/Scene opens with Wakezilla laying in bed, his two hands behind his head and his eyes wide open. Underneath the sheets is another body that begins just below Wakezilla’s waist, with a head bobbing up and down. The bobbing stops and the sheets are raised to reveal Mrs. Wakezilla, wearing a Dolphins helmet.

Mrs Wakezilla: Papi, your cock mood ring coloUr is purple, meaning you are full of anxiety. What’s wrong?

Wakezilla with a deep sigh: Oh, for some reason I feel a hopelessness and a sense of loss overcoming me. I think I’m going to go down to the basement and sit for a while.

/Wakezilla grabs his cellphone, sets it to vibrate and tosses it over to the Mrs. Wakezilla

Wakezilla: Here you go baby, finish yourself off.

*Wakezilla gets up and puts on his white Xavien Howard jersey and orange shorts, and exits the master bedroom– as Mrs. Wakezilla mentions in the background that she’s going to go have a shower– Wakezilla walks down a flight of stairs. Upon walking another flight of stairs, Wakezilla is in his nice, spacious basement. Wakezilla begins to speak as he continues to slowly walk towards the couch.

Wakezilla: August. For most NFL fans, August represents hope. A clean slate. Anything can happen for their team to not only make the playoffs, but also do some damage and maybe make it to the Superb Owl. But for Dolphins fans, it’s the beginning of a 16 game season, where in the end, like setting your phone to vibrate, you won’t be able to get off, so you have a date with a powerful showerhead to cleanse yourself of the disappointment in January. The football season for Dolphins fans means that they will regularly crank it, not because they’re horny, but because they need the dopamine to keep on living.

Wakezilla walks past an open door that gives the view a glimpse in what clearly is an all red-lighted,  S&M lair. Wakezilla continues to speak as he gingerly walks to the couch.

Wakezilla: So here we are, yet again in another rebuild for the umpteenth time. Did you know that the Dolphins are a 196-196 over the last 25 years? Somewhere Jeff Fisher just got a hard-on while lying down on a tanning booth, covered in baby oil and only wearing black tinted water goggles. With Gase, Tannenbaum and Tannehill gone, Miami is set to try and blow everything up and lose on porpoise this season so that they can get a lottery pick and draft a franchise quarterback. I’m sure that’s exactly what Coaching canon fodder, err, I mean, ex-New England defensive coordinator Brian Flores wants to hear.

Inexplicably, the radio turns on and Sonny and Cher’s “I got you babe” begins to play*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80QHRTQ3Kmw

Wakezilla sits down on his black leather single couch Lazy-boy recliner: After another 3 years of mediocrity, Miami is going with the sound strategy to Tank for Tua, or jump for Justin or whatever–and it seems many of the supposed experts and the 27 Miami Dolphins fans agree that this is the strategy to go with. In fact, Miami is supposed to be so bad, ESPN’s Mike Clay thinks the Dolphins will go winless this year. Caesars Entertainment sportsbook made Miami the 5-2 favorite to finish with the fewest wins, followed by the Arizona Cardinals (4-1), New York Giants (9-2), Cincinnati Bengals (9-2) and Oakland Raiders (7-1). 5 wins seems to be the median for wins predicted (which is the fewest amount of wins among all NFL teams).

As much as I would like to see Miami sandbag and get the #1 overall pick, there’s two problems:

A) Miami is terrible at drafting and would likely draft Taro Tsujimoto with the first overall pick; and 2) They aren’t as bad as people are making them out. Miami finished 7-9 last year and that was with them being comically injury depleted. Yet, they battled most games and ended up winning some games that wouldn’t be described as a Van Gogh painting, but more like Dogs playing Poker.

Wakezilla gets up, walks over to the fridge and grabs a Chinook Saison, from the Banded Peak Brewing company. He takes a swig while returning to the coach and lets out a burp. Wakezilla sits down and once again speaks.

Wakezilla: Ah yes, that’s the good shit.  Speaking of shit, lets talk defense.

Flores comes from a franchise where the collective pass rush is better than the sum of its individual parts. Here’s hoping for a similar situation in Miami, where their defensive line situation can be best described as Birdbox.

It all started with with Cam Wake–a massive loss– and Robert Quinn (meh) not liking with what they were seeing, and vanished into the abyss. It culminated with Kendrick Norton going to the extreme and amputating his arm. Some people will do anything to avoid playing on Miami’s dumpster fire D-Line.

As for the survivors, First-round pick Christian Wilkins,a defensive tackle from Clemson, will be relied on to stop the rush and bring some of that winning Clemson culture to Miami. Either way, he won’t be as bad or as over-paid as Donkey Kong Suh. So that’s a win, I guess. In all honesty, just between us DFOers, if an opposing team were to throw the ball more than 10 times in a game against Miami this year, the coaching staff should be fired and forced to work for the Dolphins’ organization.

The starting linebackers are formidable, but unfortunately has no depth. So if any on the linebackers go down, you can all but guarantee the opposing team’s backs and Quarterback are going to run for 200-300 yards. With that said, when a linebacker or two go down, it’ll be amusing for the PA announcer to pick a person from out of the stands and get them to play linebacker in the NFL. That’s essentially what the Dolphins’ backup linebackers are anyway: cromulently in-shape fans.

Secondary. Now we’re talking! The NFL is a passing league and the Dolphins’ strength is their secondary. Xavien Howard re-signed with the Fins and despite being named the 55th best player in the NFL top 100, he’s still criminally under-rated. Minkah Fitzpatrick is a star in the making and is incredibly versatile. This is huge for a franchise that seems to have players made out of peanut brittle. Reshad Jones is still one of the best strong safeties, as long as he doesn’t throw another temper tantrum about being platooned in. Bobby McCain is a solid cornerback and TJ Mcdonald is an excellent cover guy.

