Like the hot girl you meet and may never date, just thinking about the possibilities of Andrew Luck as a Dolphin are exciting. Even if this team somehow screws it up, by winning one more game then they should.

SCOTT JACOBS

Suck for Luck is no longer a fun phrase that rhymes.

It’s a cry for help.  From teams deep in the bowels of the NFL’s cellars with no legitimate hope of winning anything — nevermind a few games (suspects this fan) — fans from coast to coast are crying out Luck’s name like he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ himself (and before I roll on, let me note that this article has nothing to do with religion).

Andrew Luck is more than just a great college player being heralded as the greatest college QB prospect since Peyton Manning.  He’s hope.  Suck for Luck is that message in a bottle that you send down the river, and hope that come late December, a number 1 pick is returned.  Luck may be a bust. Luck may very well be over-rated.  Luck may be the product of social media hype not thrust upon any QB since we began this so called ‘instant information age.’

But once again, Luck is potential.  Luck is a reason to watch.  Luck is the reason you openly bite your tongue, swallow your pride, and root for your atrocious going-nowhere in a hurry, loser of a franchise team, to tank. Luck is the reason that you as a fan do the ultimate fan sin.  Whatever it takes, even if that includes rooting for your most hated rivals, you do it.

Again, Luck may be a product of a West Coast offense in a league that plays little defense.  Or he may be the next NFL superstar.  Luck may be too smart and too wise to bleed football the way some other prospects do.  Or he may be such a quick study that within 2 years he’s tormenting the league with his accuracy and strong arm.

There is no such thing as a sure-thing.  But there is such a thing as sure-hope.

Luck brings that. Hope. When things look bleak, and the tunnel is unlit, and you’re crawling through a foul smell for hundreds of yards, and you barely know which way is which, that’s when you need hope.  When your team is so bad that they border on unwatchable, that’s when you need Luck.

When it’s so abundantly clear that your coach is a goner, your GM won’t be far behind, and you have few legitimate pieces to build upon, that’s when you need Luck.

The Miami Dolphins have started almost 20 QBs since Dan Marino retired, following a horrific 62-7 thrashing in Jacksonville in 2009.  It ended the Jimmy Johnson era. It led to a QB carousel that is spinning 100 miles an hour nearly 12 years later.  It set in motion the most unstable franchise this side of the Bengals and Raiders.

But most importantly, it laid the ground-work for what has evolved into the most unwatchable team in football.  Ladies and gentleman, your 2011 Miami Dolphins.

Here’s an analogy.  Sucking for Luck is like quitting your crappy job and giving up the bad pay check you have, because you have a possible chance at something much bigger.  It’s backing out of a stable, going nowhere position, and thrusting yourself into the wonderful albeit scary world of the unknown. It’s looking yourself in the mirror and saying ‘I can be more than this, I need to change my life around.’

That’s the Dolphins.  Bandaid upon bandaid, upon freaking bandaid, the Dolphins’ quick fixes, and their refusal to literally blow it all up, has paved the way for this: whatever this season is. Carolina is 1-5 but they’re exciting. Denver is 1-4 but they’re interesting. Minnesota is 1-5 but at least they’re talented.  Miami is 0-5 and my god, are they awful.

They’re the ‘mace yourself in the face so that you can’t watch them play offense’ awful.  They’re the laugh to stop crying, because it hurts less when they predictably flop, awful.  They’re the worst 3rd down team in the league. They’re one of the most boring teams in sports, and the local hockey team, the Panthers outscored them tonight. In hockey, 7-6.

In life we have to sacrifice, sometimes giving up in order to get. It’s a whacky strategy in many regards, but often times the system, whether it’s the government or the NFL, gives you more of a chance when you’ve hit rock bottom, than when you’re teetering on something wholly insignificant.

The Dolphins are in football purgatory. It’s nothing but white.  They’re in no mans land. They have no identity. They lack any thing resembling excitement. Their star receiver is an overpaid whackjob whose mind is so far out of line it’s hard to know where it is after tonight.

Andrew Luck doesn’t solve every woe. He doesn’t turn Miami into a Super Bowl contender over night.  What he does is he gives Miami a rebrand.  When a company needs an overhaul, they rebrand. Sometimes they change logos. Sometimes, they start over from the top.  Miami needs a new look. They need a star — a real star, not some washed-up never was-been — to draw fans out to the games.  They need hope. They need pizzazz, but the real pizzazz, not the kind manufactured from celebrities buying 1 percent into your team.

Miami needs playmakers. They need doers. They need talent. They need direction.  Shall I go on?

So damn it, if Miami needs to let this miserable season — one expected to be mediocre by many — swirl right down the drain. Damn it, if Miami needs to face the facts and look for Luck.  Miami’s schedule is ruthless the rest of the way, and there’s maybe 2 or 3 games they can win this year — starting with next weekend’s home game against Denver.

A game where Miami will roll out the special treatment to honor the 2009 Florida Gators — yes the Gators — before, get this, Tim Tebow’s first start of the season.  Maybe if Miami had a real team, and not cardboard cutouts of nothing, they could attract fans by, I don’t know, just showing up.

But that’s where things have gone for the Dolphins: a once proud franchise now toiling in NFL hell.  Thankfully, hope awaits if they continue to plummet.  It’s not exactly poetic stuff, but it’s reality.  One horrifically embarrassing year can change everything.

For Dolphins fans, that has to sound like a better plan. And a breath of fresh air on a franchise that just flat out stinks right now.

Photo: AP

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