Expecting ESPN to show the Miami Dolphins respect is kinda like going to Walt Disney World and expecting to be able to go to the front of the line on every ride in the Magic Kingdom...it ain't gonna happen and if anyone is really that wrapped around the axle about their opinion, you really need to get a life. I've repeatedly expressed my concern over the Dolphins first 5 games due to the schedule and the travel involved. We could really be upside down on the .500 scale and have a hole to dig out of, but that certainly doesn't mean we're not a better team than last year. I'm kinda like Jarvis Landry when it comes to this sort of thing. Where was he ranked last year in the NFL's top 100? What did he do with that? The entire team needs to do the same thing in this regard. Use this as motivation to show ESPN and the rest of these so called sports reporters they have no idea what in the hell they're talking about.
'60 - '77 there were only 14 games in the regular season. Something to keep in mind for the older coaches listed.
Yup.. but let's be precise here. The number of games in a season doesn't have any influence on win percentage over a career, so the difficulty of winning 10+ games in a 16 game season argument doesn't need to be modified. But you're right about the difficulty of improving by say +4 wins from season 1 to season 2 being different in a 14-game season than in a 16-game season. For those interested in the math, you can use the binomial theorem to calculate the probability of getting X wins in N games for any given win%. You have to use the binomial theorem for every possible value of X (0 wins to 10 wins for a 14-game season, and 0 wins to 12 wins for a 16-game season), calculate the probability of first having X wins, then X+4 wins (so you multiply those probabilities) and then sum over all possible values of X. You get different results for different win%, but if win% is like with Don Shula at 67.7% you can calculate that the probability of increasing win totals by 4 from one season to the next is 4.42% if you have a 14-game season while it's 4.86% for a 16-game season. So for Don Shula it was 9% harder to increase his win totals by +4 than if he had to do it during a 16-game season.
