ESPN is running a competition right now to name America’s best sports bar and while Third & Long didn’t make the cut, our neighbors to the South did.
The season before Short Michelle and I started Dolfans NYC we visited Miami Mike’s in New Jersey for a game. It was amazing. We watched the game with 100 Phins fans and they played the fight song after every score and Miami Mike ran around like a manaic with his Dolphins poncho on high fiving everyone. It was an amazing experience.
So when Michelle and I started DolfansNYC Miami Mike’s was and continues to be a huge inspiration. We will not stop until we are as big of a Dolphins home base as they are. With two huge Dolphins bars in Jets territory Dolfans will not be stopped.
I don’t know about you guys but I am getting more and more excited about football season every single day. We are just four days away from the start of training camp and I can’t wait. I have no idea what this team is going to look like but I could not be more pumped.
I think if Chad Henne continues to improve our offense could be something really special. We had the #4 rushing offense in the NFL last year and that was with Ronnie hurt. This year our QB has a full training camp to prepare and a guy you might of heard of named Brandon Marshall. Add to that improved depth at offensive line and more experience for guys like Bess and Hartline we could really have an impressive offense.
On the defensive side you have to worry a little bit. Mike Nolan comes to town with and amazing reputation for turning around defenses and Karlos Dansby provides us with a quality inside linebacker like we haven’t seen since Z Thomas was in his primte, but with Ferg retiring we have lost all three defensive captains. Other than Dansby we really only have Bell, Allen and Crowder to provide veteran leadership and you can question if Allen or Crowder will even start. There is a lot of potential on this team certainly. Cam Wake seems like the guy everyone is talking about. As a former Nittany Lion myself I am pretty excited about him, but I still don’t know if he is the real deal. And that brings us to our secondary. Sean Smith and Vontae Davis look to be our corner backs of the future. These are athletic guys who showed they could make plays last year. They also showed that they occasionaly give up the big play. I think everyone is counting on these guys to show up and I am confident they can do it, but will they be able to do it NOW? I hope so.
Speaking on Vontae Davis I got to meet the man the other week. I saw on Twitter that Vontate Davis was going to be in New York on vacation. I hit him up and he put me in contact with his assistant. I put her in touch with Dolfans NYC member Scott who is part of the ownership of the popular nightclub Greenhouse. Greehouse has NFL players there all the time and I thought it would be the perfect spot for Vontae. We got him a table set up for Saturday but he showed up on Thursday as well. I went down both nights and hung out a bit.
Thursday was the day Ferg retired and it was one of the first things I asked Vontae about. He hadn’t checked the news and hadn’t heard about it. He almost didn’t believe me until I pulled up the article on my phone. He looked more than a little upset. Still, he had very high hopes for this season and is a monster up close. The guy is two inches shorter than me but his arms are bigger than my legs. He seemed like he had a great time both nights and he told me he would hit me up next time he is in town. I am really glad Dolfans NYC could treat him right. Hopefully he will let other players know and we can build on the already good realtionship we have with the team. Also, Vontae’s assistant is going to try to send over some autographs so we have something to raffle this year.
Anyway, I should be updating this more over the next couple weeks as we get ready for the reason. I hope you guys are exicted as I am. Go Dolphins!
This is the slowest time of the year and I can’t really take it. Everyone in Miami is talking about Lebron James and the only thing happening in Phinsland is that Chad Henne is getting married. And over over here at Dolfans NYC nothing is going on either. I really am trying to find something to update about and I just can’t do it. July is just too long to deal with. I just keep refreshing the Phins newswire and hoping that Rex Ryan falls down a manhole. He might actually fit now that he had his lap band surgery.
Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you guys and post a picture of the kitten I rescued. I found him and his brother in a box on the street. I found them good homes but before I did I taught them all about the Wildcat. They are named Jameson and Maven now, but to me they will be Ronnie and Ricky. Say hello to the Wild Kitten.
About a dozen members of Dolfans NYC met up at the NFL draft. There were more of us originally planning on going but there was rain and some miscommunication and not everyone showed up. Still, we had a pretty nice group as we waited in line for 5 hours on Wednesday and 3 hours on Thursday. A few of us even went back the next day, but we only stood around for about an hour. It was an awesome time despite the lines. All the football fans were talking smack and talking football. We all love the game and it was just a great time.
I can’t tell you guys anything you probably don’t already know about our draft picks, but I did meet one of Jered Odrick’s high school coaches and he had nothing but amazing things to say about the guy. He said he will make our OLB’s so much better because the Olinemen will never be able to get past him. He talked about the guys character and how psyched we should be. My freshman year roommate at Penn State still lives in State College, PA told me a lot of the same stuff, and compared him to Pittsburgh DT Aaron Smith. That’s some high praise.
Anyway, this update is mostly just to share with you some of the pictures I took at the draft. There are some nice ones, check it out.
Wow. We just traded two 2nd round draft pics to the Broncos for Brandon Marshall. That is nuts. I went to bed and when I woke up we were suddenly a much better football team. And yes, the pics are worth it. Marshall has had domestic violence issues and problems with Josh McDaniels in Denver, but as far as I am concerned he is well worth the risk. He is going to make Chad Henne so much better, he is going to spread the field and make the run game so much better, he is going to make the recievers so much better. The Phins are evidently trying to trade Ted Ginn, but with Marshall there is no way you can double Ginn, or Bess or Hartline or whoever is on the other side.
