Two straight overtime losses aren’t a particularly good way of generating goodwill with your fan base, something Dolphins center Mike Pouncey seems to realize.
Pouncey took the unusual step of issuing a public apology to Dolphins fans this week after losses to the Jets and Cardinals have left the team with a 1-3 record after the first four weeks. Pouncey said that it has been tough shaking Sunday’s loss in Arizona because he feels the Dolphins are a better team than their record might suggest.
“It’s tough to let go of a game like that. We got to figure ways to make those plays at the end of football games. If you look at film and watch this team we should be 3-1 right now, but that’s the NFL. Very frustrating. Say sorry to the fans, it’s all on us, those games we should’ve won,” Pouncey said, via the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “We got to finish these football games and we’ll turn it around and be a winning football team down here. We don’t look at ourselves as a 1-3 football team; we look at ourselves as a 3-1 football team, which we should be today. You can’t take it back; it’s the NFL, it happens, but we got 12 more games and we will turn it around.”
There’s an old quote attributed to Bill Parcells that seems to fit as the best response to Pouncey’s feelings about being a 3-1 football team stuck in the body of a 1-3 football team: You are what your record says you are. The Dolphins are a 1-3 team, regardless of what Pouncey might think about how the team looks on film.
That said, the Dolphins haven’t been nearly as bad as many people were projecting before the year got underway. The run defense has been very good, Ryan Tannehill provides reason for optimism about the future of the offense and there’s a lot less gloom in the forecast than there was this summer. There’s still plenty of work to do, but there’s also reason to believe things are heading in the right direction.
