which brought Waddle, Jaelan Phillips and Jevon Holland with the first three picks.
(Hill spent his weekend winning the 60-meter sprint at the USA Track & Field Masters Indoor Championships with a time of 6.70. The Cheetah, indeed.)
Talent wants to be around talent. Great attracts great.
As free agency commences, it’s why Bills safety Jordan Poyer is on social media wooing the Dolphins.
What s going on in Miami has the NFL’s attention.
A bright, quirky, inventive young coach in Mike McDaniel. The Hill trade screaming “now, not someday.” Signing elite free agent tackle Terron Armstead last offseason. Adding linebacker Bradley Chubb, 26, by trade during the season.
Hiring sage Vic Fangio, guru of defensive coordinators, last month. Now gifting him Jalen Ramsey. Not to mention young, ascending firepower like Phillips and Holland, and a blossoming Christian Wilkins. Fangio was a brilliant hire, and Miami’s defense will be the most improved in the league in 2023. Bank that.
Ramsey is a huge addition tailored to Miami’s reality in the AFC, a quarterback’s conference in a passing league. The Fins must beat Buffalo’s Josh Allen to win their division, and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow to reach the Super Bowl. Not to mention Aaron Rodgers joining the Jets seeming like a real thing.)
Ramsey makes the Dolphins well-armed now to take on any opponent passing game in their way.
Just as Hill, Waddle and a healthy QB Tua Tagovailoa proved their explosiveness last season, when Tagovailoaa led the NFL with a 105.5 passer rating and 8.9 yards per attempt. He also missed five games including the playoff loss in Buffalo with (at least) two concussions raising a red flag about his future.
In a show of faith the Dolphins have announced they will exercise the team option on Tua’s fifth season for 2024 at $23.2 million, a bit of a risk but prudent to get that lower rate. Now they may gauge his performance and health this coming season before deciding whether to go all in on a long-term deal that would certainly be north of $40 million per year.
Tagovailoa has never not dealt with distracting speculation in his young pro career, and his handling of it has been admirable and earned the respect of teammates. First it was Miami’s unseemly pursuit of Deshaun Watson and then tampering to get with Tom Brady. Now Lamar Jackson and even Rodgers have been linked to the Dolphins. (And the Brady rumors will never go away. I predict in 2040 a 62-year-old Brady will be coming out of retirement and linked to Miami in an exclusive tweet by ESPN’s Adam Schefter Jr.)
I still do not discount the long shot possibility an aggressive Miami might get in the game on a Jackson trade. Talent draws talent, and Jackson lists the Dolphins as a preferred landing spot. And we have seen, last offseason and this one, that the New Dolphins mind-set is all-in-now. Jackson’s generational talent and Tagovailoa’s concussion history dovetail to justify the interest, and Miami picking up the fifth-year on Tua is a safety net but also one that leaves options open.
Even this is a decision arising from strength, though — the idea your QB choice is a run at Jackson, or sticking with a just-turned-25-year-old incumbent who just led the NFL in passing.
Talent draws talent, and Ramsey is joining a bounty of it.
It has taken more than two decades of false starts, delays and reboots, but the NFL should take notice what is happening with the franchise that once stood for perfection.
The difference in talent level between Super Bowl contenders and this team has disappeared.
Full force, the Miami Dolphins are back.
