- Super Wild Card Weekend. Josh Allen and Christian Wilkins get into a fight during Wild Card game
- Dolphins 31-34 Bills. Buffalo Bills struggled, but beat a determined Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins were eliminated with much dignity as they gave the Buffalo Bills a last-minute battle and lost by a score of 34-31 in Super Wild Card Weekend on Sunday, however, what remains in the infamous contemporary history of a team not winning the Super Bowl in nearly half a century.
Forty-nine years ago, on Jan. 13, 1974, Miami defeated the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 to win its second consecutive Super Bowl and three straight Vince Lombardi Trophy contests to establish itself as the best team of the first half of the 1970s.
What is Dan Marino's curse?
January 15, 2023 marks another championship-less season for Miami but the crisis is much broader than that and involves arguably the greatest player to ever wear that jersey, legendary quarterback Dan Marino.
Marino was selected in the 1983 Draft for head coach Don Shula's team and shined for 17 seasons in the NFL until 1999, year in which he said goodbye being the all-time leader in the NFL in many of the most important statistical categories in the NFL, however, he could never be crowned, being considered the best quarterback since the merger that never lifted the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
But the curse of Dan Marino continues to this day and goes beyond championships, since in the aforementioned 1999 season, Miami won its last playoff game as a visitor, which was also the last victory of the University of Pittsburgh graduate in his glorious career. On January 9, 2000, the Dolphins defeated the Seattle Seahawks at the now defunct Kingdome by a score of 20-17.
The sad end of Dan Marino's career
A week later, Miami went to the Jacksonville Jaguars and was destroyed 62-7 in the worst thrashing in AFC playoff history and it has been 13 years without a Miami road win in the postseason.