Advertisement

Mahomes-Allen air show a face-slap reminder how much better Dolphins, Tua need to become | Opinion

Twitter @NFL

We watch NFL games through our own prism, right? From the vantage of how our own team compares. For a Miami Dolphins fan this exercise is called “torture.” But never quite like it was Sunday night, in the astounding crescendo to the single greatest weekend in the league’s playoff history.

Heck, it was maybe the greatest weekend in sports history.

Perhaps in history, period.

Or at least the greatest in approximately 5,321 years, since that weekend when an uncredited person thought to be in lower Mesopotamia around 3300 BC invented the wheel. Thank you for that, anonymous inventor. But, with due respect, what Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen were doing Sunday night was even better.

The Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills offenses were unstoppable in the hands of two premier quarterbacks who took mere seconds to trade points until finally Mahomes and the Chiefs prevailed in overtime 42-36.

That was after the weekend’s first three playoff games (all upsets) ended on a game-deciding field goal on the final play.

It was an historic weekend capped by a thrilling, epic display of quarterback artistry in Mahomes vs. Allen.

The conference championship round both lost its biggest stars with the elimination of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers (to the chagrin of ratings-minded TV executives), and still the weekend was the best possible advertisement for the NFL.

The parity, the unpredictability, the rise of the new, now generation of star quarterbacks in command of the future ... all were on regal display.

But from where Miami sits, alas, the weekend and especially Sunday night was depressing. Sobering. Enough to make a Dolfan set the alarm for around 2034, which might be about when the two quarterbacks now most in their way are finally retired or at least in decline.

Mahomes is 26. Allen is 25.

And there is not a single Chiefs or Bills fan today — not one, anywhere — wondering if their team has the right quarterback. If he’s good enough or maybe possibly someday could be.

Allen pilots the new king of the AFC East, Miami ‘s division.

Mahomes leads the king of the AFC, Miami’s conference.

These are the two quarterbackks, and teams, the Dolphins have to figure out how to be better than for any chance to reach the Super Bowl in the foreseeable future.

Only twice in NFL playoff history has a quarterback passed for at least 325 yards and three touchdowns, not thrown an interception, and also ran for 60 or more yards.

Mahomes and Allen were the first and only to do it, Sunday night.

It isn’t fair, really. Must be karmic payback for Miami having won back to back championships in ever-distant 1972-73 including a Perfect Season

I mean, think about it.

The Dolphins spent much of the past 20 years as the Toyota Tercel trying to catch the New England Patriots Maserati on the Autobahn.

Kept waiting for Brady to succumb to age, or retire.

He did neither.

But then he left for Tampa, for another division, another conference. Cue parade!

But wait.

Mahomes hit the NFL as its most dynamic star since Dan Marino circa 1983-84.

Now Allen emerges, ascends, as a budding superstar instantly wiping away decades of Buffalo misery and irrelevance.

There’s more, unfortunately.

Cruel fate has it that Miami’s AFC roadblocks led by Mahomes and Allen now also include Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow, age 25, who has the Bengals (!) in the AFC Championship Game, and the L.A. ChargersJustin Herbert, age 23, another blossoming superstar and forever the guy the Dolphins could have drafted fifth overall in 2020 but said nah.

Lamar Jackson, Mac Jones, Trevor Lawrence, not to mention Deshaun Watson — the AFC is lopsided with bright young quarterback talent as the Dolphins shop for a new head coach and enter Year 3 hoping Tua Tagovailoa will be their QB of the future but still having no real proof he will rise to that level.

Miami, for really the first time since Tagovailoa was drafted, seems committed that he’s their guy and to build around him. Seems smart.

Then you watch Mahomes and Allen and their surrounding weapons put on that Sunday night fireworks show...

...and you think back to the Dolphins offense with its shoddy pass protection, no premier running back and conservative, quick-hit passing...

...and you wonder. Or perhaps you weep?

So next Sunday the Chiefs will host the Bengals — Mahomes vs. Burrow — and the Rams will host the 49ers, the winners advancing to the 37th Super Bowl in a row without the Dolphins in it.

Maybe the Dolphins will have head coach by then.

Maybe Tagovailoa will bloom to be the kind of dynamic, difference-making star we saw on Sunday night.

That is what Dolphins fans’ hopes rest on today.

Maybe.