Miami Dolphins can’t be called tankers anymore

The Miami Dolphins are (gasp) on an actual winning streak after beating the Indianapolis Colts 16-12 on Sunday

For the first seven weeks of the NFL season, the Miami Dolphins were called tankers, the worst team in the league and maybe ever, even a flat-out embarrassment.

Look at them now, because head coach Brian Flores suddenly has his team on a winning streak. Miami defeated the Indianapolis Colts on the road 16-12 on Sunday for their second straight win after starting the year 0-7.

Miami deserved every negative comment, however harsh, directed toward them at the beginning of the year. From giving up 59 points in the opening week to the Ravens to being shut out by the Patriots 43-0, the Dolphins looked every bit like a team playing for 2020 or even 2021 instead of 2019. But something changed after the team’s bye week.

Late in their Week 6 game against the Redskins, Flores decided to bench Josh Rosen and reinsert Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback. Over the last four-and-a-half games with Fitzpatrick under center, the Dolphins have gone from historically inept to actually being a competitive group. They were a missed two-point conversion away from beating Washington, then held the lead at halftime over both the Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers.

Then, last week, came Flores’ first win as Dolphins head coach, a 26-18 triumph over the equally bad New York Jets. The 15-year veteran Fitzpatrick is completing 64.7 percent of his passes since taking over the starting job with seven touchdowns and four interceptions.

Flores admits he’s seen a change in his young team over the past few weeks as they turn into a group that’s learning to play together.

“That’s something I’ve felt for…the last four or five weeks,” he said after the game. “We are starting to come together across the board. From a communication standpoint, from an execution standpoint, from a practice standpoint, from a confidence standpoint.

“Being able to overcome adversity is part of playing in the National Football League. We had a lot of that early in the year. We’re starting to do that at a higher level now.”

The Dolphins will continue to have naysayers. The Jets are terrible. The Colts were playing without starting quarterback Jacoby Brissett and had to rely on Brian Hoyer, who hasn’t won a game since 2016. It also wasn’t a pretty win on Sunday. After taking a 10-0 lead at halftime, the Dolphins ran seven plays in the third quarter for -8 yards. They didn’t manage a first down in the second half until five minutes into the fourth quarter.

But, after Jason Sanders put them back ahead with two 48-yard field goals, the Dolphins stopped the Colts on a fourth down inside the red zone, tight end Eric Ebron coming up two yards short of a first down.

The Dolphins are now 2-7 and behind the Bengals and Redskins in the race for the first overall pick. Since 1990, only one other team went on a two-game winning streak after starting the year 0-7: the 2011 Dolphins, who ended that season 6-10.

The current Dolphins front office must not have watched yesterday’s LSU-Alabama game, which featured perhaps the two top quarterback prospects at the top of their games in LSU’s Joe Burrow and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa.

The Dolphins had their sights on selecting either of them with one of their three first-round picks they’ll have in next year’s draft. But Flores never let this group quit, and that might be even more important to their future success than taking a quarterback in the draft next April.