Last season, the Miami Dolphins shocked the NFL world by not only making the post-season, but winning the AFC East, yes, the same AFC East that the New England Patroits are apart of. What will the Dolphins do for an encore? Many figure that they’ll have a hard time repeating the results from a season ago and that’s understandable. The Dolphins introduced an offensive scheme that resembled something fresh out of college, the Wildcat. Usually when a scheme like that comes around, it takes defenses two weeks tops to adapt and shut it down. However, that did not happen with the Dolphins. Whenever defenses countered, the Dolphins introduced a new staple of the Wildcat, thus leaving defenses lost and speechless.

What kind of staples will the Miami Dolphins have added for the 2009-10 season? To be short, they drafted multi-treat quarterback Pat White from West Virgina in the second round of the NFL Draft. Not only is he a threat to break off big runs at any given time, he spent his senior season showing teams he is capable of throwing the deep ball and being accurate at it while doing so. Because of that, defenses will have a hard time keying in on Pat White, thus making the Wildcat offensive scheme even tougher to defend. Is this a new chapter in how NFL offenses will begin scheming and running plays? Or is just a one-hit-wonder sort of thing and it’ll die out as fast as the option offense did?

Are you old enough to remember the film the above song lyrics came from? It’s “Wildcats” — a 1986 movie about a ragtag team of football underachievers who get a new coach, add a little bit of trickery and hard work to their repertoire, and suddenly find themselves at the top of the heap. If that doesn’t describe the 2008 Miami Dolphins, I don’t know what does.

Coming off a 1-15 fiasco in 2007, the team fired Cam Cameron and brought in unproven Tony Sparano. After an 0-2 start, it looked like the team was headed for another disastrous season, but then inspiration struck. Sparano instituted a new offensive formation with no quarterback. With running back Ronnie Brown taking direct snaps from the center, the team surprised the New England Patriots 38-13, with Brown running for four touchdowns. So effective was this new wrinkle that several teams around the league quickly incorporated their own versions into their offensive schemes. The name of the formation? The Wildcat, of course. Miami ended up winning nine of its last 10 games and won the AFC East with an 11-5 record. Goldie Hawn would have been proud.

Of course, that’s the glossy, romanticized view of this team. The fact is, the Dolphins were not nearly as bad as their 1-15 record in 2007 would have you believe, and they weren’t nearly as good as their 11-5 record last season. Quarterback Chad Pennington came over from the Jets to manage the offense, and he did it better than anyone could have imagined, throwing only seven interceptions all season, helping to propel Miami to a turnover differential of plus-17, tops in the NFL. That’s why we think this team is due for a setback in 2009. There’s very little chance that this team will hold on to the ball as well as it did last season.

If you saw the playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, in which Pennington threw four picks and the Dolphins were soundly thrashed 27-9, you saw a sneak preview of what this season holds for the Dolphins on a much more regular basis. The receiving corps on this team is very average, and with so many Wildcat imitators around the league, the one weapon that made the team unique last season won’t be so unfamiliar to opposing defenses. That’s not to say this team can’t contend for a playoff spot, but with Tom Brady back in New England and Terrell Owens now with the Buffalo Bills, and with two rookie defensive backs joining a unit that finished 25th in the league against the pass, we’ll be surprised if the Dolphins do any better than 9-7.

Article via ESPN, written by A.J. Mass – http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/football/ffl/story?page=nfldk2k9dolphinscamppreview