The Miami Dolphins fill in the final blank on their regular season Sunday night, and it’s a good time to return to the first question posed before their first game:

If not this year, then what year?

If not this five-years-in-the-making team, then what team?

If the Dolphins on Sunday don’t steady the ship, save the Republic, write the good ending by beating the Buffalo Bills to grab some home-field turf and help their chances for a good playoff run, then when will they?

A loss Sunday isn’t the end of the season. But the realistic fear is you could see if from Sunday night the following week in Kansas City against the Chiefs. Even that idea has posed a worrisome, would-you-rather dilemma for some fans about Sunday’s game.

Would you rather: Beat Buffalo, claim the AFC’s second playoff seed and probably run it back next week in the playoffs against Buffalo at Hard Rock Stadium; or lose to Buffalo, get the sixth playoff seed and play in Kansas City next week?

That’s a no-brainer, right?

Win, second seed and stay at home not just for the playoff opener but two playoff games (or three, if Baltimore loses).

Playing at home is the starting point of so much good as the Dolphins’ 7-1 record at Hard Rock (and 4-4 on the road) shows. That’s the idea on a Sunday against Buffalo that should breathe some good life back into this season, to give pause to the idea that these Dolphins are a few dimensions and healthy bodies short.

Remember, the Dolphins talked after last season about being unlucky with injury. All the outside talk this past week is they’re again unlucky with injury. But what if something else is at work, too? What if they built too much with bodies that came with a lot of wear and tear?

Do you expect them to be healthier next season with another year of mileage? Do you also see the looming contract decisions to be made? And the lack of young players from the past two drafts?

Again: If not this year, then what year? This was the stipulated intersection where five years of organizational sacrifice and alchemy would create a team ready to make a playoff run.

You know the 12-step process over those years: Tanking games, trading talent, collecting draft picks, not spending money, suffering big, developing youth, abruptly changing course, trading draft picks, spending money, accumulating veterans, building a team and …

Winning.

That final step remains the idea, too. Everything sits before these Dolphins if you can step past the moaning about injuries and replays of last week’s embarrassment in Baltimore.

Two Sundays ago, they beat Dallas and were Super Bowl contenders. Last Sunday they were blown out and suddenly left on the side of the road.

If everything can switch that quickly, it can switch back just as quickly with a win on Sunday. Buffalo is now a 2 1/2-point favorite for some reason. It’s being made into something it isn’t after four consecutive wins, the last two being squeakers against duds like New England and the Los Angeles Chargers.

Buffalo re-built the opposite way of the Dolphins. No tanking. No suffering. Using smarts to draft and develop quarterback Josh Allen. And winning enough to make the playoffs the past four years, including an AFC Championship heartbreaker.

So they know big games. The Dolphins? Coach Mike McDaniel went deep on that idea this past week.

“The only way to handle that is — when they say, ‘It’s just another game,’ it’s because it is a normal football game,” he said. “But if you take enough intentionality and create pressure and expectations for yourself from the beginning of training camp and approach each and every practice and each and every game with full ambition, focus and treating every game as though you treat a playoff game, then all games are the same.”

How can you not like McDaniel’s verbose answers? How can you not enjoy his offense when so many in the previous two decades were as monotonous as 11 men mowing grass? How can you not hope his fun ways work for years to come?

It’s about winning, though. Just that. Everyone knows that. Five years were put into this season’s finish. A win Sunday sets up the chance for a good playoff run. A loss sets up the chance for a tough day in Kansas City.

The question before the first game only adds volume before the 17th game:

If they don’t win this year, then what year?