Given the season the Dolphins are coming off of in 2019, six wins through the first ten games sure feels good. Seven would have felt better, but it is what it is at this point — Miami didn’t make the plays they needed to in Denver on Sunday afternoon to secure their sixth consecutive win and instead will enter Week 12 of the NFL season coming off their first loss since October 3rd.
To further put pressure on this young team, any aspirations the team had of making a postseason run in 2020 were significantly dropped by the team’s loss in Week 11 — the team’s playoff odds have been halved in Week 11 according to FiveThirtyEight’s playoff model and now currently sit at 30%. The AFC is a crowded field and Miami sits at 6-4 alongside the Baltimore Ravens and the Las Vegas Raiders in a tie for the final postseason berth. But Miami doesn’t own tiebreakers over either team — although they do have a Week 16 date with the Raiders in Las Vegas left on the schedule.
But the Dolphins need to worry about the now, a mistake they failed to account for entering Week 11 as they lost to a 3-6 Denver Broncos team. Miami has a promising two game stretch on their schedule. This upcoming week, the Dolphins travel to New Jersey to play the winless New York Jets, who are now six games away from a winless season. The following week? The football gods have claimed Miami’s fun rematch of SEC rival quarterbacks, as the Dolphins will host a Joe Burrow-less Cincinnati Bengals team after the No. 1 overall pick succumbed to a season-ending left knee injury in Week 11.
The Jets are 0-10. The Bengals are 2-7-1 and without their starting quarterback (and will also be without their best offensive weapon, RB Joe Mixon). There are no excuses for the Miami Dolphins over the next two weeks. They must take care of business and defeat both of these teams if they’re going to live up to their potential this season. This Dolphins team has limitations, but no set of limitations should prevent a young, hungry, upstart Dolphins team from moving to 8-4 and putting the pressure back on the Baltimore Ravens (who play a road game in Pittsburgh against the undefeated Steelers this Thursday) and the Las Vegas Raiders.
Miami missed a big chance to push themselves into the driver’s seat this weekend. They ought to be ticked off about it. And if they are, the Dolphins will need to channel that frustration into taking care of business over the next two weeks. Because after the Bengals game, there are no soft opponents left to play. Miami must host the Chiefs and Patriots before hitting the road to play the Raiders and Bills.
Get it while the getting is good, Miami. The Dolphins are in the pressure cooker and how they respond the next two weeks will tell us quite a bit about how close this football team is to living up to their potential in Year 2.