The Miami Dolphins will rightfully tell you that they’re only focused on what they can control in Week 13: beating the Cincinnati Bengals. Good. They should be. But while the Dolphins themselves are dialed in on making sure their killer instinct is up to snuff, the rest of the NFL landscape is going to guarantee the Dolphins an opportunity to improve their standing if they take care of business at home and defeat the Bengals.
How? Miami’s main competition in the AFC conference standings are the 8-3 Cleveland Browns, the 7-4 Indianapolis Colts and division leaders in Buffalo and Tennessee — who are both 8-3 on the season as well. Miami sits sandwiched between Cleveland and Indianapolis in the Wild Card standings but will see the AFC playoff field take on at least one loss this upcoming weekend outside of whatever end result we see from the Dolphins.
Because while last week was the win-win of the Colts and Titans playing each other (and the still to be played clash between Baltimore and Pittsburgh), it is the Titans’ turn to play a different AFC wild card contender: the Cleveland Browns. This clash of 8-3 teams will guarantee that someone drops even with the Miami Dolphin in the conference standings. In a perfect world, the Titans defeat the Browns and help ensure Miami is well positioned for the best wild card seed possible if they’re able to defeat the Bengals on Sunday afternoon.
But the Houston Texans, who are of utmost interest to the Dolphins given their NFL Draft capital, are playing in a ‘win-win’ contest as well for Miami as they play their first matchup against the Colts this season. Indianapolis wins, Miami’s draft picks improve. Houston wins, Miami potentially gains a game on the 7-seed cutoff for the AFC playoffs with four games left to play.
All of this doesn’t matter if the Dolphins don’t take care of their own business and defeat the Bengals. But Miami’s defense got its swagger back against the Bengals and there’s plenty of optimism that quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will be back behind center. Even if he’s not for one more week, Ryan Fitzpatrick proved plenty capable of executing Miami’s offense to a sufficient degree against the lowly Jets this past Sunday and would not impact the optimism over Miami’s chances to take advantage of their last lowly opponent on the schedule this season.