Snow, a hostile road crowd, and another cold-weather dud added up to the same outcome for Miami on Monday night, as the Dolphins’ 28-15 loss to the Steelers slammed the door on their playoff hopes. Tua Tagovailoa was once again asked whether the conditions beat him as much as the opponent, and he pushed back on the old narrative, insisting the temperature was not the deciding factor in a season-crushing defeat.
“I don't think the cold was a factor. It is what it is. We've got to go play football at the end of the day,” he said, per Joe Schad of the Palm Beach Post, after falling to 6-8 and officially out of the postseason race.
As fans tried to process another winter collapse, franchise legend Larry Csonka cut through the noise with the sharpest postgame review of all. The Hall of Famer took to social media and needed only five words to sum up Miami’s elimination:
“Well so much for that.” It was a shrug, a sigh, and a verdict wrapped into one, perfectly capturing how far the current team is from the standard set by the old Dolphins dynasty.
On the field, the numbers painted a familiar picture. Tagovailoa finished an efficient 22-of-28 for 253 yards and two late touchdowns, most of it coming after Pittsburgh had already seized control of the game.
Miami’s offense sputtered early, failed to generate explosives, and never found a reliable ground game to balance things out in the freezing Pittsburgh night.
Afterward, Tagovailoa didn’t point fingers anywhere but the mirror. As ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques relayed, the quarterback admitted he wasn’t satisfied with his preparation or leadership during the week and told reporters, “I feel like I let my guys down.”
The operational stuff, from timing to communication, never really settled in until it was too late.
So the Dolphins are headed for another January on the couch, left to sift through what went wrong yet again once the temperatures drop. Csonka’s five-word post might have sounded harsh, but it matched the moment: a proud franchise watching another season drift away in the cold, while its current quarterback insists the weather isn’t the problem and vows to fix what is.
