Phase 5: False Hope
The Giants nearly reached the playoffs last year, when the entire N.F.C. East descended into abject failure and shame. The Jets went 10-6 in 2015 thanks to journeymen having career years. The Jacksonville Jaguars reached the playoffs in the 2017 season and nearly burst into flames like a vampire entering church. False hope fools rebuilding teams into thinking that they are one player away from the Super Bowl, and that somehow that player is Nick Foles.
False hope is easy to distinguish from actual improvement: it’s almost always built upon narrow victories in fluky circumstances against weak opponents. Unfortunately, coaches and executives who benefit from a brief spurt of success have nothing to gain from honest self-evaluation. That’s why false hope inevitably leads to …
Phase 6: Recrimination
The Miami Dolphins hired Coach Brian Flores in 2019 (Phase Two). They traded veterans for extra first-round picks (Phase Three). Flores spent his first year trying to instill a winning culture by ordering his players to be “tough, smart and aggressive,” because no one else had ever thought of that (Phase Four). The Dolphins went 10-6 in 2020, with several wins over weak opponents like the Jets and the Jaguars (Phase Five).
The Dolphins are now 1-5. Recent drafts have been disappointing, second-year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s development has been sluggish at best, and Flores has already cycled through multiple offensive coordinators. History tells us that if the Dolphins don’t improve quickly, Flores and General Manager Chris Grier will turn on their subordinates, then on Tagovailoa, then on each other in a frenzy of skulduggery that makes “Game of Thrones” look like “Paw Patrol.”
The Cleveland Browns have staged the sort of coup d’état the Dolphins are barreling toward roughly every 18 months for the entire 21st century, but it has all paid off this year in a 3-3 team with an outside chance at a wild-card berth.