Kelly: Dolphins should have revenge on their mind against Titans | Opinion

Is revenge or redemption overrated?

The Miami Dolphins will be put in position to answer that question as a team on Monday in what could be yet another season- defining game against the Tennessee Titans.

Make no mistake about it, the Titans ruined everything that the Dolphins were working for last season.

If the Dolphins hadn’t had a colossal fourth-quarter collapse, and had beaten the Titans on “Monday Night Football” instead of suffering a 28-27 season soiling loss, Miami would have likely clinched the AFC East division.

That would have put the Dolphins in position to host a home playoff game for the first time since 2008, and maybe then the season wouldn’t have flat lined the way it did with three straight losses, which included Miami’s playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

“We didn’t forget,” Dolphins tailback Jeff Wilson said of that week 14 contests, which also included Tyreek Hill suffering a troublesome high ankle sprain that plagued him the rest of the season, and starting center Connor Williams tearing his ACL. “Everything we worked for was taken away from us.”

More like squandered, or given away. But the point has been made. That Titans loss was scarring to those who played on last year’s team.

In last year’s game Miami had a field-goal attempt blocked before the half, then allowed the Titans to move 69- ards downfield on six plays in 28 seconds to kick a field goal that provided a 13-10 halftime lead.

Miami rallied back to build a 27-13 lead they held with 4:34 left in the fourth quarter, but squandered it all by allowing 14 straight points in less than five minutes. The Dolphins’ third loss of the 2023 season was sealed when Tua Tagovailoa was sacked on fourth down, close to field goal territory with 20 seconds left in the game.

“I remember it all,” said right tackle Austin Jackson, whose unit allowed Tagovailoa to be sacked on fourth-and-2 from Miami’s 45-yard line with a four-man pressure. “Our offensive plan crumbled at the end. In the flow of the game we didn’t fire on every single phase of the game. Offense struggled. Defense collapsed and we had special teams errors too.”

What did the loss do?

“It made us better. Made us tougher,” Jackson said, clearly referring to the two wins that followed. “It’s hard to overcome a loss like that, especially when you put yourself in that situation. It’s a key memory, for sure.”

Even though Miami won the two games that followed, beating the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys to clinch a playoff berth, the Dolphins finished 2023 with season-ending losses to Baltimore (which was a battle for the No. 1 seed in the AFC) and then got beat by Buffalo at home in a contest the allowed the Bills to win its fourth AFC East division title.

“It was a turning point in our season. We let that one slip and it kind of all went downhill from there,” Dolphins pass rusher Emmanuel Ogbah said about the Titans loss. “The defense has to give the offense a chance….We’re a defensive team, we make the team go. We have to do a better job of giving our offense a chance.”

Even though the teams that line up Monday night are two different versions of the Titans and Dolphins, those who remain haven’t forgotten, which is why this battle between an injury-depleted Dolphins team, and the 0-3 Titans can be viewed as an opportunity for redemption, especially since the winner will have some tension relieved on this year’s season.

“I definitely understand that there’s some similarities in that the teams are the same, the stadium is the same, and that [it’s a] night [game] is the same. And I’m sure it crossed the minds of everyone, myself included, when the schedule came out,” coach Mike McDaniel said. “But one important lesson that we’ve learned this season that I hold very true and dear because I know it to be truth, is that [only] about 40 percent of the players [who] lived [through] and had that scar from 2023 [are back[. It doesn’t do justice to the 2024 team to do anything but worry about how they play football together.”

McDaniel’s referring to the adversity his team is working through, breaking in the team’s third starting quarterback in Tyler Huntley, who joined the team two weeks ago, playing the first game of 2024 without Pro Bowl left tackle Terron Armstead, who suffered a concussion last week, and replacing starting cornerback Kendall Fuller (concussion) and possible linebacker David Long Jr. (hamstring), the team’s leading tackler.

“So you’re thinking about last year? Sweet,” McDaniel added. “The past is the past, the future is what you make of it. The only thing that really matters is what we’re doing collectively as individuals that relate to a group in each phase, and sticking to that.”