Blast From The Past

If you want to see some old school, smashmouth, dick in the dirt football, this is the game for you. Quite possibly the best performance by a Fins D I've personally witnessed (and by objective measures it's right up there with the best in franchise history) and also That Guy sledge-hammering the opposing D into submission. I present to you the night when this team battered, bruised and bullied the Bills. This'll put some hair on your chest and make you want to tinker with the vehicle for a few hours before coming inside, dripping with sweat raw, primal masculine sexuality, and reminding your woman why she's yours It goes without saying that somewhere in there a beer or two will be consumed (but not Bud). Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obOlCg5h_Ic&t=4s

I thought Dolphin's games were stressful. Devil's vs Rangers Playoff Game 7 is NUTS.

JEGnj wrote:I thought Dolphin's games were stressful. Devil's vs Rangers Playoff Game 7 is NUTS.

Congrats! Devils KICKED ASS! It was a crazy game early on, but the Devils were just too fast. And Schmid was absolutely amazing!

whoa.  ha hah ha hah.  he said...

DolFan 316 wrote:dick in the dirt

DolFan 316 wrote:If you want to see some old school, smashmouth, dick in the dirt football, this is the game for you. Quite possibly the best performance by a Fins D I've personally witnessed (and by objective measures it's right up there with the best in franchise history) and also That Guy sledge-hammering the opposing D into submission. I present to you the night when this team battered, bruised and bullied the Bills. This'll put some hair on your chest and make you want to tinker with the vehicle for a few hours before coming inside, dripping with sweat raw, primal masculine sexuality, and reminding your woman why she's yours    It goes without saying that somewhere in there a beer or two will be consumed (but not Bud). Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obOlCg5h_Ic&t=4s

Great find Dolfan!

Love revisiting it for the phenomenal defensive effort but I remember I was furious while I was watching it some 20 years ago. A) Fiedler single handedly letting the Jills avoid a shutout on one late drive (and putting the outcome in doubt) and also killing the first drive of the game with another INT;
B) Mare missing two FG's off the infield dirt, something that Bumstedt should have him practicing on after this (but didn't, and it ended up costing us big time a month later in the crucial and season killing Pats game)
C) Ricky being saddled with 42 carries because we kept blowing chances to put the game away much, much earlier. When I look back to what might have made him retire early the first time, this game comes to mind.

The failure of the Wanny Era in a nutshell: great, Super Bowl quality defense wasted due to declining special teams play (once Westhoff was fired we lost that huge advantage) and a QB who really should have been a backup. So it's a great game to revisit and a painful one at the same time.

I was actually waiting for you to say something along those lines!

Not only is this game the perfect time capsule of the early '00s Fins, it's also the beginning of the NFL moving away from the romanticized ideal of the big QB standing tall in the pocket throwing bombs and going in the direction it still is today, emphasizing athleticism above all else. And Bledsoe was pretty much the cause of that. And yes, it was the beginning of the end for Mare, as he went from hitting over 90% of his kicks in '00-01 to under 80% in 4 of the next 5 seasons in Miami with some fans calling him O-miss-o.

The Fins did have a bye after this game, which I'm convinced led Wanny to believe it was okay to hand it off to That Guy as much as he did.

I remember that game well. A great summation of being a Dolfan in the Wanny era: filled with high highs and low lows, going from one to the other every couple of minutes.