Someone pointed out on a forum that this trade could be a good PR move and mabye lessen the hurt of Jason Taylor going to the Jets, but to me this is a response to the Jets trading for Cromartie and Holmes. It also takes away a second round pick that could have been used to fill the whole that JT and Porter left. If we resign JT we can wait another year to see how Cam Wake pans out before drafting an ouside linebacker early. We can focus on nose or safety with our first round pick and spend the rest of the draft trying for the other. OUr offense could use another guard and maybe a TE, but other than that, it’s really all defense in the draft. I can’t wait.
Speaking of the draft, Dolfans NYC is making a group trip to Radio City Music Hall for the draft. You have to get in line at 10pm on Wednesday night to get a wrist band and then come back the following afternoon to get in line for tickets. DolfansNYC is going to meet up around 6pm at a near by bar and send scouts out to see if they are giving out tickets before 10pm like they did last year. We will be sending out a Facebook message and email with all the details, so make sure you join our Facebook group.
Also, Michelle is going to be filming the Draft and our meet up for MiamiDolphins.com so anyone who comes out can get in the video and see yourself on the Phins official web site. That should be big press for the club!
Lastly, we have some more exciting news! We will have DolfansNYC T-shirts for the draft. They are aqua with the DolfansNYC logo printed on the front. They are insanely bad ass. They will be on sale at the draft meet up and at games next year for $15. I hope you pick one up so we can really represent at the draft. We spent a good deal of money on them, so we need to sell a bunch of them to break even. After that the money will be used for promotional stuff for the club, raffle items and other club expenses. Last year Michelle and I dropped a lot of money on this club, and it would be nice to at least break even this year. Anyway, the shirts will be amazing so I don’t think I am going to have to guilt anyone into picking them up… heh.
The shirts won’t be ready until next week, but to see the logo in action, check this picture Michelle took of the DolfansNYC banner her friend printed up for us. This will be hanging out front of Third and Long every Sunday. Get excited!
Free agency is just a few days old and it has been an exciting one for the Dolphins! We cut Joey “Bitch, Moan and Won’t Play The Run” Porter, “Garbage” Gibril Wilson and Akin Ayodele. We also let unrestricted free agent Nate Jones leave for Denver. In the process we resigned Chad Pennington as a back up and paid former Cardinals inside linebacker Karlos Dansby a dump truck of money to come play for us. And as we speak we are trying to hammer out a deal for Steelers safety Ryan Clark. One of my best friends is a Steelers fan and spoke very highly of Clark. So did Peter King in this weeks MMQB.
I am extremely happy we resigned Penny and and pretty upset we let Nate Jones go. Rarely do you get a player so happy to be a role player and Nate Jones loved the nickle. He always made plays when he had to and he played is ass off on special teams. The only problem is that Will Allen is probably going to be playing nickel next year so we had to let somebody go. Speaking of Nate Jones, Michelle met him last week and has a video message from him that will be going up on this website so check back then.
Lastly, I wanted to tell you guys a funny story. Saturday night a friend of mine texted me at 330 in the morning to tell me he was hanging out with a Dolphin. He is a pretty well known musician but doesn’t know anything about football. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he knew I was a Phins fan so he texted me. Turns out the guy he was hanging out with was Ted Ginn. He told me that Ted Ginn called me a bitch because I didn’t want to go hang out. I texted something about dropped passes, but then I sucked it up and met them out. It turns out that it wasn’t Ted Ginn at all. I mean, he looked vaguely like him, but he was too short, fat and old looking to be one of the fastest men on Earth. I decided not to call this guy out, so I posed awkwardly for some photos with him and played a long. At one point he pulled me aside and thanked me for not blowing his cover. It was pretty funny. I had a good night hanging with them anyway, so it wasn’t a total bust. I even got a fake autograph!
Anyway, here is a pretty funny picture of me and the fake Teddy Ginn. And remember, come back on Wednesday to check out the Nate Jones shout out. Probably one of the last things he ever did as a Dolphin. See you soon! Go Dolphins!
Well it has been a minute since I hit you guys up. Things are pretty slow this off season. The combine is happening right now, but I haven’t been paying all that much attention. Most people say the Phins are looking at Rolando McLain or Dez Bryant. There are also rumors that we are looking at stealing Karlos Dansby away from the Cardinals and possibly trading with the Cardinals for Anquan Boldin. If we pulled off either of the Cards deals then our draft might look pretty different. The one guy I am obsessed with in the draft is Eric Barry. He is just the type of playmaking safety we need and having him back there with our two young corners would solve our secondary problems for years. Unfortunately I don’t think he could possibly fall to us, but honestly with a lot of people trying to trade down, he might be worth trading up for. We also need a nose tackle since we have no shot at Vince Wilfork who was my #1 off season dream. It’s pretty likely we will pick up a nose in the second round if anyone is still available.
If we could get Dansby and Boldin our main needs would be a nose and a safety. We could also use another outside linebacker or two if we don’t resign JT, which we better.
Anyway, I have some planned updates for the next few weeks, so check back and pretty soon we are going to start working on our draft party plans. It’s all pretty exciting.
In the mean time, check out this amazing Sports Illustrated article from 1984 on Dan Marino. It talks about how he is a pretty boy icon and discusses things that will be really relevant in the coming years like his bad knees. It aslo talks about how he really wanted to get some big sponsors which I always wondered about. Dan was advertising gloves and Blockbuster but he never really had a big shoe contract or a drink sponsor which was very confusing to me. He should have been on Nike and Pepsi ads. I wonder why that never happened. He did have Upper Deck which was cool growing up and collecting cards.
Anyway, see you guys soon.
Ps. If I spelled anyone’s name wrong in this article, I apologise, I am very tired and very busy and I didn’t have time to double check anything…