Miami Dolphins Guaranteed First Winning Season in Eight Years

The National Football League's Miami Dolphins have finally broken through and guaranteed their first winning season in eight years as they played at New York last night and dominated the Jets, 34-13.  My old hometown team is now at 9-5 and is in the driver's seat to make the playoffs for the first time since 2008 as well.  But first they will need to win at least one of their last two games, which are at Buffalo next Saturday and at home against New England eight days later.  Miami is aiming for one of the American Conference's two wild card slots and is trying to fight off Denver, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Tennessee, and Houston to get there.  It gets a little complicated if Miami and two or more other teams are tied at the end of the regular season, but if it's just "one-on-one", the Dolphins would win tiebreakers against the Broncos and Steelers while they would lose out to the Ravens and Titans...I'm not sure where they stand regarding the Texans.  And it might get a little strange at the end, because Miami fans might find themselves rooting for Baltimore, right now a game behind Pittsburgh, to win its close division race just to keep it out of competition with the Dolphins for that final playoff position...

When starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill suffered his season-ending knee injury last week, a lot of folks began to write off Miami's prospects...but some like Boomer Esiason derisively predicted they would go nowhere even before Tannehill's unfortunate departure.  Well, the last time Miami made the playoffs, in 2008, no one was giving them any chance either and they won their division that year after going 1-15 the previous one.  2016, playoffs or not, has already been a successful year for the Miami Dolphins as far as I'm concerned, and their first-year head coach Adam Gase should be given much of the credit for getting his players to give their all and not give up...