The #MetLifeTakeover was a huge success this year and I just want to thank all of you for making it amazing. We weren’t able to get as many tickets this year because the Jets thought they were gonna be good this year (lol), but we sold out before the season even started and gave out our section number to the hundreds and hundreds of people who emailed us requesting tickets too late. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had 2500 Dolphins fans sitting together because our sections were packed. With the great tailgate and the Dolphins dominating on the field it was just an amazing day.

Speaking of the tailgate, we had a huge crowd all day and a video I took from the top of our U-Haul went viral, being reposted by tons of national media outlets, and even a local TV station reached out about using it, although I have no idea if they actually did. Speaking of TV, the film crew from HBO’s Hard Knocks came out to the tailgate, interviewed Michelle and I as well as some other fans and did a short segment during episode two of the show. If you didn’t watch the episode you can watch the short segment here.

We had some cool guests at the tailgate this year. Dolphins legends Joe Rose and Nat Moore never miss a tailgate but we also had a couple of social media stars, with Kickball Dad returning to the Takeover to film some videos, and elementary teacher extraordinaire Mary Martinez celebrated her 30th birthday with us. We had two Miami Dolphins Fans of the Year in attendance, Dolphreaky and the newest Fan of the Year Chris Barker. Solo D performed as he always does and my cousin came out because her husband is a huge Dolphins fan and that was really cool for me.

On the charity front, we raised over $6000 just from raffle and merch sales and that doesn’t include the money we made from ticket sales. We are unfortunately dealing with some possible unexpected expenses because of an unfortunately incident that we won’t get into, but we should be able to donate over $10,000 to charity this year. We will be announcing donations as they happen on Twitter but hopefully at the end of the year I can do a run down of the good that money is doing. By the way, all donations to us are tax deductible so if anyone is interested in donating please reach out.

Shout out to DJ Drell, our new regular Slattery’s DJ for killing it at his first #MetLifeTakeover and Solo D for his yearly performance. Solo came to the second or third one of these we ever did and hasn’t missed one since. He’s become such a huge part of our tailgate experience. Thanks as always to our tailgate partners Urban Tailgate. Those guys take everything off our plate and handle all the food, drinks, games and simple stuff like getting there hours before the gates open to make sure we get our regular spot. And lastly, huge thanks to all our volunteers who we couldn’t do any of this without. From our bus captains, to the people selling merch and raffle tickets, to just random people who grab a bin from the bus and bring it over to the tailgate for us, we appreciate you guys a ton.

Anyway, I did a terrible job of documenting the event, but I did technically take some photos, so I got a gallery of stuff for you guys to look through. Don’t worry though, we will have one hell of a recap video for you guys coming a lot sooner than last year’s video. I can’t wait for you to see it.

I have no idea why I go to the NFL Draft nearly every year. It’s a complete mystery. I don’t watch college football so I don’t know who any of the players are and yet I have gone to 10 out of the last 15 Drafts. One of those Drafts was a virtual Draft and I actually was shown on TV via Zoom for that one so I think that actually makes it 11 out of 15.

It all started as a marketing decision. Back in 2008 we didn’t even exist yet, we had a small group of Dolphins fans that watched together but we were hoping to find more. The Dolphins had the first pick in the NFL Draft and back then the Draft was in New York every year so we figured it would be a fun experience and maybe we could find some new local Dolphins fans. By 2009 our crew had grown bigger and just before the Draft Michelle and I set up social media accounts for a new “official” NYC Dolphins fan club called Dolfans NYC. We hadn’t watched a game as Dolfans NYC yet, but we were building. We made flyers and brought them to the Draft to hand out to every Dolphins fan we could find. It was great outreach.

After that we went to every NFL Draft in NYC using it to try and get on TV, not for the “fame” but so that Dolphins fans at home watching might realize that there was a club of Dolphins fans in NYC and maybe they should type Dolfans NYC into google and try and find us. Our group got bigger and bigger every year. One year a cop stopped me at the Draft and I thought I had done something wrong. Turns out he just wanted to know where he could get a new Dolfans NYC shirt because his old one got damaged in the wash.

