MIAMI _ Not many in the real estate business feel better than 0-8. Drowning is epidemic _ subprime lenders in Red Sea bottom lines, developers in condo surpluses and lawsuits, real estate brokers in quicksand of falling prices and commissions, Fort Lauderdale home builder Levitt and Sons in bankruptcy.
Yet all of them can go to 7-Eleven and drown their sorrows in a Big Gulp in peace. The Dolphins? Not so much, although a win Sunday against Buffalo might help.
There's no hiding when you work for a major metropolitan area's most visible company; your physique is unusually large and/or chiseled from a muscular block; and practice is one of the few times you don't have the coolest car in the parking lot. When the accounting of how you compare to your peers is continuously available to all and that accounting is zero good weeks, eight bad ones, going out in public can be akin to being recently forced out Merrill Lynch CEO E. Stanley O'Neal at a surly stockholders meeting.
"I hear it all the time. Almost every day," said cornerback Travis Daniels, who went to high school at Hollywood South Broward and so has more friends, family and general familiarity around South Florida than most Dolphins.
"It's from everybody. They don't consider your feelings. They just get straight up on you," Daniels said. Although he admitted, "Nothing is too cold. Everything's pretty much like, `When are y'all going to win a game? What's the problem?' Stuff like that. Nothing you take to heart."
To deal with it, Daniels plays it off by immediately changing the subject.
"I don't answer them or anything," he said. " `What're you doing tonight? How was your day?' Every question, I come up with another question. `You go to the movies tonight? What'd you see?'''
Defensive end Matt Roth said, "I don't go out of the house much. I stay at the home. But I'll go into the bank, and some of the guys that I know that work there will say, `C'mon, man, what's wrong with you guys?!'''
Speaking of the bank, former Atlanta Falcons defensive end Tim Green wrote in his book, The Dark Side of the Game, that he scrunched down in the passenger seat as his wife went to the drive-thru to avoid "pity or disdain."
"The one year we had a good season and went to the playoffs, my name was good for the best table in the house, along with a complimentary bottle of wine," Green wrote. "During the down years, if they knew I was a player, they'd make me wait for an hour, then seat us next to the kitchen."
Back when the Dolphins were 0-5 in 2004, defensive end Jason Taylor joked all his cars were low on gas because he didn't want to deal with the questions he might run into if he went to the gas station.
"I can't let the next person dictate what I can or can't do," safety Jason Allen said. "Regardless of where my position is, at the end of the day, I'm a normal person. My heart pumps blood just like the next man."
In the continuous commentary, professional and amateur, that fills the airwaves, print space and modem lines these days, few Dolphins have been as maligned as Allen over the last two seasons. Still, he says he has had a relatively peaceful day-to-day life (it helps that he claims to ignore the media).
"People may say something under their breath or to someone else, but they don't necessarily come up to me and ask what's wrong," Allen said.
Defensive tackle Vonnie Holliday said, "You still have to live your life and you still have to find yourself being out and about. But there's probably some reluctance there."
Holliday, never one to duck a question from the media in the locker room, says he thinks of himself as a stand-up guy in public, too. He knows, however, he has to get himself ready to handle those who cross the line of decorous criticism.
Such as the Saturday before the Dolphins' loss to Cleveland, while Holliday was still out with a fractured ankle.
"I walked into a convenience store," Holliday said. "I'm not sure if the guy was trying to be a jerk or he really didn't know it was me because I walked in and I had my hat pulled down and had my earphones on. The first thing he said, was "Aw, what about those Dolphins, they're going to go up and get clobbered up in Cleveland tomorrow.' "
"For me as a player, being a competitive guy, a guy with a lot of ... ," Holliday paused. "It's tough to hear that. You want to lash out to that guy and say something. At the end of the day, you've got to mentally prepare yourself, knowing that situation may arise and you've got to walk away, which is really hard to do. You want to stand up for your guys."