With cut day in full swing we know one football player who is not going to be cut by the Dolphins. Mike Wallace should change this team dramatically this year even when he’s not catching the ball. Our biggest free agent move should be pulling in touchdowns and freeing up space for our other receivers and running backs.
On top of that DolfansNYC gets a cut of every sale and that money will go directly to the DolfansNYC war chest which helps us do fun stuff at our bar and any money left over at the end of the year goes to charity. Last year we donated nearly $5000 to charity and we are hoping we can beat that last year so this Mike Wallace deal seems like a win-win.
Are you guys as terrified as I am about our offensive line? Mike Pouncey is one of the best linemen in the NFL and Richie Incognito is the man. I feel like Tyson Clabo will hold is own but the rest of the line frightens me. With the mediocre John Jerry injured the team seems to be in panic mode trying out a bunch of different linemen in different spots. Pouncey can play guard, he did in college, but why would you move one of the best centers in the world? Last years undrafted free agent Josh Samuda is getting a lot of reps all over the line and rookie G Dallas Thomas is seeing a lot of first team snaps. Lance Louis is gimpy and Nate Garner is a great versatile back up but I don’t want him starting any time soon. With all this interior line transition the tackles seem fixed and the most worrisome bit about all this is that Jonathan Martin is our starting left tackle. We are trusting the most important position on the line to a second year player who was absolutely horrible last year. He was playing out of position on the right side but when Jake Long got hurt he didn’t do much better on the left going up against better talent. I don’t need to quote statistics and Martin seems in better shape than last year, but every camp report talks about how dominant our defensive line is and how many sacks they are getting. You have to think that part of it is how terrible our offensive line is.
During the scrimmage the defense beat the hell out of the offense, but we have a great defensive line so maybe that’s expected and we hope they will look better against other teams. Unfortunately the Hall of Fame Game won’t show us much because Dallas has a one of the best defensive lines in the league. (Speaking of lines if you are curious about how sportsbooks are considering these early match-ups may want to refer to NFL lines on the matter.) The second preseason game is when I really hope the line comes together. The Dolphins need to find a line up and stick to it and let the guys on the line gel. Other than a QB and his receivers the offensive line is the position where chemistry is most important. These guys need to know what it’s like playing next to each other and if Mike Pouncey ends up playing guard somehow none of the guys will have been next to each other last year.
As I type this Dion Jordan blew right past Jonathan Martin in practice and Twitter exploded with beat writers talking about how bad Martin is. I just really hope he can get it together and we don’t regret not resigning Jake Long or trading for a veteran offensive tackle.
Are you guys as worried as I am about the offensive line or is it way too early to panic. Let me know in the comments. And don’t forget our Hall of Fame Game meet up on Sunday!
We have been suspiciously silent over here at Dolfans NYC and I figured I had to write an update of sorts. There has been so much Dolphins news of late it’s hard to keep up! I could talk to you for hours about the exciting new offensive acquisitions of Mike Wallace and Dustin Keller or the revamping of the linebackers or my disappointment at losing both Jake Long and Sean Smith. But all that stuff has been covered to death.
I could talk about our needs but I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone that we have big holes on the offensive line and in the secondary and if you guys are paying enough attention you know the names that are still out there in free agency (Winston & Grimes come to mind). I could talk about the draft but I watch about three college games a year and could bring nothing to the conversation. So what can I talk about? How about some Dolfans NYC business!
We have some big things planned for the draft. We are going to do a huge meet up and roll to the draft in force. Last year we got on TV when Tannehill was picked and hopefully we can do it again this year. Show the Dolphins that they have love in Jets country. We will of course update the site when we have firm draft plans, but if you want to get notified about the draft send us an email at dolfansnyc@gmail.com and we will put you on our draft mailing list. We also might be trying to organize something with Mike Wallace for the weekend of the draft but we have to keep all the details top secret for now but if that’s something you would be interested in, email us about that as well.
I also should probably say something about the new logo rumors. Everything I have heard from my source leads me to believe that this could in fact be the logo. I got two messages the day of the leak that lead me to believe the Dolphins are upset that it’s out there. I never thought our leaking what we thought was a draft of the Dolphins logo would turn into a big thing, but whatever the case I hope it doesn’t hurt any of the Dolphins plans.
Speaking of the logo, we need to make new Dolfans NYC shirts and although I wanted them for the draft, I think we might have to wait until after. I want to do a new Dolfans NYC logo when the new logo comes out. That way people who have the old shirt might want to buy a new one with the new logo. Logo changes are all about selling merch and since we are always trying to raise more and more money for charity this seems like a perfect opportunity. If anyone has any new ideas for raising money for charity let us know. We are always looking for new fundraising ideas. Raising money for the Miami Dolphins Foundation is not only a good cause, but it shows the Dolphins we are doing positive things and it makes them want to support us as a club. It’s a win win for everyone.