In 2015 the NFL Draft left New York and for the next three years there was no Dolfans NYC representative at the Draft, but in 2018 the NFL introduced something called the “Inner Circle” where a handful of die hard fans from each team would be sat in special seats near the stage where cameras could film them whenever that team would draft a player. The idea was that it would give the team’s biggest fans a great experience while also giving the NFL great footage to use on TV. The Draft was in Dallas that year and half my family lives there so I had a place to stay and Dolfans NYC had a bunch of airline miles so I flew to Dallas, put on as much Dolfans NYC merch as possible and did whatever I could do get Dolfans NYC on TV. I missed the 2019 Draft, but I got on TV for the 2020 virtual Draft. In 2021 I got a chance to go to Cleveland for the Draft. Everyone had to be vaccinated and wear a mask and there were only 12 people allowed per team, but it was still a great experience.

This year we ended up trading all of our picks for Hill and I probably wouldn’t have gone but unfortunately I booked my ticket to Vegas about a week before the trade so I was kinda stuck. After the Dolphins traded their first round pick I actually decided not to go to the first day of the Draft and spend it with my girlfriend who had never been to Vegas.

On Day 2 I went down to the Draft a bit early to check out the NFL Experience which features a bunch of different NFL related activations. There are some autograph signings and games where you do football skills and you could see the Vince Lombardi trophy and all the Super Bowl rings. I feel like it would be really fun for a family, but maybe not so much for a middle aged punk rock dude with a herniated disc and torn hip. I also got to check out a lot of this stuff last year in Cleveland.

The Draft itself was very Vegas with a bunch of celebrities and Raiders cheerleaders and for some reason Criss Angel.  The famous faces were a good mix of old and new, plus a lot of legendary players. Barry Sanders was a crowd favorite. The crowd around me was pumped about Donny Osmond but had no idea who MERO or Sean Evans were (I was pumped for them) and I am sure the kids there were really happy to see pro gamers FaZe Rug & Dr. DisRespect and the TikTok duo who I didn’t recognize. The Dolphins Draft choice was announced by the legendary Larry Csonka who I didn’t photograph because I was too busy cheering for him. It worked, and once again Dolfans NYC got on the broadcast.

As far as the actual draft picks, you can read a million site that will tell you about them, this post is about the experience of going, and some Dolfans NYC history. I will say that I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t pick a lineman. I think the Dolphins are a lot happier than we are about center and right tackle. I am not sure why that’s the case but I hope they are right. I guessed our first round pick was going to be a pass rushing LB and I was right. I don’t know anything about Tindall but a player that had a second round grade with a ton of upside and is fast as hell is perfect for a late third round pick. I have no idea why we drafted a WR in the 4th but he’s very fast, so that makes sense with our offense.

Click here to see all my pictures from day two of the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas!

Thanks you all for coming out to the 2021 #MetLifeTakeover. What an absolute blast! From the party at Slattery’s to the tailgate to the Dolphins play on the field everything went off without a hitch. Despite a slightly less than normal turnout (the team’s record, the pandemic and the Jets only selling us 700 tickets didn’t help) we still had one of our most successful years. Thanks to you guys we raised over $6000 for charity between raffle, auction and merch sales. And that doesn’t even include the money we made off the tickets sold. That money is going back into our war chest to make new merch, raffle prizes and other expenses for next season, but it will all eventually be turned into even more money that we can use to do more good. The merch/raffle/auction money will be going to the Miami Dolphins Foundation, The Dolphins Cancer Challenge and the Jason Taylor Foundation.

So here’s a quick breakdown on the weekend. On Saturday night we had a great crowd at our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub. We had DJ Syckturtle spin both that night and the tailgate the next day. We had a live auction that raised over $1000 on just three items and we had a big raffle as well for a bunch of great signed stuff. One of our members even brought a team signed ball from the Philbin era that had some great signatures on it despite how we may feel about those years. Another one of our members donated a Marino jersey that raised $275 in the live auction. Special shout out to Robert who bought it AND the Christian Wilkins signed jersey for $500!

One of the coolest parts of Saturday night, and the tailgate, was that the Miami Dolphins entire podcast network came out. We had Dolphins legend OJ McDuffie and his The Fish Tank co-host Seth Levit (and DJ DJ Prēc), Drive Time’s Travis Wingfield and Dolphins Today host Johanna Torres all come out and party with us both days. Nat Moore and Jason Jenkins also came out during the tailgate… those guys never miss one. Want to give a special shoutout to OJ who signed autograph after autograph and posed for picture after picture the entire time he was there. And another shout out to Seth who also runs the Jason Taylor Foundation who donated the Jason Taylor jersey to our game day raffle. He told us to give all the money to the Miami Dolphins Foundation in the DCC but we raised so much that we had to surprise him with donation to the JT Foundation as well.

