You may not have noticed, but the 10th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football month came and went . . . and I didn't mention the Miami Dolphins once. That's because they suck. In fact, they suck so badly, the NFL has kicked them out of the country.

This Sunday, the 1-2 Dolphins play their Week 4 game against the 2-1 New York Jets in London. The game will be televised live in the USA at 9:30AM Eastern. Believe it or not, I value my sleep more than I value the opportunity to watch two terrible football teams play a shitty game of football.

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only 2007 when the Dolphins played in the first ever regular-season NFL game played on international soil. To promote that game, the NFL made a 26-feet tall animatronic of defensive end Jason Taylor. I'm so glad they don't do that anymore. Whose crotch would a 26-feet tall Ndamukong Suh find to step on?

Dolphins' ownership must like the damp English climate. Exactly one year ago, the 1-2 Dolphins played their fourth game of the season in London and won big against an inept 0-4 Oakland Raiders. Maybe, like last year, a win in this game will propel the Dolphins to another 8-8 season — their third in three years!

History may be doomed to repeat itself, but that doesn't mean I have to pay attention. Like I said, I'll be sleeping in on Sunday.

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While browsing the internet to find the etymology for the neologism "trickeration" -- currently my least favorite word in the English language -- I discovered that Jason Taylor has announced that he will retire after Sunday's game. So the horrible 2011 season will claim one last player before it's all over.

Taylor will retire with the second most starts ever as a Miami Dolphin. If Taylor hadn't spent one season each with the Redskins and Jets, he'd need only 1 more season to pass Dan Marino's 242 games as a Dolphins' starter. Seeing as this is the year that the most significant of Marino's remaining passing records falls, it seems a missed opportunity not to eliminate his other records from the books. At the rate that the Dolphins discard their players these days, perhaps that's the Marino record that is truly unbeatable.

This is the fifth time I've blogged about Jason Taylor. It will probably be the last, if Taylor is smart enough to stay away from an organization that rewarded him with a trade to the Redskins just 1 year after the NFL made Taylor into a 26-feet tall robot. It's a shame that Taylor can't ride off into the sunset with a championship ring, but that's what happens to modern Hall of Famers in Miami. It sucks, Jason, but you just sort of get used to it.

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Alright, Randy. You want it, you got it.

The Miami Dolphins are currently 0-7, staring down the barrel of a potentially win-less season. The remaining schedule is, in a single word, difficult. Some say the silver lining of the second-worst season in franchise history is the opportunity to draft first in the 2012 NFL Draft. The media calls this phenomenon "Suck 4 Luck" in honor of apparent first-overall pick Andrew Luck.

The Dolphins were terrible in 2007, too. That year the team narrowly avoided becoming the worst team in NFL history in their third-from-last game of the season by beating the hapless 4-9 Baltimore Ravens. The team had the first pick in the following year's draft and used it to select Offensive Tackle Jake Long. Long is pretty good, but is hardly a single-handed game-changer. In 2007, no one said the Dolphins should "Suck 4 Long," but certainly the team did (and still does).

Just for the record, Andrew Luck isn't a senior. He was projected as the number one overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, should he have chosen to leave college, but he didn't. Another year later, and he's still the best quarterback in college sports. Will he go pro? Maybe. But why would he want to play for the Miami Dolphins? I wouldn't.

There are currently 7 players on the 2011 Miami Dolphins roster who were on the 2007 Miami Dolphins team that finished the season 1-15. One of those players is Jason Taylor. Said Taylor to the Miami Sun-Sentinel:

"You do your best to ignore it, but sure, there's an elephant in the room, and you have to realize you have nothing to do with it. You can't control it. The only thing you can do to control it is play well and win games. It's something that's hanging out there, and people are going to talk about it because people love to talk."

I understand and share your frustration, Jason, but we would rather win than talk. We be talking about "it" at all if you would actually win a few games. Or even a game. If you want us, the fans, to stop calling for the head of the coach, try winning for a change.

