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.

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!

Yesterday was amazing. Not only did the Dolphins TROUNCE the Patriots but we had an amazing first day at Slattery’s Midtown Pub. About 400 Dolphins fans showed up to our first meet up of 2014 and it was a blast. We had some technical issues to start the day with DJ Tropic’s DJ set up not quite working as planned and the upstairs TV’s looking like the Dolphins were wearing the Detroit Lions jerseys in the first half but DJ Tropic managed to kill it despite his limitations and the TV’s got fixed before the second half. Things are only going to get better from here!

We have a lot more planned this year and hopefully the Dolphins will keep winning so that you guys will keep coming back in crazy numbers like yesterday. It was so much fun and we raised over $1000 for charity through the massive raffle and t-shirt sales and that doesn’t include our cut of the bar tab. We aren’t going to have a raffle every week but between our weekly events and the #MetLifeTakeover our plan is to donate over $10,000 to charity this year.

Now about the game! Can you believe the Dolphins beat the Patriots by double digits despite giving the ball up three times, settling for four field goals, playing without three starting linebackers, Mike Pouncy, Reshad Jones and Dion Jordan, and getting mediocre QB play? Obviously we are going to have more injuries this year and we already lost Ellerbe for the season, but this team is just going to keep getting better. Even Tannehill haters know he can pretty constantly play better than yesterday. With this suddenly powerful run first offense Tannehill can be a game manager and still succeed. The Patriots look worse than ever, the Jets looked pretty bad despite the win and I still don’t think the Bills can be competitive with EJ Manuel.  This season could be a lot of fun if yesterday wasn’t a fluke.

Time for some photos! I took a bunch of photos before and after the game. I was way too panicked to do anything during the game despite an appearance from Michelle’s son Charlie! Also, despite being a professional photographer I took EXTREMELY mediocre photos. Oh well, such is life. You guys will probably dig them anyway.

So check out the photos below! Phins up!

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Yesterday was one of the best days of my life and I have a feeling that another 750 or so people feel the exact same way after the amazing day we had yesterday at the Meadowlands. We rolled very deep taking four busses of fans from Slattery’s Midtown Pub to MetLife Stadium where a ton more Dolphins fans joined us. As a group we bought 760 tickets but there were a lot more at the game and I feel like most of them came to our tailgate!

The tailgate was catered for the first 300 people who signed up but a bunch of people brought their own food and set up around us. We also had beer and rum provided by PBR and Sailor Jerry and I can’t thank them enough for sponsoring our tailgate free of charge. The tailgate featured some Dolfan guests when team CEO Tom Garfinkle and Nat Moore showed up and posed for pictures with fans. While it wasn’t quite the Fergie appearance from last year Sun-Sentinel reporter Omar Kelly showed up and he was voted one of South Florida’s sexiest TV newsmen. (I actually had to google “Omar Kelly sexiest” to find that link. I hope the NSA isn’t judging me.) We also had a pretty awesome performance from Miami Dolfan Music’s own Solo D who recorded a #MetLifeTakeover song for the occasion. The Dolphins sent us a MASSIVE flag that we broke out at the tailgate. I had to climb on top of an RV to get pictures! I was also told Brent Grimes’ hilarious wife Miko showed up to the tailgate late but I missed her.

I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off so I barely had time to talk to anyone for more than a minute, but it was really amazing to meet all the Dolphins fans who came from all over the northeast for the game. The York PA Dolphins Fan Club and the Northern VA/DC club made group trips up and I hope it becomes a tradition. I love meeting fan clubs from all over and Michelle and I really want to do what we can to help grow these clubs around the country. Dolfans NYC has been successful partly because there are more than 10 million people living within an hour of us but I also think some of our marketing efforts have worked pretty well and I hope we can help other clubs do similar events at other Dolphins away games.

The game itself was of course amazing and our sections were ROCKING! We gave out 750 rally towels at the tailgate and they were in full force throughout the game. Marv Albert mentioned how loud we were on the TV broadcast after Brian Hartline scored a TD and pointed to our section with the ball. You could hear our LET’S GO DOLPHINS and DEFENSE chants in the background on the telecast but our Seven Nation Army chants were really audible in the fourth quarter. The Jets made a huge mistake by playing the song before a Dolphins third down and we kept coming back to it after that. It was pretty hilarious to use that against them.