The tailgate itself was an absolute party. We took over the entire parking lot between L4 and L7. It was massive. Our partners at Urban Tailgate killed it again. They were a little understaffed at the last minute and that led to some long lines, but the food was incredible. We will get that worked out for next year and make sure the lines aren’t nearly as bad. Huge shout out to our friends at Sailor Jerry for providing not only Sailor but also some bottles from their sister brands Reyka Vodka and Fistfull of Bourbon.

The game couldn’t have gone much better. The Jets hung around for a bit, but in the second half the Dolphins put them to bed and you could hear our “Let’s Go Dolphins!” chants on TV. Several of the Dolphins players Tweeted about us after the game and the #MetLifeTakeover hashtag absolutely exploded on Twitter. I couldn’t even keep up with it. We even got a little write up in the Miami New Times. Very cool.

So thanks again everyone for making this year one of the best years ever. I can’t wait to do it all again next year. I got a pretty good gallery of photos for you too. I have a back injury so I didn’t do a great job documenting it, but there are still some fun shots here. Also we have the 2021 #MetlifeTakeover video coming soon. That should be amazing. Now go check out the photos below! (Click here to view the gallery directly on Flickr where it looks less wonky than the embedded gallery viewer.)

I almost called this post a 2021 NFL Draft recap, but we aren’t going to be getting into the actual picks very much, more just my experience in Cleveland and then we can take a look at some of my photos from the weekend (well, technically it was Thursday). I will say this about the picks, I am very excited about all of them. I would have loved Harris at 18 because that would have been really fun, but RBs are the most replaceable position in football and if you had asked me what the Dolphins needed without knowing any of the players in the draft I would have told you pass rush and receiver and we got two great players at those positions plus a beast at OT and apparently the best safety in the draft (which happens to be my favorite position) so I am pretty happy with it. But that’s enough of my second rate analysis, let’s talk about the trip.

When the NFL Draft was in NYC we started organizing group trips starting with the 2008 Draft when we picked Jake Long with the first pick in the Draft. We didn’t even have a club yet. The next year we printed a bunch of flyers and handed them out to everyone to promote the club which we had just started. We kept doing this and using it as outreach for the club until the Draft moved out of NYC. In 2019 I got invited to go to Dallas to be part of the Inner Circle and it was a great experience and I couldn’t wait to do it again in Vegas last year. Michelle was coming too and we had a bunch of plans for meet ups and fun things like that, and then Covid happened. I did get to be part of the screen behind Goodell instead, but not quite the same thing.

This year I think I lucked out. The NFL only allowed 12 people per team into the Inner Circle this year and you had to be vaccinated by April 15th. Finally my high blood pressure helped me out in life and I got my second shot in early April. I also happened to be holding my phone in my hand when I got the email from the Dolphins. I am not exactly sure who else was on the mailing list, but I bet it was all of the fan clubs, but when I saw it was first come, first serve I emailed back within seconds before even looking at flights or hotels. I ended up staying at a horrible motel out by the airport because of it, but it was well worth it in the end.

I don’t watch college football and I try not to dig to deep into Draft stuff because I don’t want to get excited about a player and watch him go right before we pick to the Jets or something. I remember after the Chiefs drafted Eric Berry I was so god damn disappointed I stopped following the Draft from then on, but I still love the Draft experience. I love having a reason to get excited about the Dolphins again, I love interacting with fans from the Dolphins and talking some smack to rival fans and just being part of this group experience of the most die hard fans in the world coming together for this admittedly kinda boring event. I mean can you imagine explaining it to someone who doesn’t like sports? It’s crazy how much we love it.

I personally do not care one way or another about getting on TV but I do care about getting the Dolfans NYC logo on TV. Our group trips to the Draft were such a good way to grow the club and my hope is that if people at home in NY see a Dolfans NYC hat or t-shirt on ESPN they might look up the club and realize that there are Dolphins fans in their backyard and they had no idea. It’s all about spreading the word. So I thought it was very cool that I got some TV time during the first pick, what I didn’t expect was getting even more TV time on the actual Draft stage!

