The Miami Dolphins are hitting the road this week to head to frigid Orchard Park, New York, where they’ll meet the division-rival Buffalo Bills in a game the road team needs a bit more than the home team.
They’ll also need to pack their parkas for this rematch. Forecasts are calling for temperatures in the 20s and the existence of snow (on the ground and/or falling from above) on Saturday, including a 75 percent chance of precipitation, per Weather.com. The area will be under a winter storm watch from Friday evening until Tuesday evening, covering nearly the entire NFL window for Week 15 with at least the expectation of nearly a foot of snow.
It’s not quite the storm of the century Buffalo saw earlier this season — which required the Bills’ game against the Cleveland Browns to be moved to Detroit — but it will be foreign to the Dolphins, who spent the first two games of their three-game road trip in California and will finish the stretch of away dates by trading balmy Miami for Buffalo.
The Dolphins are already trying not to think about it.
“I think for me, it’s understanding that there could be many things — could be snowing, it could rain, I don’t know,” quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. “For me at least, it’s a mindset thing, really. If I’m too focused and worried about, ‘Is it too cold? Can I really grab the ball? Can I not,’ then I would say I’m focused on the wrong things. It’ll be hard to play that way going down there and playing against a good team.”
The timing is not the best for Miami, losers of two straight, and Tagovailoa specifically. The quarterback who led the NFL in passer rating and loomed as a dark horse MVP candidate just a few weeks ago has been noticeably off, missing a number of relatively simple throws and watching his numbers — and Miami’s record — suffer accordingly.
Tagovailoa’s passer rating has dropped from 115.7 in his first nine starts to 73.1 in his last two. His completion percentage has followed suit, falling from 69.7 to 45.9. After averaging 30.2 points per game in Weeks 7-12 (the stretch in which it won five straight), Miami is scoring just 17 points per contest in its last two.
That’s also exactly how many points Buffalo is allowing per game as a defense, ranking as the NFL’s second-best scoring defense.
This wouldn’t be the best matchup for Miami if the weather was temperate. Adding in snow complicates matters, but the Dolphins know they can’t worry about that too much, even if their offense ranks 29th in rushing, and their quarterback has never played in a snow game in his still-young career.
“You don’t really prepare for it besides mentally deciding if it’s going to matter to you or not,” coach Mike McDaniel said. “To me, you just decide if you’re going to let it factor in or not, and then you adjust as best you can. There’s certain things that become harder when there’s moisture or it hits a certain level of frigidness. But the good news is that there’s not different atmospheres on both sidelines. We will be playing the game in the same elements.”
Miami could help itself by not thinking about it much at all. Plus, it’s not as if the Dolphins haven’t traveled north in a division that includes three members located on or near the East Coast.
A Bills win would all but lock up the AFC East title for Buffalo, while also tamping down the good vibes coming from Miami’s sudden rise to prominence. Both can be important when battling for divisional territory. And the Dolphins could send quite a message to the rest of the division (and the NFL) by going to Buffalo, wearing extra layers, and pulling off a season sweep of the Bills in their own element.
“That’s the objective — are you going to let the elements matter more to you than them?” McDaniel said. “It is the same field, the same elements, so you just decide mentally how much you’re going to let it affect you.”