Anyway, that’s it for now and I hope to update the site more often as we get ready for the draft! Go Dolphins!
I know most people don’t care about the Pro Bowl and honestly I think the last one I watched featured Ricky Williams as the MVP but I haven’t updated Dolfans NYC much recently so I figured I should try to pretend to be interested in the Pro Bowl. Â The Dolphins have a few players on the roster and as always I find the choices super questionable. So let’s talk about it.
Who made the team and who SHOULD have made the team?
Cam Wake is our only starter with John Denny the only AFC long snapper. Randy Starks and Richie Incognito also made the team as alternates after other players backed out. Reshad Jones, Mike Pouncy and Brandon Fields all should have made the team. Jones was one of the best safeties in the NFL this year much less the AFC. Pouncy out played his brother who is a Pro Bowl starter and Brandon Fields averaged over 50 yards a punt and was probably the best player on the Dolphins.
What happened?
The problem is that the Dolphins are not a great football team. Even with all their cap room and draft pics I doubt anyone has bet on the Miami Dolphins to win the Super Bowl next year. When you are an under .500 team you aren’t going to get any love from the Pro Bowl voters even if you have some really deserving players on the team. Hopefully our players will get a little more recognition next year when we finally make the damn playoffs. At least Fields was rewarded with a new contract.
Should you watch the Pro Bowl?
Eh, probably not. At least we are only three months from the NFL draft… sigh…
Now that the Dolphins are officially out of the playoff hunt we can start looking forward to the future. After we beat the Pats next week and before the draft one big item needs to be talked about… the new logo. Mike Dee promised to make an announcement on the new logo soon and I know the Dolphins nation is very worried. There has been so much speculation and concern, but let’s talk about what we know for sure.
During the Miami Dolphins Web Weekend Mike Dee talked to a group of Dolphins webmasters about the logo. He gave us three bits of information:
The new logo would be a mix of modern and retro.
He implied that navy would still be an accent color.
He showed the logo to Dan Marino, Bob Griese and Nat Moore and they all loved it.
Recently I was presented with some new information about the logo. If I hadn’t been in the exact place and time this would have never come together. The first bit of information is that a Dolphins fan and friend of mine has been showing off this logo that he swore was a sketch of a design for what would become the Dolphins helmet. I didn’t put too much stock in it because it didn’t look anything like any logo I had seen and the Dolphin looked a bit too much like a whale.
Fast forward to last Sunday and I was talking to a friend who happens to work with Nike and was bragging about how they had seen the new uniforms and logo. I don’t want to say too much but their job requires seeing new uniforms well in advance of most people. They of course have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and couldn’t tell me anything except that they didn’t love the logo because the Dolphin looked too much like a whale. That seemed like too much of a coincidence and my friend who had showed me the logo happened to be standing right there. He showed my Nike source the photo on his phone and they flipped out. “How did you get that?!” the source asked. Evidently the logo he has had this whole time is “very very close” to the new logo.
Today I saw my friend again and asked to see the logo again. I took a photo of his phone with my phone and although it’s a terrible picture I am VERY confident that this is a rough draft of the logo. If you look carefully the fins are navy and there are sort of navy accents on the Dolphin. This is a sketch but like I said, I am 95% sure the Dolphins new logo is going to look a lot like the photo above.
Other bits of information I got from my source is that the Dolphins will not have an orange jersey next year and that the Vikings new uniforms are retro and “awesome”. The source seemed to like our uniforms more than the logo and hinted that they were retro, but wouldn’t say much more than that.
Now as a very loyal Dolphins fan I was conflicted about leaking what I believe to be the new logo, but I don’t think any news source would take my friend of a friend story seriously and I don’t think many people will pick up on this. But when the logo comes out I can point to this and say that DolfansNYC broke the logo first! Then again there is a small chance I am totally wrong too. So I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Lastly, I don’t hate the logo. I am a big fan of the stupid helmet on the Dolphin so I will miss that, and yeah it looks a lot like a whale, but it could be a lot worse. I am still pretty excited to see the new uniforms that my source seemed to think would be revealed at the NFL Draft. Ross had to put his stamp on this team and I don’t hate the logo and I am sure five years down the road no matter what the logo looks like we will still all love it. Go Dolphins!
I shall not be at another regular season game at Third and Long as I am flying home to London for the holidays. So barring a Christmas miracle of a Miami post season chances are I won’t get to catch up with many of you until the draft. So here’s to hoping.
