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KANSAS CITY — The fans brought cardboard sheets to slip between their feet and the frigid concrete. Andy Reid’s mustache turned into icicles. Patrick Mahomes’ helmet cracked like it was constructed of plastic. This was a different kind of cold, a different kind of football, a different kind of test.
“You kinda have to go to a different place to be in that weather and play a contact sport,” Mike McDaniel said.
McDaniel’s Dolphins, a warm-weather team with a warm-weather quarterback, had been called everything from frauds to front-runners this season, the criticisms intensifying as December bled into January and they dropped three of their final five, losing not only their chance at the AFC’s top seed but also their grip on their own division.
The consequence of a Week 18 loss to the Bills proved severe: instead of an AFC East title and a playoff opener at home — it was 81 degrees in Miami on Saturday — the Dolphins instead were rewarded with a trip to Kansas City for the fourth-coldest games in league history.
“You reap what you sow,” chirped ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith this week, dismissing the Dolphins, like plenty more, as pretenders this year and nothing more. “You deserve this. Go out there and freeze.”
Just about everyone at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium did Saturday night during the Chiefs’ 26-7 win in the wild-card round of the playoffs. With the wind chill, it felt like -27 at kickoff. The gusts were whipping, the air biting, the conditions flat-out unforgiving.
One team seemed to relish it. The Chiefs danced and screamed and lit up the scoreboard. The champs looked revived.
The Dolphins, meanwhile, stumbled in silence, whimpering quietly into an offseason of uncertainty.
“Guys are going to take this one on the chin for sure,” wide receiver Tyreek Hill said.
GO DEEPER
Chiefs handle frigid conditions to outlast Dolphins in AFC wild-card matchup
The conditions didn’t help an offense built on speed and timing. Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was off all game, his throws routinely halted by the wind, some wobbling several feet off target. He finished with 199 yards on 20 completions for a touchdown and an interception, though a large chunk of that came on a single heave to Hill (a 53-yard TD that was the Dolphins’ lone highlight) and plenty more in garbage time, the game’s outcome long decided.
“They beat us one time over the top with Tyreek on a fade route,” Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “We eliminated the big plays and forced them to take the small, short throws. If you stop the run and make them one-dimensional and throw the ball, we’ve got guys who can get after (the QB).”
The Chiefs’ plan paid off. Tagovailoa was erratic and under pressure. The run game never got rolling; Miami made it a point early to stay with it, and it cost them (the Dolphins finished with only 76 yards on the ground). Tagovailoa was sacked twice and hit five more times. Outside of Hill’s spark, nothing worked.
“As an offense, we gotta put drives together and help (the defense) out, man,” Hill said. “We can’t just be a bunch of front-runners.”
But it’s hard to see the Dolphins in another light. The QB’s struggles Saturday night and across the last month mirrored that of this team. Tagovailoa shrunk down the stretch, playing his worst football of the season.
So did Miami.
The NFL’s hottest team in September cooled considerably for a second straight year.
“We felt short of our goals, we had very strong expectations for ourselves,” McDaniel said. “One of the reasons a lot of reasons people don’t put themselves out there and hold those expectations is because when you fall short of them, it’s emotional, it’s gut-wrenching.”
McDaniel has won 20 regular season games in two seasons in Miami and, at times, turned the Dolphins into the most entertaining team in the league. But the next step? The one where the Dolphins become a legitimate threat in the AFC instead of just a splashy early-season story?
They’re still not there yet.
Still no division titles since 2008.
Still only one postseason victory since Dan Marino retired in 1999.
Consider this: McDaniel’s teams are 4-10 in games played in December and January over the last two years. They are 16-6 in others.
They also can’t hang with the league’s best. Not when it matters. Not consistently. Miami couldn’t shake that stigma all season, and outside a Christmas Eve win over the Cowboys, did little to challenge it. The Dolphins, 11-7 on the year, finished 1-6 against playoff teams with a -110 point differential.
