Jakeem Grant, have I told you lately that I love you? He might be the 6th round pick of the century! That opening line came to me with about 5 minutes left in the game and I was determined to use it...Grant is sensational. But then the Raiders marched down the field, threatening to take the lead, and our man Howard gets YET ANOTHER pick in the endzone with the game on the line. Howard is undoubtedly the player of the game. And then here comes Albert Wilson, faking a little misdirection and going to the house on a massive run. He was sensational this afternoon as well and heck, he's the most efficient QB in the league with one pass and one TD- yeah baby! Wilson has to be the MVP, doesn't he? You could easily make a case for Stills to be the game's MVP as well. Or how about Kiko...leading the team in tackles again? There's just too many play makers to make a fair decision. PS- Grant was about 10 yards behind Wilson on that final TD, on the opposite side of the field, and he caught his butt around the 40 yard line. I think we finally got the heads-up race everyone wanted in mini-camp and my boy Grant won by a decent margin! Here's an official stat for you guys- Miami scored 28 points on four drives that took just over 4 total minutes. If that's not an explosive offense then I don't know what is! It's just all that stuff in-between that masks how ridiculously powerful we are on offense. I'm not going to get into a lot of positional stuff this week because let's face it, the Raiders came out and punched us in the mouth. They completely shut down our run game, bulldozed us with Lynch and played a very physical game. We desperately missed Jones this week and a lot of defenders got banged up over the course of the game. Give the Raiders credit- they came for a war and played excellent for four quarters. They just couldn't contain Wilson, Stills or Grant 100% of the time. It's almost unfair that we have two players that freaking dynamic....they're superstars! And once we unveil the Wildcat against NE next week, everyone around the league is going to be asking the same question- where the heck did those little speedsters come from? How is it remotely possible that those two can be our WR 4 and 5? They're on my team and I'm still bewildered.... Great win today Dol-fans! Today was the perfect example of "a win's a win". Nothing went right, the game-plan fell to pieces, and our play makers found WAYS to make huge differences. It wasn't just one person either- it was a team win from top to bottom. And that's what great teams do....they find a way to bite and scratch back into tough games to get the W. One final thought- we did open up the offense quite a bit when we were down by two scores. Tannehill was throwing very nice intermediate passes and the protection was excellent overall. I think Gase is determined to be as conservative as possible though since turnovers lose ballgames. I hated the runs on 1st and 20, for instance, but the strategy did pay off in the long run. Awesome team win!
Tackling issues again, too many glancing shots rather than bringing down the runner. Needs to be cleaned up. Pass defense was solid. Early pass-protection issues were resolved, so that was good to see. Run-game.... where was you at? Passing offense got rolling at times - and would like to have seen with the drive the refs stole. Still WAAAAY too many bubbles for my liking, not to mention runs on 3rd or 2nd and long. Still, some gutsy calls from Gase for trick/sneaky plays and one big run break out from Wilson made ALL the difference on attack. Resilient performance from the Dolphins. Game ball to the whole D, but Xavien for those two picks. Offense carries the kit for the D all week long.
That drive the refs stole was insane; we made 2 first downs in 3 plays yet somehow still had to punt. I don't think either play was a penalty but the difference was that we're not sitting here crying that it's why we lost. I really wanted to bring it up in the initial post but then I thought, screw it...there's no reason to. The refs didn't get to rob us of anything thanks to Grant, Wilson and X-man.
That was shocking and only saved by two trick plays and a fantastic interception by Xavien Howard. But a win’s a win, and the mark of a great team is its ability to win ugly. To recover in the manner we did today will give everyone great confidence for next week's showdown with the patsies.
Umm, the Pats have won many close games like that the past few years- every team does in a close battle. I could care less who, what, where or why we win....as long as we win I'm loving it.
do we get an extra win for beating the refs? so we are actually 4-0 right? or did Gase tell them to be bad on purpose to get ready for next week?
Good point. I am guessing that Gase didn't want to reach into his bags of tricks until the Patriot game. However, since we really couldn't do anything until then, save that beautiful pass to Stills, he had no choice. I am glad he did though. I know the offense is struggling, but at least he is playing to win. More than I can say about other HC we have had, in the past, that played not to lose.
Well, now the Pats will have to spend extra time on some of these plays the Dolphins broke out today. Hopefully that will open up the running game and play action a little more.
You could tell the Raiders spent all week with a chip on their shoulder determined to clean up their run defense...and they honestly executed their game-plan nicely. Folks are upset we struggled on offense but to me, that makes the win even more impressive. They shut down our game plan and still lost....that's a rare thing in the NFL. That also says though that we haven't showed enough on film. I don't know if you caught it, but one announcer said, "How is Miami selling the play action so well when they haven't been able to run the football at all today?" I think that's the story of the game- they were ultra-focused on our run game and didn't see Grant/Stills/Wilson coming. Plain and simple, the Pats can't shut down Stills, Parker, Grant, Wilson and Drake/Gore. I don't think any team can. So it's really a "pick your poison" type of scenario since we have so many ways to win. I'm guessing Drake will have a big day next Sunday and that only opens up the play action even more.
