Dolphins' playoff picture: Chances are good only with wins in all four remaining games

Hal Habib, Palm Beach Post

December 13, 2021 at 4:31 PM·4 min read

The door remains open for the Dolphins.

All they have to do to enter is finish the regular season on a nine-game winning streak (and get a bit of help).

Anything less and it’s all over.

That’s the takeaway from numbers-crunching via the playoff predictor at fivethirtyeight.com, which says that despite being in 13th place in the AFC, the Dolphins have a 77 percent chance of reaching the postseason if they win out.

More: Dolphins top running backs dealing with COVID, injury

More: Miami Dolphins Fact or Fiction: Bye Week Edition with Habib & Schad

Lose any of their four remaining games and their playoff chances shrink to the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

The Dolphins already have beaten the odds by winning five straight following a seven-game losing streak. Put the two streaks together and it explains the 6-7 hole they’re in today. But the real challenge comes in the final month of the season via an increasingly difficult quartet of games, building to a Jan. 9 finale at Hard Rock Stadium against the New England Patriots, who occupy the No. 1 perch in the AFC.

Just don’t mention anything that far off in the distance to the players. Adhering to Brian Flores’ one-day-at-a-time edict, they don’t want to hear it.

Dolphins cornerback Byron Jones defends against Bills receiver Emmanuel Sanders.

“I’ll tell you what: This NFL season has been crazy, where teams started out extraordinarily well and fell apart as the season went along,” cornerback Byron Jones said Monday. “Our focus is just on the next game. We keep it simple that way. It’s too hard to kind of open your vision.”

Fine. First step, the Dolphins must beat the New York Jets for the second time in three weeks. It’s a game in which the Dolphins have everything to lose and little to gain. Win and Miami’s playoff chances rise from 10 percent to … 11 (really). Oddsmakers are almost assuming a win, favoring Miami by at least eight points on most sports books.

Odds of reaching the playoffs climb with every potential victory after that. Beat the Saints too and it’s 20 percent. Add the Titans and it’s 43 percent. Complete the sweep by beating the Patriots — who could still have a first-round bye at stake — and it’s 77 percent.

The sobering side is that a 3-1 finish — regardless of where the loss comes — drops the playoff chances to 6 to 8 percent.

The Jets are 3-10, mathematically eliminated and coming off a 30-9 loss to the Saints in the Meadowlands. The challenge gets tougher for “Monday Night Football” on Dec. 27. Not only is the Superdome unkind to visiting teams, but New Orleans just got running back Alvin Kamara back from a knee injury that cost him a month. Sean Payton wasted no time putting Kamara to work, giving him 31 touches and getting 145 yards from scrimmage in return.

The Dolphins may avoid the comebacks of two sledgehammer backs in successive weeks. Reports lean toward Derrick Henry returning to the Titans either for the regular-season finale or the playoffs, not Jan. 2 when Miami visits. Henry had foot surgery Nov. 2. Either way, the spotlight will be on Titans QB Ryan Tannehill facing his original team.

We know even a 4-0 Dolphins finish would require help. One team to keep an eye on is Buffalo, which holds a tiebreaker edge having swept Miami. The Bills have fallen to the No. 7 seed via a two-game losing streak. If the Dolphins win out and Buffalo upsets the Patriots in Foxborough, Miami’s odds of making the postseason soar to 90 percent. On the flip side, a 4-0 Miami run coupled with a Bills loss to either the Panthers, Falcons or Jets would skyrocket the Dolphins’ chances to at least 94 percent.

Much of this wouldn’t be an issue if the Dolphins were blessed to be in the top-heavy NFC. There, a 6-7 record is good enough to find Washington in the No. 7 position.

Since a league source informs The Post that the Dolphins will not be joining the NFC anytime soon, one final piece of evidence for any Sherlocks out there is strength of schedule (excluding Monday night’s Cardinals-Rams game). Miami’s remaining schedule falls in the middle of those on or near the No. 7 cutoff, with opponents having a .519 percentage. You wouldn’t want to be Pittsburgh (.634 strength of schedule) or Cincinnati (.596). Easiest: the Bills (.442) and Chargers (.462).

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: No margin for error: Dolphins' playoff odds revolve around 4-0 finish

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