These have been the three longest playoff droughts in the once-proud history of the Miami Dolphins:
Seven seasons, from 2009 to 2015.
Six seasons, from 2002 to 2007.
Now five seasons, from 2017 ... and counting.
College-age Dolphins fans have grown up not knowing their team to be anything but almost always bad. Even worse — irrelevant.
They hear their fathers and grandpas with misty eyes reference “The Perfect Season,” but the words are a near-foreign language. Yellowed pages in a scrapbook.
They hear the words “Marino and “Shula” said, but these are vague, distant deities who hold no sway in the modern age. They are but strong-yet-powerless memories, reminders of a fallen empire.
And the Lost Century slogs on.
It wasn’t that they lost Sunday, was it?
That was hardly unexpected. After seven wins in a row. Against a tough Tennessee Titans team. In the rain and cold of wintry Nashville.
But 34-3!?
“Disappointed. You’re in the wrong business if you’re not disappointed by that,” coach Brian Flores said Monday, of that defeat and missing the playoffs. “A lot of emotions come with being eliminated. It’s easy to go and lament all those feelings. Hard thing to do is pick yourself up and go on to the next challenge, which is what we have to do.”
Were those seven wins in a row a mirage? A daydream?
No, it wasn’t just the loss. It was the sense of back to square one. Of here we go again.
It was the ifs. If the season hadn’t begun 1-7. If there hadn’t been that embarrassing loss to then-winless Jacksonville in London.
Suddenly next Sunday’s season finale, at home vs. playoff-bound New England, is meaningless beyond the bare consolation of a winning record, at least.
These are the Dolphins in the Lost Century: They tease, occasionally. As with the odd good season, like in 2008 and 2016. As with the seven wins in a row, until Sunday. They allow optimism not to flourish, but to at least exist. And then they crush it.
Between 1970 and 2001 the Dolphins made the playoffs 21 times in 32 seasons and won 20 postseason games, including three Super Bowls.
Between 2002 and the present Miami has made the playoffs twice in 20 years and been quickly ousted both times.
Shula never did live to see the long-promised return to glory.
Owner Stephen Ross, at 81, has to be wondering if he ever will.
Dan Marino is 60 now. Will he?
We have put off long enough mentioning Tua Tagovailoa, the living, breathing embodiment of the Lost Century.
Given Alabama’s secondary logo from his college days, Tua is quite literally the elephant in the room.
All of Dolfans’ hope, brave optimism, and disappointment, all of the wondering and the not knowing — all of it is represented in the second-year quarterback who still might be the answer ... but who will be the biggest question until he proves he isn’t.
Is Tagovailoa good enough to stick with, to have faith in, to build around?
The answer is the scariest three words in the running of an NFL team:
They don’t know. No real idea.
The club wanted to end this season with a firm, internal sense of what they have in Tagovailoa. Whether he is the answer.
They will not. And the doubt will segue into another offseason of speculation and rumors and Tagovailoa twisting in the wind.
Fans don’t know what his future is. The franchise doesn’t know. Nobody can, after 20 career starts that have shown enough good to buoy optimism but enough bad to sow doubt.
Funny and fitting enough, Flores in his brief media availability Monday was not asked even once about Tagoavailoa. What is there to say that the club’s actions haven’t already said loudly in the back-channels pursuit of an available Deshaun Watson? A pursuit like tabled more than forgotten?
Tagovailoa in Sunday’s loss was inaccurate, threw an interception and fumbled three times, losing one. All with the playoffs in the balance.
Afterward an out-of-town reporter asked him if he was aware of the concerns surrounding him, saying “Why are people wrong to doubt you moving forward?”
His reply: “People have their own opinions. I have heard this the entire time I’ve been here, so, at the end of the day, I can only control what I can control.”
The question was harsh, but not unfair.
The answer was not great, but it was the best he had.
Tagovailoa has worked behind a below average offensive line, has a below average running game, and has rarely had all of his top receivers healthy at once. All true.
But so is this: He has not displayed the ability to rise above, to lift his team beyond what it otherwise is.
He might grow into that, if given the chance.
Or he may not grow into it, or be given the chance.
This is the no-man’s land the Dolphins find themselves in as yet another NFL season moves toward playoffs that will go on without Miami.
It is an uncomfortable, dispiriting, frustrating and altogether familiar spot for this franchise to find itself stuck.