The Miami Dolphins have 20 individuals listed as coaches on the official team website, and none of them appear to be doing a very good job. One of those 20 coaches is the Head Coach's son, Tony Sparano, Jr. There can't be any nepotism involved in his position: unlike the other coaches, Jr. seems to be living up to his job title, "Offensive Quality Control," because the team is very offensive right now.

The problem here is that either the team doesn't have players good enough to compete or the team doesn't have coaches good enough to prepare the players to compete. The solution to both of those problems lies in the front office, which holds the purse strings and makes the tough decisions. Since buying the team in 2008 from a desperate-to-sell Wayne Huizenga, the Dolphins majority owner Stephen Ross has demonstrated a management style of paying ridiculous salaries to players and coaches for which the adjective "mediocre" is too kind. I'm sure that style is what made him the billionaire he is today.

It's past time for someone to do something to fix this season. Like the 2007 season, this one is already in the tank. But it sure would be nice if we could look forward to something next year other than the prospect of letting our career-destroying coaches get their hands on another potentially franchise-defining player. That just plain sucks.

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So DC Comics has turned Batman into a gun-toting thug, and the Georgia Bulldogs have started this season off with the same dismal performance we've come to expect from Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo. Could Batman and Football Month get worse? In a word: yes.

The Miami Dolphins will kick off the 2011 season a week from today against the New England Patriots. Traditionally, the Dolphins have held their own against the Patriots. However, this year things look bleak. To sum up the Miami offseason:

• Head coach Tony Sparano was unofficially fired then re-hired with a raise when team owner Stephen Ross couldn't convince his intended replacement to come to Miami.
• Both running backs from last year were not offered contracts to return to the team. The two backs were drafted one and two overall in different NFL drafts, but both were considered expendable by the Dolphins who instead plan to start an untested rookie drafted 62nd overall this year.
• The Dolphins' starting quarterback, Chad Henne, is so bad that the league's own media arm, NFL.com, recommends that you not take him in your fantasy draft unless 25 other starting quarterbacks -- or 168 other players -- have already been taken.
• A few months ago, the Dolphin's best receiver was stabbed by his wife and then publicly revealed he has mental illness. It begins to become obvious why Denver was willing to trade their star receiver who owns several NFL game receiving records, none of which have been set as a Dolphin.

I'd like to think up a list for the positives as we head into the season, but the only thing that comes to mind is the Dolphins signed Jason Taylor to a one-year deal. I like Taylor, but he has played only sporadically the past two years, and its unlikely he will make a significant addition on the field. Still, it's good to have at least one player to cheer for this year, because it's going to be a long, long season.

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Update to yesterday's post: the Dolphins have just given an unspecified contract extension to General Manger Jeff Ireland. Ireland is being credited with finding such Pro-Bowl talent as Jake Long and Cameron Wake. Never mind that Long was the obvious first choice in the 2008 NFL Draft by whichever team was (un)lucky enough to have it, or that Wake chose Miami after interest from half the league. And Ireland was also among the team decision makers who forced out Jason Taylor. The Dolphins may look talented on paper, but that hasn't translated to success on the field.

This isn't really a case of "what have you done for us lately," but "what have you done for us, period?" Is the right approach really to keep throwing money at people who haven't ever really produced? After two years of 7-9 finishes and one post-season appearance in 9 years, maybe it's time to let the staff start getting a little uncomfortable. There is no shortage of other guys waiting for the job who are willing to work harder and take less money for the opportunity to prove themselves better.

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Eddie Murphy's giant head has been touring America promoting the star's latest flop movie, Meet Dave. It's a pretty good looking sculpture of the star of The Adventures of Pluto Nash and The Haunted Mansion, as it lacks any pores or blemishes, unlike the real Murphy. Lemuel Gulliver pointed out that from his diminutive point of view, the Brobdingnagians had terrible skin with seemingly gigantic pores, and the microscopic vermin that lived on them were plainly visible to him. No doubt Eddie Murphy, one of the highest grossing stars in the world thanks to such films as Metro and Holy Man, would never suffer the indignity of appearing as something other than perfect.

