At some point during the second period of the Las Vegas Golden Knights’ Game 5 romp of the Florida Panthers that clinched the Stanley Cup, David Furones — the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Miami Dolphins reporter — dropped this gem on Twitter:
City of Near Champions.
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) June 14, 2023
It’s a painful bit of truth for sports fans in this part of the country. In the last three months, the University of Miami and Florida Atlantic both made the Final Four, and the Panthers and Miami Heat both reached the finals in their respective leagues as eight seeds.
Yet, all that success resulted in exactly zero championship parades.
With all due respect to the Miami Marlins — who are having an excellent season of their own but are not built at this point to win a World Series — that leaves just the Miami Dolphins as the last best hope to finish the job.
After Heat, Panthers Losses, Is It Miami Dolphins’ Turn?
Unlike the Heat and Panthers, who both very easily could have missed the playoffs altogether and were the longest of shots to go on the run that just ended, the Dolphins are not an unreasonable championship pick.
They have an ascendant quarterback (Tua Tagovailoa), an innovative coach (Mike McDaniel), a potential Hall of Fame wide receiver (Tyreek Hill), perhaps the best cornerback tandem in football (Jalen Ramsey and Xavien Howard), a bunch of talented pass rushers (led by Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips), and a true home-field advantage (they’ve won 12 of their last 14 games at Hard Rock Stadium).
The Dolphins also now have a fanbase that’s been conditioned to expect their teams to make deep playoff runs — something Miami’s football club hasn’t done since 1992.
Which is why McDaniel was playfully irked when a reporter asked him the following last week:
There’s a lot of excitement in the area right now in the Heat and Panthers. As you’ve been out especially at Heat games, have people looked at you and smiled and said, ‘OK, it’s the Dolphins’ turn?’
McDaniel’s response:
“This question fires me up because I’ve been frustrated with myself, because I don’t think I’ve really adequately articulated that experience. It has been unbelievable, the support, the excitement, just the general enthusiasm for the Dolphins when I’m at an event that is an organization’s pinnacle of working for an entire year to get into these playoff games that are hard to get to.
“That, by itself, has been unbelievable. I’ve tried to share it, too, with the team as much as I can. They know they feel it when they’re out and about as well. So the team within this building is very aware and definitely finds exuberance from all of the juice that is in South Florida right now.”
Can Miami Dolphins Make a Super Bowl Run?
McDaniel, of course, wants to keep those good vibes alive. But even with an improved roster and another year of familiarity with his scheme, a Super Bowl championship is a very big ask.
The Dolphins play in arguably the toughest division in football and also face all eight teams from the NFC East and AFC West. That’s why PFN’s Arif Hasan, using a proprietary formula, says the Dolphins have the NFL’s fifth-hardest schedule in 2023.
And while everyone believes they’ll be good in 2023, will the Dolphins be great?
There are skeptics.
The Dolphins are 10th in PFN’s latest power rankings, behind the Jets (seventh) and Bills (fifth).
(If there is good news for the Dolphins, it’s this: The Patriots, Bills, and Jets all have schedules that are even tougher).
Even though they’re better than even money to make the playoffs in most books (-105 at FanDuel, -110 at DraftKings, and -115 at Caesars), there’s not a lot of confidence in the Dolphins winning it all.
Every book, including Caesars, has Miami in the neighborhood of 25-to-1 to lift the Lombardi — putting them in the same bucket as teams like the Jaguars, Lions, and Chargers.
All of that, however, hasn’t stopped their fans — and some of their players — from not only thinking about a Super Bowl run, but talking about it.
“I think Mike does a great job of just keeping us focused on what we’re on right now — and that’s the offseason and just getting back to football and how we do things,” Dolphins linebacker Jerome Baker said during spring practice.
“But of course, you look around the room, you can tell we have a talented group. We had a talented group last year, but we just added more guys, guys got more experience. So I don’t think we said it out loud what our expectations are, but you can just feel the energy of our expectations are high. And that’s why everybody’s here and we’re already working. We’re all locked in.”