MIAMI — If the Miami Dolphins let themselves dream — and many NFL players are dreamers because they imagine playing professional football when they're maybe 10 years old — they can see the next three weeks as a chance to harden their position.
The Dolphins, 6-3 and winners of five consecutive games, can easily go to Denver this weekend and beat the reeling Denver Broncos and their backup quarterback. They can and should go to New York after Thanksgiving and feast on the hapless Jets. They can and should defend their home field against the last-place Cincinnati Bengals the first week of December.
The Dolphins three weeks from now should be looking at a 9-3 record.
They're going to be in the midst of an eight-game winning streak and on a full-blown playoff run.
And, just so you understand, all of this is freaking out coach Brian Flores.
The Dolphins coach is not into letting his players dream — at least not publicly. At least once every week this season and sometimes more often than that, Flores asks his players to concentrate solely on the assignment at hand.
He has asked them to forget the past and also put the future out of their minds. He has implored them to focus on the present.
So talk of a playoff run and thoughts of a possible December to remember for the Dolphins? Flores isn't feeling warm and fuzzy about that at all.
"I think it's important, and we've talked about it, we just try to take things one day at a time and not worry about what's in the future or what's happened in the past," Flores said. "That's a hard thing to do with young players. But I think just the way they responded in practice and how our meetings are set and the attention to detail in those settings, hopefully we're not looking past — I don't think so."
It sounds trite. It sounds like coach speak over a bullhorn.
But Flores really believes this is the way to approach an NFL season.
Obviously, this is the way Bill "We're on to Cincinnati" Belichick typically approaches it and Flores is a Belichick disciple. But Flores says this is the way he learned to approach things earlier in life.
"Yeah, I would say that's definitely the approach for a lot of people," he said. "That was my approach growing up. I mean I'm not going to get into the specifics of that, but I learned early on that that's the best way to approach things — not to look too far ahead, not to get too high, not to get too low, to stay even-keeled and just take things one minute at a time, one day at a time and focus on right now.
"But yeah, I've had experiences really throughout my life that have brought me to the conclusion that that's probably the right way to go about things. I found some results doing it that way and that's the message that I try to send to the players."
And now you'd love to know what "experiences" taught Flores to keep his eyes on today's prize and not allow himself a peek of tomorrow. I'd love to know, too.
But, sorry, the coach isn't offering up this kind of interesting stuff on Zoom meetings these days. So that will have to come another time.
What you need to know is that a football team often takes on the personality of its coach. That often happens for good and bad, by the way.
So these Dolphins are currently repeating and living by the words Flores has ingrained in them.
Forget about making that December run for the AFC East crown. All thoughts are on the Broncos and upstart quarterback Brett Rypien.
"We definitely understand that we're in the mix and everybody's excited that we're in the mix," safety Bobby McCain said. "But as a team, we try to preach to guys just have a one-week season and don't think so much about being 13-3. Think more of 7-3.
"And if you can do that each and every week — go from 7-3 to 8-3 to 9-3 — that should be the goal ... We're not thinking hindsight and we're not thinking down the road of 'oh, we can beat this team' or 'what if we don't beat this team?'
"It's just a series of one-week seasons and understanding that you've got to prepare each and every week because every Sunday, any team could be beat."
This isn't a new approach in Dolphins history.
Adam Gase used it with his 2016 playoff team.
He understood it wasn't sexy but decided his players responded better thinking about only one thing at a time.
Don Shula, the winningest coach of all time, walked a line between keeping his players focused on the present while also giving them a vision of the future to shoot for.
Before the 1972-73 season began, Shula told his team the goal was to go to Super Bowl VII and avenge an embarrassing loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI.
But Shula never told his players the goal was to go undefeated the entire season. Every week, he merely asked them to be undefeated that week.
The most notable exception to the one-day-at-a-time approach was Tony Sparano. In 2008, his first year with the Dolphins, the team had to win two consecutive games to reach a 4-4 mark at the midway point in the season.
The record wasn't jaw-dropping but the team had been 1-15 the previous season so Sparano wanted his locker room infused with confidence. He wanted players to believe in themselves.
So he encouraged playoff talk after only eight games.
"I want them to have those expectations," Sparano said. "I'm not going to hide from those things."
Those Dolphins won seven of their final eight games and the AFC East title.
That's not to say the current way of doing things is wrong. It worked that one year for Gase and it's working for Flores.
So rather than consider what grand possibility lies ahead, this club is going to think about the 3-6 Broncos on Sunday.
"I think we've all been very fortunate to have won five in a row," quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. "We hope to continue to do the same thing throughout this week."
