Can the Miami Dolphins ring in the New Year with a dramatic run into the playoffs?

Are the Miami Dolphins for real? We are about to find out.

The Dolphins extended their remarkable seven-game winning streak Monday night at the expense of the New Orleans Covid-19s, 20-3. The team formerly known as the Saints was so ravaged by the pandemic that their offensive line and linebackers had to be introduced before the game - to each other – and their offense was led by a fourth-string quarterback who didn’t have a playbook. He had a crib sheet.

Considering those circumstances last night at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, one has to take Miami’s latest victory with a grain of salt, not to mention with some hydrochlorquine and rendesvir. Still, Miami set the most remarkable of NFL records Monday night, becoming the first team in NFL history to follow a seven-game losing streak with a seven-game winning streak in the same season. It’s been that kind of year in professional sports.

Yet if the Dolphins are real it may be time for the New England Patriots to (pan)demic…I mean panic. Only three weeks ago, the Patriots were being widely praised as a team like the phoenix and not because they played in Phoenix. It was being said Bill Belichick and a rookie quarterback named Mac Jones had lifted them from the ashes of their post-Brady apocalyptic demise to become the best team in the AFC after embarking on their own seven-game winning streak. They had gone from afterthought to the AFC’s number-one playoff seed, which meant they might have home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Then reality struck.

Since that moment, New England has lost two straight in crushing fashion, having been trampled by the Indianapolis Colts and embarrassed on their home grounds by the stampeding Buffalo Bills, whom New England had similarly stomped on up in wind-blown Buffalo just two weeks earlier while allowing young Jones to throw the ball only three times because his coaches felt the wind was blowing too hard for him to safely launch a pass.

So now many of New England’s fickle fans are saying Jones isn’t who they thought he was, his arm too weak to be successful once the chilly winds of winter begin to howl in the Northeast. They say their coach, not so long ago considered a genius, looked a lot smarter when Tom Brady was regularly saving his and his team’s bacon before being shown the door by a coach who says he always does what’s in the best interest of the Patriots. Clearly deciding he’d had enough of Brady wasn’t that because on the same day the Bills were seizing control of the AFC East from the clammy hands of the fading Patriots Brady was clinching a NFC South tile for the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers but enough about them. What about the Dolphins?

New Englanders, always fearful of one of their most hated rivals (and New Englanders have plenty of them), now have to fear the Fish because if Miami’s resurrection proves hardier than their own, it could well be Miami who sends the Patriots on vacation without a playoff appearance for the second straight season while their former quarterback continues to win without them…and without Belichick.

It is unclear which of those fates they would hate worse, missing the playoffs or again seeing Tom Brady go to them without the guy they for years claimed had created him. Regardless, it is now Miami and another ex-Belichick disciple who may decide it all for them.

For that to happen Miami must win out and it won’t be easy. First they must go to Nashville and face the Tennessee Titans, a scrappy group that has found a way to overcome the loss of their best running back and top wide receiver and continue to win often enough to at the moment be the second seed in the AFC playoff picture. If the Dolphins can do it they’d be 9-7 and riding an eight-game winning streak going into a season finale back at their humid, humble home base against – drum roll please – the likely 10-6 Patriots.

Now there’s some potential drama all fans should be rooting for because it was Miami who opened the season with an unexpected win over the Patriots in New England. For a time it looked like that might be a mirage after Belichick’s charges ripped off its seven-game winning streak while Miami was doing the same in reverse, losing seven straight. But in a pandemic year filled with often unpleasant surprises, both now look up and find themselves with the possibility of facing the other with the potential of not only winning a playoff spot in the final game of the season but the added pleasure of eliminating the other from the post-season.

We, as fans, should be so lucky. That is the type of end-of-the-season drama we all should be rooting for. A final game with massive playoff implications - not to mention personal animus between the participants - that seemed highly unlikely a month ago.

For it to happen, New England needs to beat up the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday and Miami has to extend its unlikely winning streak against a team not in Covid protocols. That would leave one-game separating the Patriots and Dolphins in the standings but Miami holding the head-to-head advantage. If their seven-game winning streak somehow swells to nine they’re in, New England is out, Tom Brady’s long shadow grows darker and The Hoodie begins more and more to resemble every other great coach who preceded him to genius status, which is to say more the product of the quarterback who once stood by his side rather than that quarterback’s architect.

So, we should all become Dolphins’ fans for at least a week because there seems to be no need to back the lowly Jags for this season-ending drama to play out as everyone but die hard Patriot fans should want. What could be a better way to ring in the New Year than a New Year’s weekend showdown between two of the game’s long-time rivals with everything – including coaching reputations and tri-cornered revenge – on the line?

Other than a negative test for Covid, I can’t think of anything.