PITTSBURGH _ Old habits. Fresh pain.
Nine more to go.
The Dolphins lost again Monday.
The Steelers were two touchdown favorites. Pittsburgh won by 13.
Final score: Steelers 27, Dolphins 14.
And so, the dream for Tua lives on. The Dolphins, at 0-7, remain on track to land the top pick in the draft.
But it's fair to ask how players _ not to mention a charged up Brian Flores _ who clearly care so much, can handle this for much longer.
Or put another way: What's better for the collective mental health of a franchise _ to get smoked like they did the first few weeks of the season or self immolate like they have in the past few?
Put other way: Is false hope good or not?
They had it last week in Buffalo.
And they had it again tonight here.
They had their first two-score lead of the season. Ryan Fitzpatrick looked magical.
And then it unraveled. Quickly.
Three Dolphins turnovers, including two forced by ex-Fin Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Twenty-seven straight Steelers points. Twenty-two third-quarter yards by the Dolphins.
A Pittsburgh scoring drive that traveled 97 yards and took nearly eight minutes off the clock.
A thermonuclear Flores, who torched the officials after a bizarre replay sequence that took roughly 10 minutes and cost Miami the football.
A risky play call by Patrick Graham that backfired spectacularly.
A pass-happy Steelers game plan, who went to work after Xavien Howard (knee) and Ken Webster (ankle) left with injuries.
And yet, it for a while, it was all so promising. The prospect of the first win of the year _ in front of the team's only national audience of the season, no less _ was very real.
Sure, the Dolphins did themselves big long-term favors with another second-half lay-down. (They've now been outscored by 110 points after halftime this season.) A win would have put in serious jeopardy their shot at landing the quarterback of their choice.
But that seems silly and, to use his term, "disrespectful" when you watched Flores annihilate an official after an overturned call on a fourth-down run by Ryan Fitzpatrick that cost the Dolphins the football.
He showed passion and anger that was inspiring. But it was also misguided.
The Dolphins didn't lose Monday because of an officiating decision. They lost because Ryan Fitzpatrick threw two interceptions to Minkah Fitzpatrick and Mark Walton fumbled the ball in the fourth quarter.
While the ending was the same, the start felt different.
The first half was shocking and wonderful and jarring and exasperating for Dolphins fans, and more than a few of their employees too.
The Dolphins looked like the team stacked with talent. The Steelers looked like the team tanking.
Fitzpatrick threw two first-quarter touchdowns _ one to Albert Wilson and the other to Allen Hurns _ and the home Heinz Field crowd was shook. They booed and booed and booed some more. Sometimes their players got the rage. Sometimes, their coaches. And more than once, the officials got blasted too.
Yet never underestimate the Dolphins' ability to let opposing teams off the hook.
The Steelers began to turn the momentum with Minkah Fitzpatrick's first interception. And Nick O'Leary deserves all the blame. Miami's tight end let a perfect pass bounce off his chest.
But that was a mere blip compared to the coaching staff's collective brain freeze late in the first half.
The Steelers trailed by 11 with faced third-and-20 from Miami's 45. A simple Cover-2 almost certainly would have gotten the Dolphins off the field.
Instead, Flores and Graham sent the house. An eight-man blitz, leaving Howard, Ryan Lewis and Nik Needham to cover some 2,400 square feet of real estate.
The result: a touchdown catch and run by Diontae Johnson that was as crushing as it was predictable.
The backlash? Immediate.
"Dumbest call ever," former Dolphins great Patrick Surtain wrote on Twitter. "3rd&20."
So what should have been a comfortable Dolphins lead at the break was a one-score game.
In other words, the Dolphins did just enough to make the inevitable late collapse hurt even more.