I have no idea why they introduced this fan sitting in Goodell’s seat thing, but they picked one person out of the Inner Circle for each pick to sit on stage. After the first pick I started to look around and realized of the 11 remaining Dolphins fans who hadn’t been on stage, there were only a few of us in Dolphins gear that wasn’t just your standard jersey. I figured if I was a producer I wouldn’t pick someone who was just in a jersey if I could help it. I sort of figured I had a chance to get our logo on TV in a bigger way so when it got close to the 18th pick I stood up and started looking around for NFL employees, and I made eye contact with a guy who immediately called me over and that was that, I got to go into the chair.

When they brought me up I thought I was going to be really nervous so I just tried to be as chill as possible. Goodell shook my hand and told me to enjoy the seat and a producer came over and told me the Dolphins had already made their pick and my time in the chair would be short. She told me that after the pick I would be handed a jersey and once I got it I would stand up and either hand it to the pick if he was there or just hold it up to the crowd. After that I just got to sit there and relax. The chair was comfy as hell and I saw people taking my photo so I crossed my legs to get the Jordans in the pictures. When Goodell came back out he showed me the pick and asked me if I like it. I didn’t even see who was picked 17th so I wasn’t sure if Harris was even still on the board. When I saw Philips I was pumped because we desperately needed a better pass rush and he’s a beast. I almost flashed The U symbol to the crowd before Goodell read of the pick but I absolutely chickened out. I didn’t want to get in trouble for signaling the pick before it was announced. After that I got handed a jersey and a screen came down with Philips on it and I was told to hold it to the screen which was weird because there wasn’t a camera there and Philips was hugging his family and not looking at the screen so Goodell just told me to show it to the Dolphins fans. After that someone took the jersey and told me to exit stage right and that was it. Later round picks got to keep their players Draft card so kinda jealous I didn’t get mine, but over all a very cool experience.

I also met some great Dolphins fans but I just wanted to shout out my dude Alex who picked me up from my hotel and brought me home from the draft on Thursday. It saved me like $70 on Ubers cause that’s how much I spent on Friday and it was great talking football with him at the NFL Experience before the Draft. Thanks man! Huge shout out to TPP as well for the challenge coin. Means a lot!

I am not sure what else I should add, but the whole event was very cool from the NFL Experience stuff (I got to see all the Super Bowl rings and managed to hurt my shoulder trying to throw a Hail Mary) to the gift bags (I got some new raffle prizes for the club next season) to getting to sit in the chair. I got a bunch of photos for you guys too, all from Thursday since I didn’t bring my camera back for Friday and I left Saturday. Check them out below!

Wow, this weekend was amazing, well at least it was until that pass interference review… But even with the loss the #MetLifeTakeover event was a huge success. With the Dolphins having some issues on the field we had less fans join us this year, but it turns out 500+ Dolfans is still a huge party!

Not only was it a blast but between the pre-party at Slattery’s on Saturday and the tailgate on Sunday we raised a TON of money for charity. Our raffle for a signed Dan Marino/ Zach Thomas hat ended up raising over $700 for the Dan Marino Foundation and we raised a lot more money throughout the weekend. We also collected three huge boxes of toys for Toys For Tots and the Dolphins came out as part of their Huddle For 100 initiative and set up a table where people could make Christmas cards for troops overseas.

During the live taping of Joe Rose’s Cup of Joe radio show we donated $5000 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation bringing our total giving for the year up to $10,000 and that doesn’t include our food, toy and dental supply drives or the money we raised Saturday night for the Dolphins Cancer Challenge  which takes place in February. During the taping the Dolphins also surprised us with a framed jersey celebrating our 10th anniversary, it was pretty amazing.

We also had a South Florida CBS affiliate come do a live Facebook video from the tailgate which was pretty cool as well. We will have a bunch more video coming soon as the Dolphins did a video about us in collaboration with Hotels.com and we of course have our yearly wrap up video that should be out by the end of the season.

We had a bunch of Dolphins alumni make it to the tailgate. Along with Joe Rose and Nat Moore who are regulars we also had Shawn Wooden, Terry Kirby and Ed Perry. Shawn’s son plays football at Columbia so he comes by Slattery’s enough that he’s part of our crew now. Glad he got to check out the Takeover.

