Pick the play when the Miami Dolphins’ future seemed brightest this era, and you’d pick that first play two Decembers ago in San Francisco. Coach Mike McDaniel was on a five-game win streak and gut-guessed his mentor,

Mike McDaniel and his Miami Dolphins passed an essential test Sunday. They tried. Hard. More important than their Week 16 result — a 29-17 victory over the wounded San Francisco 49ers — the Dolphins showed that they weren’t mailing it in after their season-wrecking loss to the Houston Texans the Sunday before.