Open-Mic Night
The football comedians of Twitter had some real knee-slappers about Tyreek Hill getting traded to the Dolphins
Dilip Vishwanat
If your name is Rip Van Winkle and you’re just waking up in the woods with a beard down to your toes wondering if Britain won the war, we have news for you: Tyreek Hill is now a Miami Dolphin. On Wednesday afternoon, in arguably the biggest detonation of a bombshell-laden NFL offseason, the Kansas City Chiefs officially traded Tyreek Hill to Miami Dolphins in exchange for some serious brisket.
As soon as the deal was done, the Dolphins inked Hill to a massive $120-million ($72.2 million guaranteed) deal that not only made “Cheetah” the highest paid wide receiver in NFL history, but brought the Dolphins' spending in the previous 12 hours alone to over $200 million including the acquisition of free-agent offensive tackle Terron Armstead. In concert, the moves left no doubt that Miami has entered win-now mode, with sportsbooks around the nation slashing the team’s Super Bowl odds nearly in half, but you wouldn’t know it to read the reaction of Football Twitter ” of the internet, who turned grandma’s basement into a makeshift comedy club upon hearing the news.
Apparently gammie still has her 2018 calendars up. This sort of reaction from people who purport to know about football is lazier than full-serve gas sations. Most of these jokes (and plenty more Ctrl C/Vs of the same general sentiment) rely on a false equivalency between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins. The problem is the Dolphins have won 19 regular-season games the past two seasons. That's five more than the defending AFC champs, more than "America's Team," and six more than the Jets. Miami has also won 10 of the last 12 head-to-head meetings with the Jets dating back to 2015. We’re not saying the Dolphins, who dropped a hand grenade in their own foxhole when they fired Brian Flores in January, are a prestige organization, but they aren’t the Jets.
The second fallacy is that Tua Tagovailoa, who has done nothing but keep his nose clean and get dicked around by the Flores regime the past two seaons, is some noodle-armed invalid. There are the TuAnon freaks, sure, but they are outnumbered three-fold by the haters, most of whom are too young to remember Marino and haven’t watched a single snap of Dolphins football since Tannehill. The grainy Tim Tebow gifs sure are funny, but the truth is this: Tua had a better completion percentage, threw fewer interceptions (five fewer in five fewer starts), and posted an equal win-loss ratio to Justin Herbert—the guy who the Dolphins allegedly f—ked big time by not taking over Tua—in 2021. Is he the NFL’s new checkdown king? Yep, but so was a fella by the name of Tom Brady until a guy by the name of Randy Moss came along.
Is Tyreek Tua’s Randy? Probably not. Will all this blow up right in Chris Grier's face? Probably. But if you're on the internet shoveling cheap likes down your gullet to fill the void where meaningful human relationships should be, then the least you could do is a little reading first.
RELATED: All you left-handed weirdos out there will be thrilled to see this wild Tua Tagovailoa stat
All that said, Tua and the Fins weren’t the only casualties of Tyreek Hill’s blockbuster trade on Wednesday. A fella by the name of Jackson Mahomes also took a few body blows in the process.
In the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, now that’s funny.