Huge thanks to Solo D, DJ Tropic and DJ Syck Turtle for providing the music for the tailgate and Outsnapped for doing our photobooth. (See the photo booth photos here!) Thanks to Sailor Jerry for providing a bunch of rum as always and Hotels.com for providing a $500 gift card and pregame field passes for the raffle.

And finally, huge thanks to Urban Tailgate for running the catered tailgate again. They make our lives so much easier and we are doing it all again on Sunday! We decided to do a scaled down tailgate for the Giants game. Tailgate tickets are only $45 ($35 for food only) and will feature the same great food, just a few less options and of course all you can drink alcohol. Get your tailgate tickets here! Prices go up to $55 if you wait until game day. We will be in the same spot, bus lot, L4 and feel free to BYO as well. The tailgate won’t have a live DJ, but we will have music and our merch for sale, cornhole set up and a bunch of other stuff and we still have a bunch of the boom sticks we gave away on Sunday left, so come and grab one to bring inside.

So that’s the full wrap up and now it’s time to look at some photos. I didn’t do a great job taking photos and working the event at the same time, but I think you are going to enjoy them anyway! Thanks for coming and hope to see a ton of you guys on Sunday! Phins up!

It’s finally here! The 2018 #MetLifeTakeover video took us forever to finish, but I think the results are worth waiting for. For the second year in a row the video was directed/edited by RizeOptix and hosted by comedian Oscar Collazos. We loved their work on the 2017 Takeover video and we were glad they could do it again. We have actually teamed up with RizeOptix again to work on something special for our 10th anniversary next year, but don’t tell anyone!

The video is of course a recap of the 2018 #MetLifeTakeover during our week 2 win against the Jets at MetLife Stadium. It features footage from our Saturday night pre-party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub, our massive tailgate and we got some pretty amazing footage from inside the game as well. In past years we didn’t have a ton of footage from inside the stands but this year we got some great stuff including footage from across the stadium where you can see how fully we took over the upper deck.

The video includes interviews with Dolphins alumni Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, Kim Bokamper, Joe Rose and Nat Moore who were all at the tailgate. Additionally there are interviews with Jason Jenkins who is one of our biggest supporters in the Dolphins organization, musician Solo D and a bunch of Dolfans. We unfortunately had to cut some of the fan interviews because we had so many, but you might see them as Instagram videos next year!

Before we get to the video I just wanted to give some shoutouts: The Dolphins organization for always supporting our club, the Jason Taylor Foundation for donating a signed JT jersey for our raffle (We ended up raising $2000 for the Foundation!), Urban Tailgate for doing all the hard work for our pregame party, Sailor Jerry for providing a ton of rum, Slattery’s as always for all the help on a day where we are actively taking people AWAY from their bar and of course everyone who came out, supported us, spread the word or donated anything to the charity. We have raised tens of thousands of dollars over the 10 years we have been doing this and we couldn’t do any of it without you guys.

See you guys next year for the 10th anniversary of Dolfans NYC! We will be doing TWO #MetLifeTakeovers as the Dolphins play both the Jets and the Giants next year!

Okay, it’s video time! Please share this with all your fellow Dolfans and let us know what you think! Oh, and make sure you watch until the very end!

When the schedule came out this year the first thing I did was book a trip to Green Bay with a bunch of other members of Dolfans NYC. As the season went on I found out more and more of our crew was going. We had at least 20 people who went but there were probably a lot more than that. When word got out that we were going people kept asking us if we were doing some sort of “Lambeau Takeover” and while we would never disrespect such a holy place as Lambeau like that we did want to throw a tailgate there, but less than a week out we still didn’t have any actual plans. That’s where Ace came in.

Andrew Abramson who you might remember as a Dolphins reporter from the Palm Beach Post reached out to us on Twitter about tailgating. He heard a guy named Ace had a great location about a block away from the stadium so I reached out to Ace to see what his plans were. He is the manager of a store called Extreme Audio in Manitowoc, WI and asked his boss if when the Dolphins played the Packers he could use the Green Bay location to throw a tailgate. Extreme Audio serves as a parking lot during Packers games so his boss said as long as he could still sell the parking spaces Ace could tailgate there.

