Even When We Win We Lose

Allow me to start by saying it feels damn good to watch your team open up a can of whoop ass on a Sunday. The Miami Dolphins have been the league’s punching bag all season, so to watch them smack the Falcons 34–10 was like finally having five minutes to yourself to rub one out on a family vacation. For a brief moment, it was beautiful. For the first time all year, I actually enjoyed what I was watching. It looked like football, real, competent, balanced football. All three phases of the game finally came together like Grandma’s lasagna, layered, hearty, and surprisingly satisfying.

But much like my late grandmother’s lasagna, the heartburn hit shortly after.

Yes, the Dolphins won. But at what cost? I hate to be that fan, the one who’s miserable when we lose and somehow even more miserable when we win, but the Dolphins leave me no choice. When you start the season 1–6, you train your fanbase to root for losses. It’s not about being negative, it’s about survival. The season’s cooked. Everyone knows it. So every meaningless win now is just a small victory that sets us up for a bigger failure later.

We’ve seen this movie before. Remember 2021? We were 1–7 under Brian Flores, then rattled off eight straight wins, finished 9–8, and earned ourselves… a mid first-round draft pick. Mediocre purgatory. That’s where the Dolphins love to live, not good enough to compete, not bad enough to rebuild.

And here we go again. This “feel good” win against Atlanta is just the start of another pointless hot streak that’ll ruin our draft position and our future. Nobody in the NFL wins when they’re supposed to lose quite like the Miami Dolphins. Mark my words, come April, we’ll be sitting pretty at the 15th pick, celebrating another meaningless moral victory while the real contenders get richer.