Tua Tagovailoa’s game-ending Dolphins fumble shows why they can’t be trusted

The Dolphins weirdly aren’t good enough against great teams.

There’s no denying the Miami Dolphins are a talented team with some of pro football’s most explosive talents. Having Tua Tagovailoa throw darts to Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle every week is the likely envy of most of the NFL. This is a no-doubt playoff squad that should finish with at least 10 wins, and it has one of the best offenses ever on paper.

And yet, something appears to be missing every time the Dolphins face off against someone at or above their weight class. On Sunday, that was the Kansas City Chiefs in a Frankfurt, Germany AFC battle.

Before Miami could seemingly blink, it was down 21-0 to the reigning Super Bowl champions. It took the Dolphins until the end of the third quarter before they finally got on the scoreboard and even more Chiefs brain farts to even make this an interesting matchup at the end. With a chance to make Kansas City sweat on the game’s final meaningful possession, Tagovailoa fumbled a wild snap on a do-or-die fourth down.

Because of course he did. Game, set, match, and a 21-14 Chiefs win. That’s par for the course for these Dolphins:

With the defeat to the Chiefs, Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins have now lost seven straight games to teams with a winning record. The last instance in which they beat a team above .500 was the Buffalo Bills … in Week 3 of 2022. That is not a good sign of a squad ready for any Super Bowl aspirations:

It’s even worse when you dive deeper into how Miami’s offense struggles against better teams:

The Dolphins will probably be OK, but only when they don’t face other heavyweights. A late-season stretch featuring dates with the Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, and Buffalo Bills now looks impossibly daunting and like it might define Miami’s success (or lack thereof) in 2023.

As it stands, these Dolphins are good but not great. Game-ending, wild-snap fumbles on fourth down are a perfect demonstration of what they don’t bring to the table when it’s time to rise to the occasion.