Aside from the camaraderie and the huge win it was awesome to feel like what you were doing made a difference on the field. I think we all felt like we were making a difference in the game and giving our team energy and I don’t think we were alone in that. A ton of Dolphins Tweeted thank you messages to the crowd including several of them mentioning Dolfans NYC by name. We should have a list of all those Tweets on the blog tomorrow or whenever Alex gets a chance to do the post.

So check out all the photos I shot at the tailgate below and both MiamiDolphins.com and our crack team of video reporters were on hand so there should be some pretty cool videos coming soon! I also will be posting these pictures to our Facebook group so tag yourselves in them! Phins up!

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On Thursday Dolfans NYC threw a big Halloween party and the Dolphins won in miraculous fashion as Cam Wake sealed the game with only the third overtime safety in NFL history. Another great half was wasted with another poor third quarter but Ryan Tannehill made the plays he had to make to lead the team to a game tying field goal with seconds left in regulation. When the safety happened Slattery’s Midtown Pub erupted and we had free shots all around. The Dolphins broke the Bengals winning streak and ended their own losing streak and we partied.

We had DJ Tropic DJ again and he killed it all night. We had a costume contest as the three finalists battled it out via Instagram to see who would get the most likes. Mr. McGibblets out beat Ricky Williams by one vote and Joe Philbin came in a distant third. I loved the Philbin costume but after four straight losses he didn’t get a lot of love. My pajama wearing “Tired Of Losing” costume got the most votes but of course I was not eligible and Mr. McGibblets walked away with a hat signed by OJ McDuffie and Sam Madison. Mr. McGibblets also promised he would be coming to our #MetLifeTakeover on Dec 1st in full costume!

The next Dolphins game is a Monday night game against the Bucs and we will be having DJ Tropic in the house again as well as a huge raffle. We also will have our new DolfansNYC hats for sale again. I hope you guys get a chance to pick one up. Hope to see you guys then.

And lastly, before we get to the pictures I wanted you guys to check this video from the “Miami Dolphins Web Weekend” that the Dolphins posted on their site. DolfansNYC got a lot of love in it and special mention of the $3000 we donated to the Miami Dolphins Foundation. Thanks to you guys for our opportunity to do so much in the way of charitable donations!

Now check out the Halloween party photos from Slattery’s Midtown Pub below. Double click to open em in a new window so you can save them to your computer!

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Yesterday was amazing! We had so many people packed into our new home, Slattery’s Midtown Pub, that we took over both floors, not just the upstairs like planned. The only problem was the bar wasn’t quite prepared for the insane turnout so they were understaffed and it took forever to get food and drink. Fortunately, they know the deal now and will have plenty of staff on hand moving forward. The bar was amazed at the turnout and we are going to get all the kinks worked out and make this the best experience possible. All the problems aside, the day was so great and I know everyone had a fantastic time. So pumped moving forward.

Michelle and I are both out of town for work next week but Alex will still have the shirts to sell, and I am sure someone will take over for me as far as screaming like an insane person all day. But we will be back for the Falcons  game and we will plan something special for the Monday night Saints game!

Anyway, I took a bunch of photos at our meet up yesterday so check them out. If you want to save a photo or something just click the slideshow below and it will open in a new window!

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It took me a few days but I finally got up all the pictures from the draft. Honestly I didn’t do a great job taking photos because I was totally stressed about everything, but I got some shots you guys are going to enjoy for sure. The trip was a HUGE success and we had 40 Dolfans sitting together at the draft making more noise than any other fan base. You could hear us on TV during the picks and if you watch the draft video you can see Dion Jordan point to us up top when he walked out on stage. We were singing the fight song, chanting Let’s Go Dolphins, Dion! Dion! Dion and of course J-E-T-S Suck Suck Suck! We pretty much ruined Jets fans lives all day. It was pretty great.

We should have a pretty cool draft video coming soon from Alex Bente who helped us make our fantastic #MetLifeTakeover video. By the way we got video taped by a few different media outlets during the draft so if anyone sees any footage of us let us know and we can try to edit it into the video.

So yeah! Check out the photos. You can double click on any of them you like and it will take you to our Flickr page where you can download the photo. Thanks a bunch and Go Dolphins!

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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!

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The DolfansNYC tailgate and takeover was the most successful thing we have ever done as a club. We bought 200 tickets, rolled up to the stadium in two packed busses and were pretty much the only fans left at the end of the game. It was amazing. There had to have been more than 300 fans at the tailgate and we sold out of EVERY Dolfans NYC t-shirt and raised a bunch of money for charity. We plan on donating $1500 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation when Michelle and I head down to Miami for the Titans game in two weeks. Really great experience.