It seemed like a perfect solution so we offered to buy 7 parking spaces that we could tailgate in as well as some money to pay for food. I reached out to Sailor Jerry and got them to send us some rum to make spiked hot apple cider. I posted on our social about the parking spaces and sold all of them in advance of the game in 24 hours and got the word out to hundreds of Dolphins fans who had made the trip. Ace did all the hard work and got all the food and booze and we went from a small tailgate into a massive event in just five days!

The game itself was a disaster but the Lambeau experience was so amazing. I honestly enjoyed the misery of sitting on cold ass metal bleachers in freezing weather and cheering on my team even though only half of them were there because of all the injuries. The fans in Green Bay are great and they understand we are there to appreciate Lambeau and the amazing history of that holiest of football locations. We got to do a tour of Lambeau the night before and it was really amazing. Every bit of the trip was great except for the actual game.

Oh, I totally forgot. We went by the team hotel after the Lambeau tour and we talked to a couple of players (Stills and Asiata) but we also ran into Tom Garfinkel who for some reason wanted a photo with us (Ace and I) and we ended up hanging out with Nat Moore at the bar and he told us some great stories and argued with us about what players belonged in the Ring of Honor. He also kept telling us about how great the #MetLifeTakeover was which is pretty much the greatest compliment we could get. He was saying how much it means to the players when all you can hear is LET’S GO DOLPHINS in the 4th quarter. Such a fun night.

So yeah, our trip was a great success, I just wish I could say the same for the Dolphins. We also ended up raising $800 for the Green Bay Toys 4 Tots at the tailgate! Thanks to everyone who chipped in, brought some booze, or just hung out. I heard it was the biggest contingent of away fans ever at Lambeau. That’s probably not true, but I am willing to pretend!

Now check out all the photos from the tailgate (and a few from the Lambeau tour) below!

Every football fan should go to Lambeau once in their lifetime and every 8 years Dolphins fans get the chance to see their team play in the football world’s Mecca.  As soon as the schedule came out a group of Dolfans NYC members set our plans in motion. Since then our group has grown and I found out that a bunch of our other members were going as well. When I mentioned we were going on Twitter Dolphins fans all over the country reached out to me about what we were doing for a tailgate. Well, we have finally figured that out!

Former Palm Beach Post Dolphins writer Andrew Abramson reached out to me about a friend of his living in Wisconsin who had a perfect spot for a tailgate. Andrew was a #MetLifeTakeover regular when he was covering the team and knew we were going and wanted to connect. He put me in touch with his friend Ace who got us access to a store called Extreme Audio (757 Mike McCarthy Way) that is only one block from the stadium!  The store acts as a parking lot for Lambeau on Game Day, but the owner is willing to sell us the parking spaces in advance.

Between Andrew, Ace and Dolfans NYC we have purchased 6 spaces that we are going to leave empty for the tailgate as well as a couple of spaces that we are going to be parking in. If you want to park in the lot as well (way cheaper than actual Lambeau parking) email ace@extremeaudio.com and let him know ASAP. There are only about a dozen spots left so first come first serve!

As far as the actual tailgate goes, we will be kicking off at noon, with the game starting at 3:25pm we should have plenty of time to pregame. We have 50 burgers, 50 brats and some vegetarian options. We are gonna have some beer and water, but please BYOB because we aren’t going to have enough for everyone. The tailgate is technically free but we ask everyone to make some sort of donation. After we recoup the funds we spent on food/parking all left over money will be donated to Toys 4 Tots. You can also bring an unwrapped toy as payment as well. Extreme Audio does a Toys 4 Tots fundraiser every year so we figured this was a perfect way to thank them for hosting us and to do some good for the Green Bay community. If you want to donate directly please PayPal us at dolfansnyc@gmail.com. I think a $10 per person donation would be perfect.

So to sum it all up, every Dolphins fan is invited to party with us before the Green Bay game. If you want to eat our food bring $10 or a toy for the charity drive. If you want to park near us make sure you email Ace ASAP. And if you want to drink, please BYOB. Obviously anyone who wants to bring other snacks and stuff we would love it. This should be an amazing experience no matter what happens on the field. Stay warm out there!