“We shouldn’t feel entitled to high opinions from the masses,” McDaniel vented after one of those losses, a 21-14 defeat to the Chiefs in Germany in November. “We have to earn that confidence. If you want the narrative to change, (then) change the narrative.”
They never did.
The Dolphins wouldn’t play the excuse game late Saturday night, but the rash of setbacks this team faced late in the year undoubtedly played a role in the late-season skid. Top edge rusher Bradley Chubb was lost for the year to injury. Another one, Jaelan Phillips, was, too. Linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel missed Saturday’s game. Same with safety Jevon Holland.
Beyond that, nothing about the Dolphins’ injury report was encouraging this week — or normal, for that matter. Ten players were listed, including most of their top offensive weapons (Hill and fellow wideout Jaylen Waddle, running backs Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane). Next to Holland’s name: “Knees.” Next to veteran offensive tackle Terron Armstead’s name: knee, ankle, back.
McDaniel allowed after the game that both Mostert and Waddle, after missing the Dolphins’ Week 18 loss to the Bills, wouldn’t take no for an answer. They were playing, period.
“One of the reasons it hurts so bad is because nobody on this team really harbored all the excuses,” the coach said late Saturday night, the wound fresh, the sudden end to the season still something he needed to process. “All the variables people talk about … injuries, weather, all that stuff … we came here to win. Didn’t happen.”
Now the Dolphins enter an offseason of unknown, the future muddied by questions that need will need answered. Start with the quarterback. Tagovailoa, driven by the disappointment of how 2022 ended — parts of five games missed due to multiple concussions, including the playoff loss in Buffalo, leaving him to briefly consider walking away from the game at age 24 — designed his entire offseason around durability.
He took up jiujitsu, relearning how to fall. “Not everybody’s doing that,” McDaniel gushed last week. “Not everyone would do that.” It paid off. Tagovailoa started all 17 games. He led the league in passing yards (4,624) and finished tied for fifth in touchdowns (29), both career highs. Miami finished with its highest win total since 2008.
“He’s my guy, man,” McDaniel said of his quarterback.
But for how long?
It’s clear this version of the Dolphins — the front office handing out weighty contracts to accomplished veterans while Tagovailoa played out his rookie deal — won’t last. It can’t. The QB’s cap number goes from $9.6 million this year to $23 million in 2024 (the Dolphins exercised his fifth-year option last spring). Hill will be a $31 million cap hit next year, cornerback Jalen Ramsey a $27 million hit, Chubb $26 million, cornerback Xavien Howard $25 million and Armstead $20 million.
The flexibility Tagovailoa’s rookie deal afforded the franchise will vanish, leaving general manager Chris Grier with a dicey decision: has his QB done enough to earn an extension? Because extensions for starting quarterbacks who lead the league in passing yards aren’t cheap. Tagovailoa has excelled at times in McDaniel’s system, climbing into the MVP conversation early this season, but his struggles late will cloud his value — and potentially his future in South Beach.
As sizzling as his start to 2023 was, Tagovailoa stumbled down the stretch. He didn’t have a 300-yard passing game after Week 10. Over his last eight games, including the playoff loss, he threw nine touchdowns against seven interceptions, and he was badly outplayed by Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes Saturday night, the difference in the two as clear as the night was cold.
Two of the other top quarterbacks in Tagovailoa’s draft class, the Bengals’ Joe Burrow and the Chargers’ Justin Herbert, have already been paid. Burrow got $275 million, Herbert $262 million.
Is Tua worth it?
And do the Dolphins want to tie their future to him, his limitations on full display over the last month with so much on the line?
That’s what is riding on Miami’s next few months.
After the loss, and after his news conference, Tagovailoa lingered in the locker room until it was nearly cleared out. He hugged every teammate he could find, one by one, the emotion and the pain of the loss written across his face.
“It sucks, brother,” he said. “Losing sucks.
“We didn’t come together then way we wanted to offensively, and it showed tonight.”
It’s showed over the past few weeks, a late-season skid that left the Dolphins in the exact same spot they were a year ago. Perhaps one of these years they’ll change that.
(Photo of Mike McDaniel: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
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