If you somehow missed the news we had a few special guests at the tailgate… Dolphins owner Stephen Ross showed up with minority owner Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, CEO Mike Dee, Phins great Nat Moore, MiamiDolphins.com Andy Kent and a ton of cheerleaders. It was so cool of them to do that and a pretty good PR move. Some Jets fan hit Mr. Ross with a cheeseburger knocking his glasses off. Luckily they fell right at my feet and as soon as Ross got his glasses back on he just ignored the whole thing and kept posing for pictures and signing autographs. One of our members asked him why he came down and he said “I could have stayed in my box all game but I had to check out the tailgate. This is the biggest Dolphins fan club in the United States!” Very cool.

After the tailgate we filled the stands. We may have been in the endzone in the nosebleeds but I assure you our presence was felt. Mike Dee tweeted after the game “Great to head home w/a win. Complete team effort w/ an assist from DolfansNYC, who kept the Fins chants going all game long!” Reggie Bush didn’t mention us by name but he Tweeted “Loved the Dolphins fans showing up today! We heard you guys loud and clear and so did the rest of the stadium! Thanks for your support.” Not to brag or anything (okay maybe a little) I was leading the chants from the endzone. By the end of the game all the Jets fans were gone and the Dolphins fans left seemed to flood into our sections and we chanted “LET’S GO DOLPHINS” so loudly you could hear it on TV. It was one of the best experiences of my life. What a great day.

I want to thank everybody who came out, and especially want to thank my partner Michelle who did all the dirty work on this one. I am pretty good at doing the promoting and doing the screaming but Michelle is the best party planner you could imagine and put all 199 tickets we bought on her credit card. We have worked on this for months, but she busted her ass all week on the details while I was off hanging out with my girlfriend in California. So thanks Michelle, thanks to Sailor Jerry rum for sponsoring the tailgate, thanks to Third & Long for hosting a breakfast before we got on the buses, thanks to everyone who joined us at the game and thanks to the Miami Dolphins organization for not just recognizing us but supporting us.

All the pictures I took at the tailgate are below. If you want to save one just double click it or you can just go directly to our Flickr page to see and save all the pictures there.

Go Dolphins!

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Week one was a huge success for Dolfans NYC but not so much a success for the Miami Dolphins. We had a packed house at Third and Long(sadly we had to send a few fans next door until we could sneak more people in) and we raised some money for the Miami Dolphins Foundation with another raffle. A lot of the regulars won the prizes so I was happy about that. If you didn’t win you will have more chances. We plan on doing a bunch of raffles this year. We won’t be doing one this Sunday but we will have a new batch of t-shirts for sale.

The Dolphins on the other hand did not play so well. They teased us with great defense and better than expected offense for about 25 minutes. They couldn’t get in the endzone but they looked good against a VERY good team. And then they fell apart. They had four turnovers in four possessions and got scored on three times in the last three minutes of the half making a 3-3 game a 24-3 game by the time they went into the locker room. Aside from a special teams touchdown they couldn’t get in the endzone in the second half and lost 30-10.

It took me two days to get over the game but in the end I came out feeling pretty okay about it. Yes, it was painful to watch but if you think about it there were a lot of positive signs. The Dolphins run defense was dominant and the secondary did okay. Andre Johnson is one of the best players in the NFL and the Texans have a very good offense. They scored 24 points off of turn overs and ended up scoring only 30 points. That’s impressive.

The offense couldn’t score in the red zone and gave up four turnovers which you don’t want to see. But it’s not very often that a team gives up four turnovers in four drives. Tannehill looked pretty good aside from throwing passes into the defensive line and I think that stuff is correctable. Some of the missed passes that looked like over throws or under throws were mostly to Armstrong and Hartline, two players that have only been practicing with Tannehill for a week. Their timing will get better and Hartline looked very healthy. The right side of the o-line struggled and we clearly need better receivers, but the run game looks awesome, the o-line should get better as the year goes on and when Hartline and Armstrong play with Tannehill for a bit longer the passing game could improve significantly.

The Dolphins are not going to be a good team this year and we know it. But there were a lot of good signs against the Texans that were over shadowed by a few minutes in the second quarter. If Tannehill turns out to be a pretty good QB in this league this year won’t even matter. But that being said I think the Dolphins are going to be a lot better at the end of the year than they are now. And for the record I think they beat the Raiders on Sunday. Go Dolphins.

Check out the slideshow of pictures from Third & Long below. If you want to save a photo double click on it and it will take you to Flickr.

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