Is the glass half full for the Dolphins at mid-season?
By Cyrus (@Cyruslassus)
The Miami Dolphins are 4-4 thanks to a hard fought 22-20 overtime victory over the AFC North leading Cincinnati Bengals.
With the team being off until a Monday Night Football showdown with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on 11/11, it is a perfect time to take inventory of what has happened in the first half of the season and re-calibrate expectations for the 2013 season.
There is a lot of good and bad to take into account when weighing who these Dolphins are and where they are going.
Miami is in eighth place and just a half game out of the playoffs with two games against the seventh seed New York Jets and a home game against the sixth seed San Diego Chargers still remaining.
This is good.
Miami is just one game in the loss column ahead of the AFC’s fifteenth place team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who host Miami in week 14. Other notable teams on Miami’s heels are Baltimore (3-4), who holds the head to head tie-breaker over the Dolphins, and another pre-season favorite, the Houston Texans.
This is bad.
Miami has beaten two division leaders, the AFC South’s Indianapolis Colts (6-2) and the AFC North’s Cincinnati Bengals (6-3) and will have one more shot at the New England Patriots (6-2) when they visit Sun Life Stadium in week 15.
This is good.
Miami is 0-2 in the AFC East. In December, they travel to New York to visit the Jets and Bills and then host the Patriots and the Jets. The home loss to Buffalo and collapse against New England have made a winning division record highly unlikely.
This is bad.
Miami has stayed alive in spite of a brutal .557 strength of schedule and are now looking at the part of the schedule that features opponents with a combined 43% winning percentage.
This is good. (continued on page 2, CLICK HERE)