Dave Hyde: The weekend football died in South Florida -- what now for Dolphins, Hurricanes?

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Dec 2, 2024

Published in Football

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Before moving on to the fact we’re a hockey town now, let’s go to the correction box for this column:

I picked the Miami Dolphins to go 11-6 this season, win the AFC East and get a playoff win. Could you get more wrong? The trifecta!

I then picked the Miami Hurricanes to go 10-2 and win the ACC. Even with partial credit for the correct record, it rings hollow as they sunk in Syracuse and wasted the best individual season by a Hurricane player in decades, maybe ever, in quarterback Cam Ward.

The Dolphins and Hurricanes remain linked by more than this bad weekend. There are too many yesterdays with them, not enough todays. Certainly there are no tomorrows as far as their 2024 seasons.

When the Dolphins beat up on another bad team in New York Jets on Sunday, there’ll be more talk of how everything can get better, when it really won’t.

The Dolphins keep telling us who they are in big moments against good teams. There’s no reason not to believe them. If the idea of them saving their season didn’t go out when they lost at home to Arizona in their trademark fashion at the end, it certainly did in their no-show in Green Bay on Thanksgiving night.

There’s a lot of talk about never-ending narratives around this team, but the one that really matters is never mentioned. It’s not their 3-16 record against playoff teams during Mike McDaniel’s three years, not their 1-11 record on the road against these playoff teams.

It’s not even how they’re 0-12 in games under 40 degrees since 2017.

It’s what Vegas oddsmakers keep telling us. It’s how the Dolphins have been the underdog in every road game against playoff teams the past three years and every game under 40 degrees since 2017.

We can talk cold and coaching and short-yardage toughness. But the bottom line is they’re not good enough. Their roster isn’t built enough despite all this rebuilding.

The problem of the past two decades might be blocking and tackling. But that starts with even more fundamentals concepts like scouting and drafting and spending money properly. When that improves, everything else will.

Until then, and unless team owner Steve Ross finally gets what’s happening, general manager Chris Grier is scheduled to talk for a seventh offseason season (or 10th running the draft) about how everything will improve this time around.

Like the Dolphins, the Hurricanes are allowed to say their season isn’t done. It’s the only recourse left after being run off the field by a mediocre Syracuse team.

They had a fun season full of wild Saturdays. But you can’t play a schedule of unranked teams, lose two and say you’re deserving to be in the 12-team playoff. Name a defining win. Just one. There isn’t one out there.

Coach Mario Cristobal sure can recruit. He’s got the NIL money to do so, too. But he’s three years into Miami and there’s still not enough evidence he can coach on the sideline when that’s needed.

The latest indictment was not going for it on fourth-and-goal from the Syracuse 9-yard line with just over three minutes left. His team needed a touchdown to win. Analytics said to kick the field goal. There’s a good place for analytics in many situations.

The problem here is analytics didn’t take into consideration that Syracuse put up a staggering 42 points after the first quarter. It’s offense couldn’t be stopped. Yes, Miami’s defense needed a stop, no matter you drew it up. So maybe Miami loses no matter what.

But why not give Ward a chance to take the lead there? Why, if he doesn’t score, not give your defense a territorial chance at the 9-yard line? Why kick a field goal at all and take the ball out of the hands of the player who had saved your season Saturday after Saturday?

Again, maybe they lose anyway. They just lost the game and their season in a way that felt like indigestion from your turkey leftovers.

This was the weekend football died in South Florida. The Dolphins defined again who they are. The Hurricanes blew their chance to return to a big stage.

If you’re looking for good news, the Florida Panthers took two from Carolina. The defending champs are sitting atop their division. We’re a hockey town, right?

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