The Truths:
The Miami Dolphins have played two “one-half” games the last two weeks. A “half-game” was good enough against the hapless New York Jets but a “half-game” was NOWHERE near good enough against the unspectacular New England Patriots. How they reached the Super Bowl last year just shows that lady luck and buffoonery still reign supreme in the NFL.
Zebras gone wild – Courtesy of Greek and Latin writers:
And let us not forget how the Patriots are the recipient of every close call, especially against
us. I literally think that on EVERY single non-procedural penalty, the refs call up to Goodell and Satan to ask permission to charge the Patriots with a penalty. I am not joking. A bunch of blind shamans from Mongolia would do a better job officiating. How in the name of God do the field refs rule the NE dude short and then go to commercial and then when we get back from the commercial we have a “Deux et Machina” moment where NE is GIVEN a first down AND Steve Ross is kicked in the groin to boot. For those of you who may not know “Deux et Machina” ….it is a Latin phrase written into plays/stories thousands of years ago to explain how a character can be in the Aegean Sea one moment and the very next scene the character is sitting on top of Mount Vesuvius. The term translates to God and Machine. It takes God and Machine to stop the Miami Dolphins.
And the networks and the NFL trot out Gene Steratore (remember he is the Phins major Zerba enemy) to say how stupid Dolphins’ fans are for even questioning the infinite wisdom of the NFL. In the offseason, I will rack my own brain and re-watch games where the Fins were completely ruined by the refs. I will try to write a treatise on this.
I HATE having to sound whiny about the officiating, but IT IS A NATIONWIDE STORY. Armando Salguero et al have discussed the garbage that masquerades as officiating.
Like D’Attaglia in the Godfather, NE is not our real enemy; just an annoyance. Buffalo is our Barzini!
On to the game itself: NE is NOT very much better than us. Don’t forget that. The announcers were fawning over the overrated Drake Maye. He isn’t that good. He throws a decent long ball but remember NE got the matchups they wanted. Not hard throws. He isn’t 1/100th the QB that Tom Brady was. Know this: it is 10,000 times harder to thread a 3rd and 18-yard deep-square-in under a withering pass rush (one of the routes that put Aikman and Irvin in the HOF) versus throwing a deep ball when he has 5 seconds to throw with very little pressure. Generally speaking, those throws aren’t there in the playoffs when it is freezing in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. This is one reason why the Phins haven’t won a playoff game, much less a road playoff game in 10,000 years since a dome playoff game against Seattle (going from memory). Yes, Seattle used to be in the AFC. Chuck Knox, Jim Zorn, Davie Krieg all come to mind.
Moving on, I want to give out a simple sign if your team is good or not good. What I am about to say doesn’t guarantee a Super Bowl or a playoff win but it tells you if you have a chance.
I didn’t see the sign – Not Ace of Base
The sign is simply this: if you can run the ball for 2 yards when the opposing KNOWS it is coming, you have a chance to be good. The reverse: can you stop a team from getting 2 yards when everyone knows they are going to run. That is the sign. If you remember with all those McDaniel teams, we would pop 30, 40 and 50 yards runs BUT when we tried to run a for two yards with Ollie Gordon, he was BLOWN UP in the back field. Pathetic! We could not get the two yards when the other team KNOWS it is coming.
I see improvement in this field with our OLINE. I see improvement in this team. There are so many good signs. EXCEPT special teams. Our kicker gets 1 pass. He used it up on the doink. He killed us on the bad miss. It didn’t cost us the game but imagine if it was close. Don’t forget, Borregales missed too and he kicked in the stadium for YEARS. Are we able to get a punt block or a kick return? And someone needs to look up Carlos Huerta (kicker for the Canes about 30 years ago). Huerta was/is the GREATEST ON-SIDE KICKER EVER. The Canes were losing to Univ of Michigan by 15 in the 4th qtr in 1988. After a Canes score, he drove the ball straight into the ground and the ball shot up very high and then it was a free-for-all ( I passed up a Ted Nugent reference here, so there! )……the Canes recovered and Huerta kicked the FG to win 31-30. But no, the Dolphins tried the dribble and it failed. Special teams COULD be to our advantage BUT NO, Sullivan and Hafley are settling for mediocrity.
BACK TO THE GAME
Back to improvements: Before we jump down the Phins throat let’s remember there were many games against Pats where we led in the first half and Belichick made his half-time improvements and we lost. This happened while Jacoby was their QB.
The way we lost to them yesterday is nothing new. Vrabel learned a lot from Belichick.
Did you notice that on first down, many of Ollie’s runs went for 0 or 1 yard? Then on second down he would get 6-8 yards, still good, but we did not wear them down. This is good news, NE actively had to respect our run game but they didn’t wear down. We had some manageable 3rd downs. On the flip side, we wore down while on defense. They found a weakness where the RB would seemingly head for the initial run read but then almost invariably cut back BEHIND the line and way from the initial run read. I haven’t looked at the film yet but that tells me the DEs and/or LBs (away from the ball) aren’t getting through and/or they are overcommitting aka racing to the ball but behind their own DL ( where the LBs are )not in the backfield (easier said than done). This will sound ludicrous based on our talent but back in the day, believe it or not, teams would run at Lawrence Taylor (LB Goat) so that they could try to get hats on him. If they ran away from him, he would simply run down the back from behind. He was virtually unblockable. We need to get that edge (who plays away from the ball to penetrate) A LITTLE( in the Goldilocks zone ) to take away the cutbacks that we saw yesterday. We don’t have that talent. Yet. Uche and Chop played decently but they have their limits. We all know TALENT always wins out. We are heading in the right direction, EXCEPT for special teams.
Malik played well: he made two really bad throws and if he only makes two bad throws every game, I can live with that. Who is out there in college (outside of Mestemaker who gives you a thrill? All those current QB dudes(Chambliss, Leavitt, etc. are system QBs from the sissy 7-on-7 schools…just like Maye).
The Pats made an obvious choice yesterday: funnel everything to the inside and set their DEs to keep outside to prevent the Malik runs. They dare us to run straight ahead and to throw. Their first half, we did. I have to watch the film but NE went to 9 on the intensity level and we simply didn’t match. Those little Malik runs weren’t there and we didn’t exploit the middle of the field like we should have.
In closing, NE is a good team, not great. We need to set the organizational sights on surpassing NE and eventually Buffalo and to be able to fight against a fully charged Baltimore(with Lamar?) and KC(I fear 10 more years of Mahomes). And then to be able to fight the LA Rams, Seattle, San Francisco and the Bears(this is the team that scares me long term because Williams is young and they are improving).
We shoot for the stars! Go Phins!
