October 13, 2008

An easy way to ruin your Sunday: Be a football fan.

Wow, tough loss yesterday.  The kind of loss that ruins the rest of your day.  There are several types of losses, and the Dolphins have experienced almost all of them this year.
 
Our first loss in Game 1 against the Jets was painful because it came down to the wire.  We had a chance to win, so it is always heartbreaking to come up just short on the last play of the game.
 
Our second loss against the Cardinals was painful because we flat out got man handled.  We looked absolutely terrible and inept.  Nothing about that game was positive.  We looked bad from beginning to end.
 
But yesterday's loss to the Texans is the worst kind.  The kind that sticks with you for the remainder of the day.  It hurts more than the others because we had this game won, with less than 2 minutes left.  We had it won.  And we gave it away.  Watching that final Texans' drive was excruciating.  Two turnovers that were over-ruled (granted, both calls were correct, but in the heat of the moment, when you think the game is over because of the turnover, only to have the drive continue, is very frustrating).  A simply amazing catch by Andre Johnson on 4th down in which he wrestled the ball out of our defender's hands.  And then having a QB draw win it with 3 seconds left, losing to the Texans by one point.  That is more painful than any other type of loss.
 
I actually prefer to get blown out.  With the Cardinals game, at the beginning of the 4th quarter I said, "Alright, we suck.  Lets play Rock Band 2!", and just like that, I put the loss behind me.  But after a loss like this, that doesn't work.  I was miserable for the rest of the day.
 
In hindsight, we should have lost this game.  The Dolphins won the turnover battle 4-1, yet we couldn't pull away.  We had several lucky breaks (Johnson's fumble as the Texans were in the Red Zone looking like they were going to score, and that extremely fortunately interception/fumble that occurred during our final drive to keep it alive).  Our defense could not stop the Texans' offense the entire game, and aside from those two big plays for us in the second half, our offense looked terrible.
 
I guess I shouldn't be so down.  We're 2-3 right now and just a few plays away from being 4-1.  Last year we were 0-5 at this point.  The future looks bright for this team.  It is just hard to see that after such a heart breaking game.
 

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