Dave Hyde: Something to warm up to: The Dolphins lost their weather advantage at No. 12 this season

For a brief, hot moment, the Miami Dolphins will be in their historic element in Sunday’s home opener. The projected temperature on the field: about 100 degrees.

Just the way they want it. The climatic impact of the subtropics in September and October on opponents has historically been the Dolphins’ 12th man, the “greatest underrated home-field advantage in sports,” as former New York Jets and Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan calls it.

But the NFL chose the Dolphins’ most suitable opponent in neighboring Jacksonville, Florida, for Sunday, so this opener was the Dolphins’ only 1 p.m. home game until late October.

The popular saying goes that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. The NFL did something about it this year when it revised the calendar like Al Roker. They made the Dolphins suffer the biggest weather change in team history.

Four potential games up north in winter weather, when the Dolphins didn’t play a single one in temperatures below 50 degrees in the regular season last year? And just this sauna-style opener and another against Arizona, in favorable weather conditions, just before Halloween, when they went 4-0 and outscored their opponents 174-74 in 1 p.m. home games last September and October?

Part of this change is because the Dolphins are a prime-time TV attraction this season (their second and third home games are on Thursday and Monday nights). Part of it is because a common complaint from Dolphins fans is the melting heat (one reason the stadium marquee was built). And…

“It happens from time to time,” one NFL official said of health and competitiveness concerns stemming from the Hard Rock Stadium’s roof design, which keeps Dolphins players in the shade and opponents in the sun.

How could it not? Buffalo pulled 13 dehydrated players from the game two years ago in a 21-19 Dolphins victory. Receiver Stefon Diggs said he had “cramps all over my body — hamstrings, quads, arms, stomach, everywhere.”

“I don’t think that team was prepared for that,” said Dolphins safety Jordan Poyer, then with Buffalo.

New England coach Bill Belichick flew his team to South Florida four days early to get acclimated before the 2022 opener. And lost. Green Bay also got there early, in September 1991, and not only lost, but lost when Green Bay quarterback Don Majkowski fumbled in his end zone and the Dolphins recovered it for a touchdown.

“My hands were so wet with sweat that I couldn’t hold the ball,” Makowski said.

The Dolphins’ history can be related to these kinds of stories. Pittsburgh coach Chuck Noll used to say that Don Shula wanted to schedule the Dolphins’ eight regular-season games on the first eight Sundays of the season and play them at 1:00 p.m. in their white home uniforms against their dark-uniformed opponents.

“Noll said then that Shula would run the two-minute offense in the first quarter and wear down the defense by half,” said Mike Westhoff, the Dolphins’ longtime special teams coach now in Denver. “There’s some truth to that.

“I remember a game against Minnesota. They were wearing purple, we were wearing white, and Marino was in charge of the offense for two minutes in the first half, and they were done.”

“It might be uncomfortable for us,” guard Bob Kuechenberg said of the heat, “but it will kill them.”

It wasn’t just the Dolphins. Just before kickoff during his days at the University of Miami in the 1980s, Jimmy Johnson had the public address announcer broadcast the temperature in the Orange Bowl and the humidity in the 90s. It didn’t matter if that was the actual humidity. He wanted that overheated seed planted before any opponent who was listening.

For all the talk about the Dolphins playing in cold weather, Poyer shared the thoughts of most players, saying, “I’ve always thought it’s harder to play in the heat than the cold, especially if you’re not used to it.”

“I think as you go through training camp and you get used to this heat, for me it’s definitely a bigger advantage than if you were playing in the cold. There are ways I like to play in the cold to stay warm. When you play in the heat, you can’t escape it. It’s going to be hot all the time.”

The Dolphins are 6-1 in Mike McDaniel’s two years in the scorching heat of 1 p.m. September and October games. Sunday’s opener against Jacksonville and Oct. 27’s opener against Arizona don’t have an edge that the Weather Channel can see.

South Florida style football fever. This season is different.

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