Every year we try to up the #MetLifeTakeover and so every year we try and raise the level of our annual #MetLifeTakeover video. It was pretty hard to outdo the last video, which was hosted by Dolphins legend Sam Madison, but I think we may have done it!

This year the #MetLifeTakoever was really on another level. Thanks to an early season game we had one of our biggest crowds with over 1100 people and thanks to our partnership with Urban Tailgate the party in the parking lot was out of control.

Both of the video teams from the last few years were unavailable and we sort of scrambled at the last minute to find a crew. Fortunately Curtis over at RizeOptix was recommended to us by one of our Twitter followers. He absolutely killed it with the video with a lot of help from our host Oscar Collazos. Oscar is a die hard Dolphins fan who happens to be a professional comedian. With no Dolphin royalty available to host Oscar was the perfect choice for the video and he did a fantastic job.

This video features interviews with former Dolphins Nat Moore & Joe Rose as well as Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel and Dolphins SVP of Communications & Community Affairs Jason Jenkins. Jason has actually been to every single #MetLifeTakeover and seems to really support what we are doing. There’s also an interview with Brian Miller who runs PhinPhanatic.com and did a series of stories about the #MetLifeTakeover. He also has been uploading virtual reality video to his new YouTube channel Phinatics360.

Also in the video is footage from our pre-party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub the night before and a performance from SoLo D. Every time I watch our video I get his song “Hit Squad” stuck in my head. I also need to give a shout out to DJ Tropic for DJing both parties and Sailor Jerry for sponsoring the tailgate.

Lastly, and probably most importantly I just wanted to thank everyone who came to the takeover, came to the tailgate, bought a raffle ticket, bought a t-shirt or just threw a couple dollar bills into a bucket at one of our weekly meet ups at Slattery’s. Because of you guys we have been able to donate $13,750 to charity this year and don’t think we are done giving. Just today we donated to Koa Misi’s CA wildfire fundraiser and we plan on doing more with Dolfans who live in Northern California.

We will have a full breakdown of everything we have donated at the end of the season but here’s an overview: We have donated $7000 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation, $2000 to the Dolphins Cycling Challenge, $1000 to RISE, $900 to cancer research charities, $2300 for various disaster relief efforts and several hundred dollars to our own members in need.

Okay, enough rambling. Let’s watch the 2017 #MetLifeTakeover video!

If you have been following us for a while you might know about the Miami Dolphins Web Weekend. The Dolphins started it 14 years ago as a way to reach out to all the different fan sites. I ran a Dolphins fan site many years ago and it only really lasted for a few months but I kept updating it just so the Dolphins would keep inviting me down to Miami. Luckily for me I did that because I met Michelle at Web Weekend and started watching games with her and her friends and soon Dolfans NYC was born.

This year was a good one. Not only did the Dolphins win (four straight Web Weekend victories!) but Dolfans NYC once again won the Miami Dolphins Webby Awards for Community Oriented Site and Best Use of Social Media. The Community award is a big one and was named after Eddie Jones who was the president of the Dolphins and sadly died in 2012.

Speaking of community, the reason we keep winning the award is because of all of you guys. The money we raise from the #MetLifeTakeover and our raffles and merch sales all go to charity.  This weekend we were able to donate $7000 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation and $1000 to The Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE). We presented the check to RISE CEO Jocelyn Benson and we hope to work more with them since they are based in NYC.

We had some pretty great guests at the Web Weekend as well. We had Kiko Alonso and Ja’wuan James speak with us on Friday and on Saturday we heard from Mike Tannenbaum and Dolphins legend Dwight Stephenson. We told Kiko about the donation we made to his hurricane Maria fundraiser and gave him a Dolfans NYC shirt. One of the most interesting moments was when Mike Tannenbaum told us that we would be surprised with how the linebackers would look on Sunday and they were really the difference in the defense this week.

On Saturday morning we participated in a Miami Dolphins Special Teams event. We helped pack up backpacks for Feeding South Florida. They feed hungry kids over the weekend. It gives them three meals a day for two days while they aren’t in school getting their school lunches.

The game Sunday was pretty awful on the offensive side of the ball but the defense was fantastic and we came away with a win. Plus the seats the Dolphins gave us were on the shady side of the field this year so it was way cooler than the #MetLifeTakeover. Might be my last Dolphins game of the year so it was nice to get a win.

Oh, one more thing… we showed a rough edit of our #MetLifeTakeover video to the Web Weekend group and they seemed to love it. We went through the video and sent in our edits to the director so hopefully we will have that for you soon.