The Miami Dolphins will play their first January game under the watch of Brian Flores this weekend — and hope to secure a winning formula to help push Flores’ record back to .500 through his first two seasons as the head coach of the team. Flores, who saw his tenure start 0-7 with the Dolphins, is currently 15-9 since and has a golden opportunity to start building upon the progress of his team with greater continuing starting in 2021.
One of the biggest reasons Dolphins fans should feel the formula in Miami is sustainable is to look at the team improvement in each of Flores’ first two seasons. With Miami turning over approximately half of their roster in both offseasons, it is understandable for the Dolphins to start both 2019 and 2020 slow. Miami has started 0-7 and 1-3 under Flores in their first two seasons — only to finish 5-4 over the final 9 games of 2019 and rebound to 9-2 over their last 11 games of 2020 with one additional game left to be played.
Flores’ record with the team gets better by the month, which is as good an indicator as you’ll find that once the Dolphins stop dramatically infusing new talent onto the roster and let their foundation of players carry over year to year, the slow starts will cease and Miami will become a prominent contender in the AFC.
Here’s Flores’ record by month:
- September: 1-6 (0.143)
- October: 2-4 (0.333)
- November: 6-3 (0.667)
- December: 6-3 (0.667)
If the saying goes that coffee is for closers, Brian Flores deserves a nice, full cup when this 2020 campaign comes to a close — because for the second consecutive season, he and his staff have managed to weather the storm of growing pains and turn his team into a different kind of pain come the second half of the season: the kind of pain that other teams don’t really want to see on the schedule. Of course, with this rebuild now making a turn, the standard will need to be changed. The Dolphins will need to start faster. But that will come when the team’s identity doesn’t dramatically shift over the course of an offseason.
That, despite Miami’s early draft capital, could be coming as soon as next year. And then we’ll get a chance to see Flores’ team try to evolve from a closer to a dynamic threat week in and week out — even in September.