Dolphins Fail

For fans who love big hits and fantastic passes...
But mostly the hits that put guys on their asses --
For fans who love stats and keep track of the fumblers
As well as the quarterback's glittering numblers --
For those who prefer being frozen to warm
And enjoy leaving parking lots caught in a swarm
Of hoarse, babbling buzzers like bees in a hive
As they try to decide who among them should drive...
For these fans and also for fans of a team
Still attempting to make of the season a dream
Just by making the playoffs — for that sort of fan,
There may be a reason to still have a plan
To watch lots of the games that are left to be played,
But I'm not like those fans, and to say I'm dismayed
Is to understate wildly the mood that I'm in,
For my passion is stories. The best ones begin
With the hope that we'll see something we've never seen,
Say, like, one team collapsing to 0-and-sixteen.
Oh, the Bucs, they were winless when they first began,
But they only played fourteen. In that humble span
They were perfectly bad. That cannot be denied...
But in this year's Miami we thought we had spied
A team so horrendous that it just might go
And lose all of their games, sixteen games in a row.
Nevermore can we hope that, for Baltimore stank,
And so it's the Ravens that we can all thank
For the fact that there's only one story remaining
Possessing the power of somehow sustaining
My in'trest in all of the sound and the fury
Of football's last weeks. Now, you'll see why I worry,
One first isn't much and two would have been great,
But for "almosts" and "might-have-beens" it is too late,
So I've put all the marbles on Belichick's Pats.
If that means I'm front running, I'll offer that that's
A defensible posture for someone like me
Who just wants to see something unlikely to be,
And though perfect's less funky than perfectly bad,
I guess as the season ends we should be glad
That there still is a chance for a heck of a story
Of flawlessness rising, a new kind of glory...
So what if the coach broke the rules? I say that's
A footnote, at worst, and I'll root for the Pats.