The Miami Dolphins will spend more time on airplanes than most of the rest of the league in 2016, tallying the fourth most miles traveled next season. The Dolphins' away game schedules include three trips to west coast to visit the San Diego Chargers, Los Angeles Rams, and Seattle Seahawks, all of which add at least 2,200 miles to the total distance traveled.
Miami could choose to stay on the west coast between the Chargers and Rams games, which are scheduled for Weeks 10 and 11 respectively, as a way to lessen the travel time.
Miami will travel approximately 25,336 miles this year, with trips to the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens, New York Jets, New England Patriots, and Buffalo Bills in addition so the Seahawks, Rams, and Chargers. According to CBS Sports, that trails just the Rams (37,072 miles), Oakland Raiders (31,580 miles), and Seahawks (27,724 miles).
The Dolphins are an oddity in their division, being over 1,000 miles from any of the other three teams in the Jets (East Rutherford, New Jersey), Bills (Buffalo, New York), and Patriots (Foxboro,Massachusetts). That gives Miami an automatic 3,476 miles of travel every year as part of the division home-and-home series. In comparison, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who will travel the least number of miles this year, are just traveling 5,138 miles - meaning just the three division games for Miami accounts for 68 percent of Pittsburgh entire eight game away schedule.
CBS also calculated the number of 2,000+ mile travel trips for each team, reporting that over the 15 years span from 1997 to 2011, teams traveling 2,000+ miles for an away game won that game just 39.8 percent of the time, compared to 43 percent of the away games won if the travel if the travel is less than 1,000 miles. Last season, road teams were just 8-16 in games of 2,000+ miles of travel (the London games were excluded in this, since both teams had to travel over 2,000 miles). In games of 1,999 miles or less, teams were 109-120, meaning away teams won just 33.3 percent of the games in which they traveled at least 2,000 miles and 47.6 percent of the games in which they traveled less than 2,000 miles.
Miami has three such games this year, the three west coast trip games.
The Dolphins are usually one of the top traveling teams each year, in part because of the distance to the rest of the AFC East division, and in part because home is on the southern tip of Florida.
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