The list of of injuries keep mounting, maybe we have been luckier than other teams for most of the season but this feel like a really bad time to start getting them.Since the Dolphins beat the Jags last week I have seen a number of articles and posts relating to the fact that the Dolphins are still alive in the playoff race here. Still alive yes, but with a very weak pulse and on life support, about ready to flat line as early as this Sunday. Week 15 produced the perfect scenario to keep us in it, all the teams that we needed to lose did just that and we won. Thing is when the playoff spot that you can theoretically get hangs in the balance of so many external factors, although it is an exciting prospect I grant you, the only thing the Dolphins can do is continue to win and let the chips fall where they will. Because without victories against the Bills this Sunday and the patriots the following Sunday it really doesn’t matter what else happens.
Ryan Tannehill needs to focus on one game at a time. He has been performing well as of late, at least to the extent where he is no making any rash decisions and turning the ball over. But is lack of TD’s seriously is concerning to me, its not really being discussed because for the most part the seasons expectations have been exceeded and he has looked decent. But in this category he is infinitely behind on all his fellow rookies, and we cannot put this purely down to the fact that he doesn’t have that elite receiver because Hartline and Bess have both been fantastic and there has been a supporting cast that can make it work. Weeden has 14 with the Browns, who the hell is he throwing the ball to? Russell Wilson has 21 in Seattle. To some extent its been the play calling. The reality is though that if the team ever wants to be competitive in a post season then we need to score more points. All the teams that will be playing in January will have QB’s who can produce in the red zone.
Chad Henne started the season riding the pine for his new club, the Jacksonville Jaguars. Following a season-ending injury to second year bust Blaine Gabbert, Henne has already gotten his second chance at a starting job in the NFL. Thus far, he has done a very good job of ensuring that he keeps it. In less than half the amount of games as Tannehill, Henne has managed to match our rookie QB’s 8 TD passes. He returns this Sunday for the first time to square off against his old club, a place that probably does not hold too many happy memories for him, just much disappointment for promise unfulfilled. But at this point of the season, this is one of the more intriguing aspects of this game, as it holds no playoff implications. In some forums, I see that people are still calculating all the things that would need to happen to get to the postseason, but the reality is that we are done; Tannehill acknowledged as much this week. When all the things that need to happen for the postseason are mostly out of your control, it does little good to speculate on it.
The Miami Dolphins are about due a victory of the Patriots – in the last 4 meetings between the two teams, the Patriots are 4-0. This simply will not do. They are travelling to our turf; and if what I am hearing around the interwebs is true, then home field advantage is unlikely to be in effect, as it seems that they will have just as many of their supporters present, if not more. One report I read suggested that the Dolphins’ offense have been practicing with loud crowd noise blaring away this week in preparation for just that scenario. It’s embarrassing but it seems that that’s just the way it is.
The Brady-lead Patriots are just as good as they have ever been with the sixth round pick out of Michigan at the helm. Since taking over the mantle, Brady has made New England a perennial playoff team and a force within the AFC and the AFC East. He is to Patriots football what Marino was to Dolphins football. They will sure miss him when he is gone. Look, this isn’t me just paying lip service to the guy – the fact of the matter is that the Patriots’ success hinges on Brady. The facts are that this Sunday we face a team that is 1st in scoring, 1st in offensive yards and 4th in passing yards, on the shoulders of the QB. Brady is putting together another MVP-calibre season having thrown just the 3 interceptions and currently holding a QB rating of 105.2. They are good, but Brady is the cog in the machine that keeps this team ticking over so nicely, disrupt his game and the whole thing kinda doesn’t work so well. Yeah, the running game currently ranks 6th in the league, but make no mistake, many of those are Brady’s yards as as well, he just now has a running back who can make the most of a great passing game.
When we dropped the game to the Colts, I was disappointed, but not heartbroken. We missed some opportunities, and we could not seem to stop Luck converting those big downs – the weakness that has and continues to be our secondary. Point is, it was a game we could have won. It was close, and for the most part I was pleased with the effort, the heart, that most of the team played with.
I said that the Titans game was a must-win game for a playoff contention. It really was, and we embarrassed ourselves. The offense seemed stale, no one looked prepared, and no one looked like they had the heart to put the team on their shoulders and carry it for us. Bush was benched for most of the game, a decision that I personally am not entirely on board with. This loss, to a team that had struggled in every facet of the game all season long, was the turning point in our season. The road gets harder. The loss to the Bills was much the same in way of disappointment, disappointment over the effort and how prepared we appeared to be as a team.
