I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on our virtual #MetLifeTakeover event. I think yesterday went just about as well as we could have possibly planned. We had a ton of people watching the game live with us, the Dolphins won and we raised almost $3000 for the Miami Dolphins Foundation Food Relief Program!

Huge congratulations to everyone who won our raffles and social media giveaways. It was great to be able to do something that felt a little like #MetLifeTakeover week even if we didn’t actually get to be together. We gave away three Don Shula memorial Yearbooks/ Dolfans NYC swag packs, a Mercury Morris signed photo, an actual seat back from the Dolphins stadium, ball signed by Dwight Stephenson, a Flo Knows shirt and of course the incredible Brian Flores signed game used helmet. I honestly am pretty upset I wasn’t allowed to buy tickets.

On the football side of things it was great to see the Dolphins play a pretty mediocre game and still win. That’s not something Dolphins fans are used to and a sign of a good team. I know the Jets are one of the worst teams in NFL history but even when we made huge mistakes at no point was I ever worried that we were going to lose. It’s nice to have that feeling during a game, especially when I was having to help moderate the Zoom meeting as well. Let’s do it again next week.

And finally check out this video RizeOptix put together for us from his last two years of filming #MetLifeTakeovers for us. As always shout out to Solo D for our Dolfans NYC anthem that we used for the video.  Phins up!

Across from the disassembled basketball hoops inside the upper-level Don Taft University Center practice court, Dolphins running backs Daniel Thomas and Jahwan Edwards sat at the first of five autograph stations, greeting and posing for photos with hundreds of season-ticket holders at Sunday’s Finatic event.

“Oh, yeah!” exclaimed Thomas when we informed him over a thousand fans will rock aqua and orange at Metlife Stadium. “Hello to all the Dolphins fans in New York!”

As we scanned the names of current Miami players and alumni listed on the metallic boards – claiming a spot in a line that stretched outside the gymnasium to meet former fullback Lousaka Polite and newly-acquired cornerback Byron Maxwell – a Dolphins staffer made an announcement that sent half the crowd rushing for the side exit.

It turned out, the player whose name and number coated the backs of nearly every other jersey at the session made an unexpected appearance. Pro Bowl wide receiver Jarvis Landry was a surprise guest, and word spread quickly as more and more fans dashed through the narrow hallway and into the adjacent auditorium.

By the time Charlie and I grabbed a football, a glove and a DolfansNYC hat in hopes of snagging No. 14’s signature, the line had twisted around a half-dozen barricades and extended past the bathrooms in the club level area. An usher immediately informed us that Landry – like all of his teammates – was on a tight schedule from 12 to 1 p.m., and we weren’t guaranteed autographs.

Of course, we decided to wait, anxiously staring as the seconds ticked away on the clock and jubilant fans at the front of the line smiled and high-fived Miami’s top playmaker, decked in his aqua jersey and white cargo shorts.

In the meantime, Charlie treated everyone nearby to nearly an hour of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” YouTube clips on my phone, while Top-40 hits from all decades blared through the speakers as AARP Foundation volunteers packed a million meals on the lower level.

We inched our way to within 20 people of the autograph station, but once the clock struck one, Landry mouthed, “I’m sorry” as he was promptly whisked away by event coordinators.

Our setback didn’t last too long, however, when we found out that during our hour-long wait, Michelle acquired signatures and video shout-outs from nearly every other player in attendance, including Sam Madison, Polite and Maxwell.

Minutes later, long snapper John Denney took Landry’s former seat and posed for a photo with us, wiping away any lingering feelings of disappointment.

Check out a compilation of past and present Dolphins thanking DolfansNYC for their undying support below. We’re looking forward to hearing everyone in the stands at #MetLifeTakeover, so stay tuned for ticket sales info!

On Monday we had a huge party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub! The Dolphins were playing great football for 28 minutes before it all went to hell right before the two minute warning, but such is life. It’s a long season and you aren’t going to win every game. Fortunately, even with the loss Dolfans NYC had a great time. We had one of our original founding members DJ Tropic spin during commercials and it worked out really well. Even late in the game we were at least enjoying the music, food and the company. People stuck around and even celebrated and sang the fight song on the garbage time TD. I also noticed a ton of rational positivity on our Facebook page. It’s great to be around Phins fans who aren’t screaming Fireland this and Tannehill sucks that. I really love this group.

