Opinion: How close are Miami Dolphins? Impossible to say after this debacle against Buffalo Bills

On the day the Miami Dolphins could hand themselves a playoff berth, they got blown out by a team whose star receiver was flossing his teeth on the bench and a quarterback who was wandering around the sideline unable to find someone to high-five.

That’s how disinterested the Buffalo Bills could afford to be in their eventual 56-26 laugher over the Dolphins.

Yes. A Dolphins team that had about as much at stake as any Dolphins team in decades picked the day it needed to be at its best, to play its worst.

On a day when four things had to go wrong for Miami to miss the playoffs, five nearly did. The Houston Texans almost delivered the final insult by upsetting Tennessee, which would have cost the Dolphins positioning in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft. But a 54-yard bomb by Ryan Tannehill allowed the Titans to kick a last-play field goal and win, 41-38. 

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Besides waking up with Monday morning blues, knowing the playoffs will commence without Miami, the question South Florida will be asking itself is whether the season proved how close the Dolphins truly are — or exposed how far.

After going from worst to winning double-digit games, nothing could paint this Dolphins season as anything but a success. At least that’s how it seemed at kickoff Sunday. Then came that avalanche of points by Bills’ Pro Bowl players and practice-squad players alike.

The NFL’s stingiest defense suddenly became the most generous. Pinning this on the defense is to ignore the shortcomings of the offense and special teams on a day when a favorite phrase of the Dolphins — complementary football — took on new meaning. Whether it was passes or the Bills’ punt returner, the Dolphins found it impossible to hang onto it.

The Dolphins began the day knowing that the only way they were not going to make the playoffs was if the results of four games all tilted a certain way. The league will tell you on any given Sunday, anything can happen.

Dolphins fans would beg to differ.

If one franchise was going 0-for-4 under these conditions, why not Miami, right? On a day when the Cleveland Browns clinched a playoff berth, in a year when the Buffalo Bills won the division, it had to be the Dolphins who would end up the odd team out in the NFL’s mathematical impossibility of squeezing four teams (Dolphins, Ravens, Colts, Browns) into three playoff slots.

Oh, but wait. The Dolphins nearly managed to go 0-for-5 as the Texans nearly upset the Titans, which would have meant that the first-round draft pick the Texans have to send Miami would have fallen a few notches from No. 3 overall. Evidently, the football gods figure they’re still owed for blessing the Dolphins with Dan Marino at No. 27.

OK, so 56-26 is history, and the Dolphins will have all spring and all summer to seethe about receiver Stefon Diggs paying almost as much attention to his dental hygiene as he did Miami’s secondary. The only question that matters now is whether 56-26 is an outlier or a warning.

These Dolphins finished 10-6. Only two other times in their history did they win double-digit games and not make the playoffs. Both times were when only four teams per conference were invited. So that’s something.

But whom did these Dolphins beat? The Raiders on a prayer, sure. And the Rams, who turned out to the only winning team Miami did defeat this year. So that’s something, too.

They’re finally set at quarterback. We think. We spent a year yearning for Tua, then spent the better part of the past few weeks seeing him turn into more of a game manager than Jay Fiedler. Is Tua Tagovailoa the quarterback who lit it up against the Cardinals or the singles hitter whom coaches don’t trust to throw beyond the sticks? How can it be that the most electric Miami play of the first half came on a pass not from Tagovailoa, but Lynn Bowden, and not to DeVante Parker, but Myles Gaskin?

Offensive coordinator Chan Gailey becomes an easy target even though we don’t know how many times Tua was gun-shy by design or just being a good soldier. What we do know is Gailey, brought out of three years’ retirement this year, turns 69 Tuesday. We also know that even after going 5-4 down the stretch last season, Flores flipped half his coaching staff. Anyone predicting what happens from here is strongly advised to avoid Las Vegas.

Once Flores moves past the shock of what unfolded Sunday, he might start asking himself why Gailey waited until halftime, with the game teetering out of reach, to recognize the fact Parker was participating in this contest.

We also don’t know if Gailey’s longtime protégé, Ryan Fitzpatrick, who just turned 38 and was out Sunday with COVID, plans to return in 2021. (Fitz has been playing some of the best ball of his career and is a wonderful mentor to Tagovailoa, so the hope would be he does go for season No. 17 and the Dolphins welcome him.)

One other thing we’ll never know: When and if Fitzpatrick would have been inserted on Sunday and what the quarterback’s situation would have looked like in the playoffs had Ryan performed more FitzMagic against the Bills.

Playmakers? It's a no-brainer that adding a couple on offense should be GM Chris Grier’s highest priority this offense.

As for the defense, Elias’ computers fried a couple of brain cells to inform us that no other No. 1-scoring defense since 1970 had ever conceded 50-plus points. That clouds, but doesn’t obliterate, 15 prior weeks of proof that first-year coordinator Josh Boyer is the real deal. And so are his troops.

Put it all together and what do you have? After the game, Flores, admittedly a stay-in-the-moment kind of guy, could only focus on how much it stung to get walloped by the Bills. Who’s to blame him? Probably most of South Florida is seething with him right now.