Greg Cote: Winless Dolphins fought hard in loss at Buffalo, and nobody cares

Greg Cote, Miami Herald on Sep 18, 2025

Published in Football

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Well, Tua, you were right, after all.

You’re not Josh Allen. Not nearly as good. Miami Dolphins fans knew it. All of the NFL did. And America was reminded once again Thursday night in Buffalo.

But did you have to say it like that? Put it so plain and surrender so publicly? Like, Dolfans were not hurting enough already?

What a weird pep talk Tagovailoa gave prior to this trip, his team desperate at 0-2 and headed for 0-3. It felt more like a concession speech.

“He’s top tier,” raved Tua of Allen. “If it’s not with his arm, it’s with his legs. That dude can do literally anything he wants. I can’t do half of what he does when it comes to running the ball and any of that. And then with how he can just chuck the ball down the field that far and the arm strength he has. He’s supreme when it comes to that. It’s going to be fun to get to see him.”

The Bills beat the Dolphins, 31-21, to launch NFL Week 3 and, realistically, end Miami’s season.

The Fins have started a season 0-3 only eight previous times in their 60-year history, most recently in 2019, and have never (not once) rebounded to make the playoffs, or even to finish .500.

Tagovailoa was not bad Thursday night; he’d thrown a couple of touchdown passes. Until he did the terrible thing. The Tua thing. With Miami driving for what would be the tying TD and at the Bills 20, he threw an interception. A bad one. Right at the defender. And that was that.

Allen, even with three scoring passes, did not have great game by his standards. But he had no turnovers. He beat Miami and Tua. Again.

It was a strange game in a strange season for the Dolphins.

To all of you fatalists among the Dolphins fandom — the small-plane renters, the fire-everybody-right-now crowd, the let’s-tank advocates — I’m sorry for your loss. Meaning it wasn’t as bad as you thought (or hoped?) it would be.

The Dolphins were not embarrassed; far from it. They showed pride, and fight. Showed they have not quit on embattled coach Mike McDaniel.

And nobody wants to hear it.

The only sound is 0-3, and it’s ear-splitting.

The Dolphins host the Jets next, and then play the Panthers. Getting to 2-3 is a reasonable thought.

But nobody wants to hear it.

Miami stunned America and most of their fans with a 7-0 early lead Thursday kick-started by a 54-yard Dee Eskridge kickoff return. Rookie Ollie Gordon’s 2-yard scoring run finished it.

“Here we go again,” muttered how many Dolfans. But the fight was on.

It was 7-7 a few minutes later. Order restored. Then 14-7, Bills, on Allen’s second touchdown pass. But Miami made it 14-14 at the half on Tua’s late, short TD pass to Jaylen Waddle.

“Go figure,” said ABC’s Al Michaels of the unexpectedly close game.

McDaniel then, rightly: “It’s meaningless without another half.”

Buffalo led 21-14 early in the next half on James Cook’s short scoring run. But the Fins tied it 21-21 early in the fourth on Tua’s 5-yard TD pass to Tyreek Hill.

It was, perhaps inevitably, 28-21 Buffalo on Allen’s third scoring pass of the night mid-fourth quarter. But it was how that happened!

A Bills punt had pinned Miami inside its own 5, but Zach Sieler had roughed the punter. Suddenly it was Buffalo with a first down at Miami’s 36. The TD followed.

Then, as Miami drove for the potential tying score, Tua erased all the positives of his and Miami’s night with a really bad interception.

The Dolphins on this night had built their fans up, maybe restored a bit of faith, only to sabotage all of that at the end.

“To win a game you have to win a game, not lose a game,” McDaniel had said, clumsily, at 0-2, inviting national credulity.

“You gotta take the punches as they come just as much as you take the pats on the back,” Tua had said.

And the punches keep coming.

Look, any Dolfans still clinging to rational thought know it. This game was significantly better than the second, which was way better than the first. The trend is right.

The defense was better Thursday. The running game was better. There was not a ton of difference appreciable between the winless Fins and the Super Bowl-favorite Bills.

But nobody wants to hear that.

A 3-0 record writes its own irrefutable story, and a critical late Tua interception is its punctuation.

In the immortal words of a certain head coach trying mightily to stay employed: “To win a game you have to win a game, not lose a game.”