Both floors of the bar were packed. It’s great to see so many people show up when the game is on TV. We have really made an event of it. We had a big raffle and sold t-shirts and ended up raising over $1200 for charity. It was really amazing. The two big prizes in the raffle were a Bob Griese signed hat and another hat signed by Tannehill, Hartline, Jimmy Wilson and Austin Spitler. Two cool things happened with that. Our member Bryan who had donated the Tannehill/Hartline hat actually won the Griese hat. It was great to see since not only has he been a big supporter of the club but he also lost 90% of his Dolphins memorabilia collection in Hurricane Sandy last year. The other cool thing was that Austin Spitler got resigned today so all four people who signed the hat are actually still on the Phins.

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures, even after we were getting beat on pretty badly. I hope you guys dig them. If you want to save one just double click the gallery below and it will take you directly to our Flickr page. Phins up!

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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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Although it seems ages ago after that tragedy that befell us on Thanksgiving Day, last Sunday was fantastic. Our boys in Aqua trounced the Buffalo Jills in the most brutal fashion. Our defense came up huge pounding away on the Bills who limped off the field down by multiple scores after just the first half. It was a beautiful thing.

Third and Long was not exactly packed as you might expect when your team loses seven straight games to open a season but the die hards are there every week and by the end of the first quarter the bar was bumping. This was the most fun I have had watching a Dolphins game since I had second row seats to watch the Phins beat the Jets at the Meadowlands to lock up the AFC Championship in 2008. It was a great day.

I took a few pictures that are not exactly the most flattering shots of our bunch. Earlier in the year we tend to have a lot more cute girls out. But hey a win is a win and shots all around. Go Dolphins!

If you want to save a picture double click the slide show below and it will open up in a new window!

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As bad as the Dolphins have been I have been amazed at how Dolfans NYC has continued to show up. On Sunday against a terrible Broncos the bar was packed by halftime. When the game started there were only about a dozen of us and I figured it was going to be empty but by God you guys kept showing up and we had a great time comiserating about the team and discussing the future. When you blow a game like that it’s really nice to be surrounded by people who feel your pain.

It took me a while to get over losing to the Jets and finally put these photos up but I have some great pictures for you.

First off we had our Nat Moore meet and greet event last Sunday. If you weren’t there Nat Moore came by to watch football with us. We had a raffle and raised some money for charity. Third and Long paid for food for everyone and Nat talked with everyone and signed autographs. He was really great and I cannot thank him enough. I know everyone there really apreciated it and I was really impressed with the turn out considering the Dolphins weren’t even playing.

The second batch of photos I have for you is from our amazing tailgate at the Jets game. We didn’t sell as many tickets as we were hoping but we still had more than 50 people all in the same section at the game and we had a lot more than that at the tailgate. We met people from all over the country and sold them a bunch of Dolfans NYC t-shirts (all the money goes to charity) to take home with them and rep in Miami and all over the place. A couple of guys were even in town from Belgium! Very cool. The game of course was a disaster but we held strong and most of us were still left in our seats when the whistle sounded. We had some fun after the game too but I think we will just leave it at that…

I am posting two galleries below. The top one is from the Nat Moore event at Third & Long and the bottom one is from the Monday Night Football tailgate at the Meadowlands. If you want a copy of a photo just double click on it in the slideshow and it will take you to the gallery.  Go Dolphins!

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I am a bit late posting these photos, basically because last week killed me inside and I have spent the last six days pretending that football is not a thing. Unfortunately, it still is a thing and I get to go down to Third & Long tomorrow and hang out with everyone and have an amazing time until the Dolphins embarrass us again.

Then again, I remember thinking we were going to get killed by the Chargers a few years ago and we Wild Catted the hell out of them. I was watching the game at a Dolphins bar in CT called Woody’s and that place was a big part of the inspiration for us starting Dolfans NYC. Unfortunately this year I don’t think we have any secret weapons and with Daniel Thomas and Vontae Davis out we could be in a lot of trouble…

Anyway, despite losing last week. we raised over $300 for charity through our raffle and t-shirt sales. Tomorrow we won’t be doing a raffle at Third & Long but we will have Dolfans NYC t-shirts. So yeah, check out the photos below and let’s all pray to Don Shula that the Dolphins somehow get their shit together tomorrow and win at least one game before the bye week.

Go Dolphins!

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I wanted to get up the photos from our party Monday before we play more football. We had a great turnout and raised money for charity selling shirts. If you made it out to Third & Long you saw that we had some TV issues with the new HD TV system and we had to watch the first half of the game a few bars down. Luckily everything was fixed and most of us returned to Third & Long for a serious party despite the awful outcome.

This week I hope Third & Long is bumping again even though myself and the other Dolfans NYC team members will be in Miami watching the game. I am sure the die hards will hold it down for us. So come out this week and check out the photos from last week using the slideshow below. Double click on a photo if you want to save and download it.

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