The Miami Dolphins are a team of two separate histories. Recent history has been anything but kind to this organization — Miami has struggled with relevancy and fell behind the pack on several fronts relative to the rest of the league. Forget about championship hardware, the Dolphins can’t even seem to make the postseason with any level of consistency this millennium.
But the Dolphins’ long-term history is one that is rich and full of proud moments. The undefeated season of 1972. The consecutive Super Bowl titles and five championship game appearances in fourteen seasons. Marino’s magical 1984 MVP campaign. The No-Name defense and the Killer B’s. The Marks Brothers. The Dolphins have a plethora of proud moments in their history books — but it all started with four miserable seasons to start.
From 1966 to 1969, the Miami Dolphins were 15-39-2 and were outscored by 515 points. From there, the Dolphins secured Don Shula to be the team’s head coach and the rest is history.
And, if the present day Miami Dolphins are a little lucky, history will repeat itself once more. Miami doesn’t seem to need a new head coach, but the team has been miserable as of late — some of that admittedly by design. Compare it to those early day Miami Dolphins:
1966-1968: 12-29-1 record, 0.298 winning percentage (-416 point differential)
2017-2019: 18-30 record, 0.375 winning percentage (-414 point differential)
But the early day Miami Dolphins made the necessary adjustments and within two years of that third straight season of misery, the Dolphins were 10-4 and within another two years the Dolphins were champions. It seems as though the Dolphins have secured a coach that is capable of instilling a championship program and it seems as though the team is well aligned to make a charge back to relevancy. History indicates the Dolphins may be three or four years away from completing a turnaround — but that process starts with improvement and it starts now.
Here’s to another brilliant bounce-back from a miserable three year stretch of the franchise, much like the one the Dolphins showed after stumbling equally hard to get off the ground back in the late 1960s.