Laces Out, Dan!

No matter what the Miami Dolphins do in a few short hours against the Ravens, in their first playoff game since 2001, this season has been a remarkable success. From going an embarrassing 1 and 15 last year, though they hung close in a few games, to 11 and 5 this year and embarrassing the Patriots, this has been an amazing turnaround. Last season, they had such high quality players as Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor, whereas this season the consensus was there was no one on their defense. Joey Porter turned that all around by having a year worth talking a lot of trash* about, leading the AFC with 17.5 sacks. The offensive line was shored up behind 1/2 man, 1/2 giant Jake Long, helping Pennington throw for a career high in yards, which he did by spreading the ball around. There were a few Ted Ginn sightings, but Miami's success on offense was through throwing the ball to many receivers (since most aren't very good), running with Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams, and innovating behind the Wildcat formation. Trickery is a time honored tradition and has helped hide the fact that teams or players aren't very good since the times of Kordell "/" Stewart.

Can they get to the next round against a tough Baltimore defense today? It doesn't matter. Just watching them this season and seeing them win has been plenty. Every week, I counted the wins, divided by the win total of last year, and realized they had doubled, tripled, quintupled, octupled and elevendytoubled their wins. They are going to have some trouble topping it next year, however, because it's almost impossible to quadruple 11 wins, unless the NFL plans on finally adopting a much, much longer schedule.


*Joey would talk trash anyway. He can't help himself.