Wakezilla pulls out two traveler’s sized bottles out of his shorts and begins to drink them, as a bowl of chocolates are on the right side of his lazy-boy armchair.  

Wakezilla: Hot take prediction: Seeing how NFL coaches over-think things, instead of running on every single play, coaches are going to throw against this defense, resulting in this secondary leading the league in interceptions.

As for my final thoughts about the defense: The Dolphins gave up a total of 433 points in 2018, which is the second time they have conceded over 400 points since 1990. I don’t think they’re giving up 400 points in consecutive seasons, which means their win total could increase.

Wakezilla picks at the chocolates that paired well with his drinks and begins to eat them

Wakezilla: Offense. Last year, this offensive line collapsed faster than a bridge built in Florida. Losing their RT, Ju’Wuan James, an above average lineman, is a major blow. Tunsil was very good last year and has emerged as a quality left tackle. Daniel Kilgore (center) and Jesse Davis (right guard) return as competent a starters. But the Dolphins may be using a third-round rookie at left guard (Michael Deiter) and have yet to replace James. If a repeat of injuries happens again to the O-line like it did last year, Fitzpatrick and/or Rosen and the running backs are all going to die.

Quarterbacks. Tannehill’s reign of terror is over, thank god. Unfortunately, the ball has been handed off to Fitzmagic and Rosen. The starting job is Fitzy’s to lose. Given his MO, I’d suspect he’ll get a couple of wins early with his gun slinging style, but ultimately get replaced by Rosen near the end of the year when Miami is eliminated from playoffs contention and they want to tank. But you never know. According to my sources, Fitzpatrick went to Harvard. That kind of smarts is something you cannot teach. So maybe he’ll win the job over the entire season. With that said, that o-line is garbage and if they’re going to have a QB take a pounding and be on their back a lot, the Fins might as well just hire Mia Khalifa. She lives in Miami, can take a pounding and from what has been revealed, she works pretty cheap.

Running Backs. Kenyan Drake and Kalen Ballage will split the running duties.  *Tee hee hee. . . Duty* Just like the album Scorpion, Drake was a disappointment last season, losing snaps to 970 year old Frank Gore and failing to build on what was a promising 2017 season. Part of this was due to shitty coaching and an even worse O-Line. Now, with Drake’s contract expiring in the offseason, the new staff may not be inspired to give him many touches, especially with Ballage waiting in the wings.  Ballage’s size (237 pounds), contract situation and pass-catching skills could give him a leg up on Drake, as the OC, Chad O’Shea, likes pass catching RBs. (Drake is also a good passing catching back, but, the new coaching staff owe him no loyalty).

If one back can significantly outperform the other back in preseason, that back could be worth a late round pick up/waiver wire pickup early in the season when Miami is relatively healthy. But once the O-lineman start dropping like flies, avoid these players like the plague.

Receivers/Tight End. Miami’s strength is a deep wide receiving crew. The problem is, they may not get the ball all that often if the quarterback is constantly lying on his back. The receiving corps is led by Kenny Stills, a quality deep threat who is one of five NFL wide receivers with at least six touchdown catches in each of the past three seasons. DeVante Parker, Miami’s 2015 first-round selection, has all the tools, but just can’t stay healthy. He’s talking up a big game in training camp, saying he’s going to get at least 1000 yards this season. If he can stay healthy, I actually believe him. He’s a lot better than his stats prove and quite frankly, has had a few freak injuries. He’s due for a breakout and no freak injuries.

Ron Howard voice over: A week from now, Parker slips on a banana peel and is out the entire season with a back injury, only to sign with the Patriots in the offseason and becomes Vikings era Randy Moss 2.0.

Wakezilla: In addition to those two, seeing how Chad O’Shea was New England’s wide receivers coach, I expect he will use Albert Wilson and Jakeem Grant more extensively in the slot and create Julian Edelman-style mismatches.

Watch out for undrafted rookie, Preston Williams. Aside from having a name that screams future white collar criminal in a RRSP Ponzi scheme, Williams has earned the praise of the Dolphins’ defense. In fact, Xavien Howard said Williams will be a future star in the league.

Also, he apparently has a great set of mits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV2bb7R2FGU

In terms of the tight end position, Miami has an abundance of them, though, it’s questionable if any of them are good. O’Shea signed ex-P*triots player, Dwayne Allen, which is odd since Miami invested second- and fourth-round picks on Mike Gesicki and Durham Smythe in 2018 and re-signed Nick O’Leary last December. Gesicki added 13 pounds this offseason in hopes the added bulk would help him build upon his 22 catch rookie campaign.

Schedule.

As of right now, there isn’t one game that Miami is entering as the favorite, much to the delight of management who want to tank.

However, as I said before, Miami’s team isn’t that bad and four out of Miami’s first five games are at home. Factoring in Fitzmagic is entering his first season with Miami and is usually streaky in a positive way early on, and assuming the Phins are healthy entering the season–and that’s a big IF with this team– I could see Miami winning at least 2, maybe stealing 3 games. As for the rest of the way, a split between the Bills and the Jets give them 4 or 5 wins. I could also see Miami beating the Giants and Bengals–because those two teams are smart and know how to tank– and could possibly upset the Browns, who for the first time in a long time, will be in a season where they will be the favorite for more than one game. That should give Miami 7 or 8 wins, which is good enough to fuck themselves out of a good draft pick.

As for my prediction, well, this fucking team can’t even tank properly. They’re going 7-9, resulting in them missing out on all the top QBs in the draft, only for them to probably draft another receiver in the first round.

Oh well, at least I have Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris’ champagne and dance celebration to look forward too.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go generate some dopamine.