For years when the NFL Draft was in NYC we used it as a promotional opportunity for Dolfans NYC. We would bring flyers and pass them out to every Dolphins fan and we would do everything we could to get on TV, not because we wanted to be “famous” or something, but because we wanted people watching at home to know that there was a place for Dolphins fans in NYC. And you know what? I think it worked!

We were really disappointed when the Draft left New York, but it’s clearly grown into a much bigger and fan friendly event. This year the Draft was in Dallas at Jerry Johnson’s monument to himself, AT&T Stadium. Since the stadium was so massive the NFL had an idea of bringing in superfans from all the teams that way when the draft picks were announced the cameras could show crazy NFL fans screaming on TV.

Each NFL team was given 50 tickets and told to invite their most diehard fans, but the way every team did this was different. I heard that some of the teams held contests to see who the craziest fans were and other teams just gave their wealthy season ticket holders the tickets. It’s why you might have noticed that the fans of the Atlanta Falcons were all dressed like insane people and the New England Patriots fans looked like a bunch of bored middle aged men wearing jersey over business casual outfits.

The Dolphins decided to invited two people from each fan club as well as some season ticket holders. This was really cool because it meant we got to go and we got to hang out with fan clubs from Atlanta, California,  DC, the Carolinas and from both New and regular Mexico. It was a great time, but I think the Dolphins made one mistake which was not filling the section. There was a local Texas cheerleading team in half the seats who were wearing Dolphins gear and cheering but clearly didn’t have much of a rooting interest. Day two had even less Dolphins fans and looked pretty sad until they started just letting in Dolphins fans who weren’t in our section to begin with. I hope if they do it again the Dolphins still invite some of the fan clubs, but make sure the lunatics from the Deep End and people like the Dolphins Bandits and Poppa Pump at least get the chance to go.

We totally lucked out with the way the team sections were organized. They were in alphabetical order by division do that the AFC & NFC East were up front. They had four teams to a row so that the Bills and Giants were on the outside and the Cowboys and Dolphins were in the middle. I am sure the plan was to have the local Cowboys up front, but it was nice to benefit from that decision.

The other really cool thing was that the NFL had the draft picks come to each section and celebrate with the teams. The NFL had a selfie stick and took selfies with the draft picks and each fan group. I would love to see those photos but I have no idea what happened to them. This also gave us the opportunity to heckle draft picks of other teams which was fun. I told Sam Darnold all about the #MetLifeTakeover and I let Josh Allen know how much fun it must be to live in Buffalo.

Right before it was our turn to draft I got $14 in ones as change from one of the vendors and I started joking with the former Cowboys cheerleader named Kelsey that was in charge of our section. She dared me to make it rain on our draft pick and like any reasonable person I couldn’t say no to a Cowboys cheerleader. So when Minkah Fitzpatrick had his name called I got my ones ready and when he came over to take a photo with us I made it rain on him. Somehow no one seemed to have taken a photo or anything, but fortunately for everyone Kelsey got video of the whole thing. I realize this was incredibly stupid, but the guy is about to get paid and I thought it was hilarious. Don’t judge me.

Day two of the draft was less exciting, because it’s day two of the draft, but it was still great hanging out with everyone including the super fans from other teams. It’s nice to bond with everyone even if you are all talking a little bit of smack to each other. I got to meet Jetman and his son and told him how excited I was going to be to see him again at the #MetLifeTakeover. Day two also featured an NFL legend and a current player announcing the picks. We had Dwight Stephenson and Reshad Jones who are both two of my favorite players of all time. I hope we get to see those selfies we took with them!

Lastly I should mention that I don’t really care about what draft picks we get because no one really knows if they are going to be good or not, but I am really happy we got out of day two with a TE that can score in the red zone and a very fast linebacker. I am also really happy with Minkah because I didn’t want to draft a QB early and my favorite position is safety. I hope he can come in and play free safety and let Reshad do what he does best and stay in the box and absolutely destroy people. Hopefully all our day one and two players can contribute right away.

So thanks again to the Dolphins for inviting us out and I hope we can do it again next year! I brought my pro camera and took a bunch of photos on day one including some of stuff that was going on before the draft and of course pictures of superfans. I didn’t shoot a ton because I was too interested in the actual draft, but I think you will enjoy the shots anyway. Phins up!

Ps. I finally got on TV on day two praising the mighty Dolphins Baby!

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.