Miami Dolphins teased, fans dared dream, then the crash. Now, do Fins have any fight left? | Opinion

The vitriol on the Miami Dolphins’ YouTube channel was a mad symphony of excess by midnight Sunday as postgame interviews from coach Mike McDaniel, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and others were shown live in the wake of the crushing home loss to the Buffalo Bills.

The scroll of comments shown on the right side of the screen was a malignant parade of hatred that made me question the humanity of sports fans. Or the sanity, at least. Some of the comments likely were from Bills Mafia gleefully stoking Miami’s misery, but most surely were from Dolfans whose frustration was a tea kettle on full boil and screaming.

McDaniel should be fired! Tua is trash!

Isn’t it wonderful (no, it isn’t) how social media affords blanket anonymity to all manner of inane commentary, with full impunity for the spewer of the knee-jerk reaction. (Emphasis on the jerk there.)

I finally hit the button that erased the soul-crushing scroll of molten pus from view.

The reaction, it must be noted, flowed after Miami had just completed an 11-6 regular season, the club’s best since 2008. And made the NFL playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since 2000-01. And led the league in most offensive yards for the first time since 1994. And scored the most points in franchise history since Dan Marino was rising like Godzilla in 1984.

But perspective is for losers, evidently. More fun to get up on a soapbox (whatever happened to soapboxes?) and vent in a mighty, fist-shaking rant

The truth is the Dolphins brought this on themselves, which doesn’t make the kick-’em-when-they’re-down reaction less cruel.

They brought this on themselves by at long last seeming to be good enough and exciting enough to make a starving fan base dare to dream again.

Remember the giddy narrative not so long ago? Tua and Tyreek Hill were being asked about splitting the league MVP vote. Hill was on pace for the NFL’s first 2,000-yard season by a receiver. McDaniel was on the coach of the year radar.

Now all that stuff is done with.

The Fins spent most of four months teasing us.

Then came the two results that said, “Ha. Fooled you. Not this year...”

The 56-19 loss in Baltimore.

Then the 21-14 loss the rival nemesis Bills in maybe Miami’s biggest home game in 30 years. That was the knife, twisting.

Miami had led the AFC East all season, rolling to a first division title since ‘08, to a No. 2 AFC playoff seed, to at least one home playoff game. They had a home game to do it, and got exactly the needed recipe for victory with three turnovers from Josh Allen. And yet somehow lost as Bills fans mocked and howled.

Now the Dolphins tumble to a No. 6 seed and the penalty of Saturday night’s road playoff game as underdogs against the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes in a stadium where the kickoff temperature is projected at 2 degrees.

Two degrees. It would be the coldest game in the Dolphins’ 58-year history. Will Taylor Swift even show up in such Siberian conditions more suited to Alaskan sled dogs?

Miami’s season has gone from Big Tease to the Big Freeze.

With the past two losses Miami’s path to its first Super Bowl appearance since the ‘84 season now could not be steeper. Likely awaiting would be a rematch in Buffalo and then another trip to Baltimore. And that’s if you survive the subarctic evening in K.C.

Injuries are a lot to blame for the ill-timed late-season swoon. Sometimes what comes off as an excuse is reality, too.

Tagovailoa has been injury-free and played all 17 games for the first time in his career, but the rest of the team has been socked hard. Jaylen Waddle and Raheem Mostert missed the Bills game but could be back to face the Chiefs.

The defense has been hit harder. Top edge rushers Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips are lost for the rest of the season. Now Jerome Baker and Andrew Van Ginkel are out, too. Where will the pass rush come from?

The loss of Chubb is most hurtful in a lot of ways. For one, it should never have happened. Why was he left in the game so late with Miami hopelessly lost against the Ravens? McDaniel later admitted his mistake. It was the costliest one we have seen from a Miami coach since the Hurricanes’ Mario Cristobal’s infamous late no-kneel turned a win over Georgia Tech into an outrageous loss.

For the Dolphins a lot has changed with the past two losses but then nothing has from the broadest view.

This team is today what it was entering the season:

This continues a franchise with indications of an upswing but still looking to lift itself from 20-plus years of being outside the conversation when, as the fight song goes, “you’re talkin’ Super Bowl.”

This remains a club still out to prove itself again. Maybe it still might?

Maybe Hill returns home to his former Arrowhead Stadium stomping grounds and leads a resurgent offense.

Maybe the battered defense rallies like the men in painter Archibald Willard’s “Spirit of ‘76” with a valiant uprising.

Maybe the Dolphins stop turning the ball over and don’t give up a 96-yard punt return.

Maybe the faint echo of the Fins’ first ever playoff win — Christmas Day 1971 in wintry Kansas City — will subliminally inspire.

Maybe the team from sunny South Florida won’t be bothered by 2 degrees.

What hurts most about the past two losses is, this was supposed to be the season.

Now, against great odds of their own doing, the Miami Dolphins must somehow prove it still can be.