MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The Miami Dolphins know the score.
They know that — thanks to Week 13 losses by the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars — they can earn the AFC’s No. 1 seed, with the first-round bye and home-field advantage that comes with it, by winning out.
And to be sure, they want it. Badly.
But it’s not their primary focus.
Miami Dolphins Control Their Destiny in the AFC
“I just feel like our goal is bigger than the No. 1 seed,” Dolphins linebacker Bradley Chubb said Tuesday. “You know what I mean? Our goal is to hoist the trophy at the end and that comes with handling your business each and every week, no matter what the position is.
“We kind of just continue the same approach each and every week, man, the same mindset, the same intensity, same focus and it’s been working out for us, man. Try not to look too far down the line and just take it day-by-day as we practice and week-by-week as we play these games.”
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel struck a similar tone Tuesday when asked about being the AFC’s top seed through 13 weeks.
“Call me when it’s a 13-game season,” McDaniel replied. “I’ll be excited to talk about the next game. For all of us that have been around the NFL long enough, you get about five games, four games left, and that becomes a lot of the conversation. It does take a lot of execution to get there.
“But it’s kind of one of those tricky things. There’s a lot of distraction, ‘look over here while this is going on,’ that you have to battle to be successful in the National Football League.”
McDaniel credited his team’s success on its focus on the week at hand — and not underestimating the next opponent, regardless of record.
“Typically each and every team isn’t discussed with the regard of, ‘Oh yeah, they beat the teams they were supposed to,'” he added. “Well, there’s a lot of teams that are below .500 that are getting wins against teams that are above .500.”
Miami gets two more of those sub-.500 opponents over the next two weeks before the schedule gets much, much harder.
The Dolphins finish the season with four of its last five games at Hard Rock Stadium, where they have won 17 of their last 19 games.
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Their best chance of returning to the Super Bowl since the mid-1980s is ensuring they don’t have to play anywhere else in January.
“The energy our fans bring, I don’t know, it just feels like home, man,” Chubb said. “When you end up on the sidelines, you see those guys over here burning up, and you kind of in the shade cooling and, you know, it just feels like you’re at home man, and you gonna enjoy it.”
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