I wanted to post these earlier but two crushing losses were hard to deal with. I will say that leading up to the Titans game I had an amazing weekend. Michelle and I were invited down to the 9th annual Miami Dolphins Web Weekend. It’s an event the Dolphins hold every year where they bring staff of Miami Dolphins fan websites down for a game, a locker room tour and some really cool other things. This is actually my 9th year and Michelle and I met at the weekend when we both ran other Phins related sites.
I took a ton of photos so let me break down the weekend so you know what you are looking at when you check out the gallery. The first night of the weekend we had dinner at the training facility. Normally the Friday dinner is a little more informal with just free food and people hanging out talking. Last year we had a surprise visit from Nat Moore. This year they upped the ante with Joe Philbin surprising us. He talked to us for a while and signed some hats for our fundraiser. After that Sam Madison and showed up and talked with everyone for the rest of dinner. No one could get him to stop talking. It was great. He was showing people how he would defend Randy Moss and stuff.
The next day we got up really early and went to the stadium and helped the Miami Dolphins Special Teams pack up care packages for the military for Veterans Day. After that we had some time off and then met up back at the Dolphins training facility. There was a tour of the facilities and we saw that Richie Incognito had the Dolfans NYC shirt I sent him sitting on his locker. I thought that was pretty cool. The Dolphins equipment manager talked to us for a while which was surprisingly interesting. After that we had dinner and then we went into the team meeting room where we had a series of guest speakers. Some of them were Dolphins staffers you probably don’t care too much about, but the big ones were Mike Dee, Jeff Ireland and Jim Kiick.
Jeff Ireland was hilarious. He came out right away and made fun of all his mistakes and the trip to get Harbaugh and what he called “Dezgate” He answered our questions surprisingly honestly and was very straight forward. It made me like the guy a lot. Of course that was before we lost two horrible games in a row where our team failed to show up completely. Mike Dee answered a bunch of questions and talked about how the new logo was going to be a combination of retro and modern. He told us he had showed it to Bob Greise, Nat Moore and Dan Marino and they all loved it. It got me exited. When he said he only had time for one more question I raised my hand. I thanked him for coming to our tailgate and then I told him that Michelle and I had a present for him.  We walked up to the front of the room and Michelle handed him an envelope with $1000 that we raised for the Miami Dolphins Foundation.  It was a really cool moment and he thanked us and the Dolphins staff photographer took photos. Next time we have to get him a novelty sized check. Lastly Jim Kiick came up and was hilarious as well. Talked about how he hated Shula and it only took them 40 years to become friends. He introduced a documentary about the ’72 season and then did a Q&A after the movie. He also signed a ton of autographs and posed for photos. Very cool guy.
At some point during the night (after the speakers but before the movie) the Miami Dolphins announce the “Webby Awards”. The Webbys are awards given to different  fan sites. Dolfans NYC had never won one because we don’t have a forum and we aren’t very similar to the other sites so there hadn’t been a category for us to win. This year they added the Eddie Jones Community Award after the late Dolphins president Eddie Jones. We thought this was an award we could win since we do so much fundraising and we have a real community.  So we were shocked when we actually heard our name called for another award. We won an award for best columns and features so that was pretty cool. We actually tied with Phin Phanatic and then tied with them AGAIN for the community award. Brian Miller who runs that site is a really great guy so it was an honor to share the award with him.  He won best over all site as well.
As fun as Saturday was it was now game time. We woke up early Sunday morning and headed to the stadium just a few minutes after the gates opened. We did a few laps around the stadium and ended up at the Phin Addicts tailgate where they were hosting a bunch of military members for Veterans Day. It was very cool. Those guys are serious fans. I would be in the Deep End with them every week if I lived in Miami. Before the game we hit the Nat Moore BBQ tailgate for some serious food and then got to go on the field and watch the team warm up. Finally we went to our seats in the “Locker Room Club”. The seats are actually on the field in the endzone and you are right there. You can then walk in the stadium right where the lockers are and you can see the players go in and out of the locker room. I have sat in these seats one before and it’s a much better experience when the team isn’t getting destroyed by the Titans. Another highlight was that Stephen Ross came over to the Locker Room Club before the game and shook my hand and told me how much fun the tailgate was. I had a copy of the Miami Herald that had a photo I took of him on the cover of the sports section so I pulled it out to show him. He signed it for me and a picture of us ended up on the Miami Dolphins Instagram account and on Mike Dee’s Twitter. Oh, and I saw Don Shula driving around the field before the game on a golf cart! Very cool.
After that moment it was all down hill and we don’t need to talk about it except to say I got an amazing picture of the pick six Tannehill threw. Sign.  Anyway, the pictures from the whole weekend are great and  you should check them out by clicking here or using the Flickr slideshow below. Go Dolphins!
