The Patriot Way has become losing to Tua & the Dolphins!
The Miami Dolphins defeated the New England Patriots 31-17 to retain control of the AFC East and be in a four-way tie for the top spot in the AFC Conference! Oddly, while all these ‘ranking goodies’ feel so, so good, sinking the Patriots’ 2023 Season and making Bill Belichick need one more game to break Don Shula’s record for the most career wins brought me the most joy from the win this week. With the team health rising and the Chiefs up next, Miami has a chance to show the world they are the team to beat in the conference and fully wash away the ugly optics of losing to the Bills and Eagles!
Division Opponent Done, Chiefs Up next!
Now that the Patriots season is technically done, Miami has whittled the division down to only two teams left to contend with for ownership of the AFC East division!
Boy doesn’t this sound great: Week 8: the New England Patriots season is done!
Clearly, this wasn’t the smoothest game for the Phins, but they fought through their mistakes and battled to a commanding 31-17 win! The defense came through in a big way and the return of star cornerback Jalen Ramsey couldn’t feel more storybook! Add in Tua with Hill and Waddle driving the offense to another high-production game with the offensive line gutted with injuries. So, in the end, this turned out to be a complete team win!
Everything seems to be coming together at the right time… with the exception of Robert Hunt getting injured. Let’s hope that injury amounts to much ado about nothing! Let’s REALLY hope that’s a little nick.
The win is almost in the rearview mirror and the Chiefs are next. A win over the Super Bowl champions would play out huge… I mean HUGE for the Phins’ season.
With the Bills struggling and the Jets posting miracle win after miracle win, Miami looks the most likely right now to be crowned the 2023 AFCE king. Miami will get their near back-to-back games against the Jets very soon and they can’t be this lucky forever, so they’ll likely sink on their own without our help.
That leaves the Bills as the only likely team to mess with the Phins plans. Sadly, Miami’s game against the Bills is all the way down the line in Week 18. But, Buffalo has to travel to Cincinnati to face a red-hot Bengals team this week. So, if the Phins beat the Chiefs and Buffalo drops one to Cincy, they’d be in a huge bind down two games behind Miami! Buffalo also has a very tough schedule for the rest of the season and has to travel to Kansas City, which would be a tiebreaker that would favor Miami if they can defeat the Chiefs this week and the Bills can’t a few weeks from now!
So, many tasty possibilities.
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, BUT…
The Chiefs just lost to the Broncos 24-9, who we beat 70-20! If that doesn’t feel like a good bet with the best pay-per-head for the Phins to win, then I don’t know what is?! I’d be a little more concerned if it was in Kansas City, but they play at a neutral site in Germany–feels so weird saying that.
While I do my best to be pragmatic and evaluate rather than fan out in my coverage, it felt so good crushing the hopes of the Patriots that I figured I drown in ‘hopium’ for this article. Why not, right? The Phins have done enough to warrant it! Let the hopium flow like a river! Go Phins!!!