All of the noise was wrong here Sunday. The sounds suggested a Dolphins victory that wasn’t there. The stadium PA system very briefly played the team’s celebratory fight song as Miami’s late 57-yard field goal knuckled wide left, mistakenly thinking it was good. Moments later fans were cheering as they filed out, but they wore purple; they were among an estimated 20,000 there for the Baltimore Ravens.
Most of the noise still to come in the wake of this 26-23 loss will also be wrong, if it is too loud or panic-stricken. If it reflects an inability to step back from this loss, and from the past two games, and see the fuller picture as the Dolphins head into their bye week at 3-2.
This team has a better record than you thought it might right now looking at the schedule before the season (admit it).
And this team is precisely what we thought it was even before these consecutive losses. It is improved, and competitive, but also deeply flawed — those flaws revealing themselves Sunday like untreated wounds. It can be exciting and exasperating. It might be playoff-bound, or it might break hearts.
You know what, though? We plow into the midsection of an NFL schedule talking and thinking about the postseason, wondering about the division race and the wild-card picture, and that alone is a small revelation. It hasn’t happened much around here the past dozen years or so.
AFC East-leading New England also lost Sunday. Miami at 3-2 remains a player in the league-wide picture, with all six division game yet to play.
“We’re still in a good position,” as receiver Mike Wallace noted, “going into the bye week up [relative to .500] instead of down.”
Two losses in a row to very good teams — one the Drew Brees-led Saints, in New Orleans, and the other to the defending Super Bowl champions — amount to neither a shock nor a shame. There was no mistaking Miami for an elite team even at 3-0. The flaws then are the flaws now, it’s just that victories tend to dress the wounds and cover them, while losses expose them, raking the scabs until they bleed.
Sunday didn’t create wounds that weren’t there before. It just ripped the Band-Aids off. And that is not entirely a bad thing entering your bye week, when the time off must be spent not only to heal the team’s overall health (a problem particularly on defense) but also to face problems and fix them.
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