Unfortunately, this reproduction lacks the animation of an audio-animatronic Jason Taylor or a marionette of the Royal de Luxe. You'd think an actor animated enough to play every role possible in each movie in which he appears would be a perfect opportunity to create a larger-than-life animated prop. But then Hollywood never does anything all-the-way when half-assed will do just as well. In fact, this statue of Life and I Spy star Eddie Murphy has more in common with the statue of the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota, than anything else: they're both big, colorful, and created just to sell me something.

(All kidding aside, the sculpture was created by a fellow named Jim McPherson at Gentle Giant Studios. He's posted more pictures similar to the one above here. Fantastic.)

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Just in time for a trip to London, defensive end Quentin Moses signed with the Miami Dolphins. Moses, a native of Athens, Georgia, played college ball for the University of Georgia (where he majored in -- I'm not kidding -- "Recreation and Leisure Studies") and was oft-bestowed lauded All-American honors. The highly-decorated collegian was the 65th pick overall and the highest draft pick of 2007 who did not make the cut for his drafting team, the Oakland Raiders, aka the 2006 Worst Team in the NFL. He has since been signed and released by the Arizona Cardinals, the All-Time Worst Team in the NFL. Now that he is on the roster for the team tied for the title of 2007 Worst Team in the NFL, I'm sure his fortunes will not improve.

Moses is a defensive end, one of the few positions that the Dolphins don't really need much help with. The team has now picked-up 5 defensive linemen in the past week. This is just another sign that the Dolphins are looking for young, inexpensive talent to replace their few remaining stars. In this case, Jason Taylor. Moses is made in the same mold as Taylor, and many around the League think he could mature into a great player with proper training and patience, two things he won't likely be getting in Miami, if recent history is any guide.

As for Taylor, despite being talented and popular enough to be the model for a giant robot stalking the streets of London, he's not good enough to remain a Dolphin. Rumors circulate that Taylor will be traded in the off-season to open up more room for young talent. It's good to know that's how the Dolphins these days reward their most talented and fan-favorite players: ship them off to the highest bidder. Taylor was publicly mulling over retirement after last season. I don't image that he'll have much incentive to stay in the League now. So no matter how it plays out, the Dolphins lose: either we trade Jason Taylor and lose a still-productive star, or Taylor, insulted by the Dolphins' trade-talks retires (a la Jake Plummer) and we lose the trade value. After the way the team mishandled the Daunte Culpepper situation last year, why should we expect any better treatment for Taylor?

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As I mentioned 2 days ago, the Miami Dolphins will be playing the New York Giants in London this weekend. I just took a look at NFLLondon2007.com, the official website of the game. The first three of six players highlighted to introduce the Dolphins to an unfamiliar British crowd are, in order, Trent Green, Ronnie Brown, and Chris Chambers, none of whom will be playing for the Dolphins come Sunday. (Green and Brown are out for the season with injuries and Chambers was traded last week.) Number four on the list is Ted Ginn, Jr, who has only 6 catches (and zero touchdowns) through the first seven weeks of the season. Wait'll they get a load of us!

On the upside, the 5th name on the list is Jason Taylor, the 2006 NFL Defensive Player of the Year and NFL's all-time leader in touchdowns scored by a defensive lineman. To promote the game in London, the NFL has constructed a 26-feet tall animatronic Jason Taylor -- "the worlds largest ever animatronic human" -- dubbed "Big JT." It looks TOTALLY BADASS. No doubt it will be shown on TV this weekend. You can see a brief video of Big JT in action on NFLUK.com. (Note that in the video, when asked to predict the game's winning team, Christian Slater, star of Kuffs, says, "Well, I grew up in New York so, uh, I've always been, uh, uh, a huge Giants and Jets fan, so, uh, I'm just excited to be here." Eloquent. And pointless, just like Slater's career.) The NFL's official pics are available in a slideshow at MiamiDolphins.com. If you'd prefer a longer, more boring video of the robot in action (but without Christian Slater), check out YouTube. Or, if you're into this sort of thing (as I am), check out the website of the SFX company that made the titan, Artem, LTD.

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