Sports

Las Vegas Gives Dolphins Among Worst Odds in NFL for Winning Super Bowl Next Year

Photo by Ian Witlen
As hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians climbed greased poles and watched a fat man in a genie costume scream profanities to celebrate the Eagles' Super Bowl win, the 2017-18 NFL season officially went in the books. Any news coming out beginning today will officially be next-year NFL news. And according to Las Vegas, for the Miami Dolphins, next-year news is likely to be bad news.

Or if you're a lifelong Dolphins fan, just regular-old news.

Vegas recently released next year's Super Bowl odds, and by the looks of things, they're not high on the Fins' chances of winning a title next season. Vegas Insider has the Dolphins pegged as 75-1 odds to win Super Bowl LIII, which for those of you nonbettors at home, is very bad. Like, almost the worst: Only the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns have worse odds of winning.

Those odds surely take into consideration the fact that the Dolphins have one of the toughest schedules in football next season, including four games against teams that played in their respective conference championship games this year: Jacksonville, New England (twice, ugh), and Minnesota. The betting experts are likely also taking into account the fact that the Dolphins are a mess and that no sane person would consider them a contender in 2018. They're just not close.

If you're a Dolphins fan, though, you really didn't need Vegas to tell you that your favorite football team isn't close to winning a title. You already knew that because you watch the team play football. A lot. More than is probably healthy. Sadly, you've already read this book. You've seen the movie too. Hell, you're an unpaid extra in the movie that is the Dolphins' lack of success. You know the chapters well, and you know every word of the script.

A head coach entering a season that should decide his fate but ultimately will not? Check! (Spoiler alert: Adam Gase will get one more year from Stephen Ross to figure things out.) If Gase leads the Fins to another 6-10 season next year, what makes anyone believe he is the right man for the job?

A starting quarterback whom half the fan base wants out but the other half constantly points to as not the problem? Check and check. Ryan Tannehill is entering his seventh year in the NFL, yet most people are unsure of who he actually is. Now, coming off two lost seasons due to knee injuries, he's damaged goods.

An overpriced roster that's riddled with holes that can be fixed only by either drafting well or cutting the losses on some high-priced players and starting over with a new batch of higher-priced guys? Yep, check. Jarvis Landry, Lawrence Timmons, Ndamukong Suh, and others could be on their way out the door to free up money that will inevitably not fix anything, because this is the Dolphins.

An offensive line in need of guards? For what seems like the 100th anniversary, check.

You get the point. It's all a mess, and there isn't a chance in hell the Dolphins will fix it all this offseason. The Dolphins are, once again, three years from being a year away.

The odds they play at the level anywhere close to the level at which the Eagles and Patriots played last week are highly unlikely. Actually, 75-1 to be exact.
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Ryan Yousefi is a freelance writer for Miami New Times, a lover of sports, and an expert consumer of craft beer and pho. Hanley Ramirez once stole a baseball from him and to this day still owes him $10.

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