Win is a win, but man Gase’s offensive style to start games is hard to stomach. I hope I never see another 3 yd pass on 3rd and 9. I’ll give him credit once he gets going, he has a knack for big plays and he’s stacked this O with explosive speed and YAC weapons. I do wonder if we’ll be able to sustain it and produce consistently week after week, though. And my lord, Alonso did force a fumble last week, but he’s a total liability in coverage and tackles 5-6 yards down field may pad the stat sheet, but shouldn’t bowl anyone over. Not sure where all this Kiko fawning is coming from. Thank goodness teams don’t have the good sense to stop testing X. If we’re lucky, our secondary and Dline could really carry our boom bust offensive style. 3-0 is always welcome and more than anything, winning games against inferior opponents is a great sign of a culture change. Playoff teams take care of business and get the W’s where they can/should.
And boy what a difference that goal line stand on 4th and 1 made. Down 14-0 in the 1st quarter would have sucked the life out of the place.
Alonzo forced two fumbles last week...we only recovered one though. The guy is playing super fast and making a lot of big hits after other people try arm/shoulder tackles. He is weak in pass coverage but he's thumping so many people out there, it's impossible to take him off the field. Heck, he stripped Lynch today right as the whistle blew....he just never stops competing.
As someone that has very anti-Kiko, I have been very happy with his play this year. It has been impressive. He has his moments where he gets caught in the wrong lane, but for the most part hes been pretty damn solid. Lynch doesn't stop moving forward. And they held him in check pretty well today.
Lynch couldn’t keep going. He ran so hard the 1st 3 quarters he had nothing left at the end of the game. In critical plays he was sucking wind on the sideline.
I noticed that too...he fell to the ground late in the fourth after a short run. You have to hand it to him though, if he touched the ball he ran like a maniac. I cracked up when the announcer said that Fitz got "Beast-moded".
Due to "responsibilities" of being an "adult", I was only able to watch the first half of the game. I watched the first half of the game thinking that the Dolphins did not deserve to win. They were playing bad and stupid. Now that they won and I have watched the highlights, I have to say, "GO DOLPHINS!?!?! WAY TO WIN PLAYING DUMB AND STUPID!!!" Big plays from fast players are something I was expecting this season. That gives Dolphins a lot of leeway when you have a player that can take it to the house at any point of the game. They have 3 legit take it to the house at any time weapons on the team. It is fun to watch. Hopefully, they can clean some of that stuff up. I would love to see Miami just dominate a team and stop making me worry so much.
That's what having speedy playmakers making plays can do. Our offense was so limited with Limited Landry being the focal point and Smokin' Jay just happy to dump it off to him every other play. It's to have guys who can put the ball in the end zone like we have and pull a win out of the magic hat despite something like the run game getting utterly shut down.
From all my years of watching football, I know the first few games of the season are generally vanilla offensively, unless of course you have an established superstar like Marino, Sanders, Peterson, Brady or Favre. Then the playbook tends to open up. Miami’s offense has been a bit vanilla save the two truck plays that resulted in touchdowns for the Dolphins. I hope that we’re able to expand on our offense but like many of you, I do get concerned with the dink and dunk short passes. Defensively we’re playing quite well. Had Hayes not injured his knee and Spence not been ejected, we would have been able to rotate the DT to keep our line fresh. As a result of those two, Oakland was able to run the ball effectively against us. Going into today’s game, there were 7 teams that were 2-0. Now there’s only 4 (Tampa has yet to play). History has shown that teams who start 3-0 have a 73.9% chance of making the playoffs. The seas still has a long way to go but thus far, we’re on our way to a winning season. Great job Miami. Way to will a win.
When they made that comment about the PA, I immediately thought of cbrad and others who have shown on here that PA is NOT dependent on any actual yards gained on the ground.
Landry? Who's this person you speak of? I don't remember having anyone named Landry on the roster this season. Oh wait....was that the guy that all the experts said we couldn't win without? I do remember that guy! His new team is 1-1-1 on the season and not doing anything too impressive. I sure do miss that guy punching opponents and celebrating every 2-yard catch!
I think this was a game that we should have dominated. Penalties were the biggest killer today on both sides. I think if we can keep those to a minimum we'll be able to compete with any team in the league. This thing is, we're winning ugly...but we're winning, and 3-0 feels pretty damn good. I am writing next week in Foxboro off as a loss, but if we can somehow find a way to go up there and beat them along with causing a colossal meltdown in the sports media world....Our first month of football will be perfect. Imagine the knee jerks and hot takes! I mean....it'll be bad tomorrow as it is, but I'm fairly certain the narrative will be spun around. It'll be blown up to where "The Pats are pissed!" "Brady out for blood after poor performance in Detroit!"....Imagine us pulling out a win up there. It would be awesome to see. Gonna need to run the ball for that to happen.
I thought we would lose this game. Perfect set up game with new England next week. Next week expect tons of new plays that were shelved this week. Fantastic job though by the team. When you win these types of games you usually make the playoffs. We are 3-0 and up two games on the pasties and we haven't even jelled yet as a team. Our linebackers are still learning the game and our offensive line is still learning to be a unit. Tannehil is still shaking off the rust and getting his timing down with his tqo new receivers. We will be better as we go forward but what's cool is were pretty ****ing good now
Gase said we had a lot of guys who got injured and didn't come back in the game. I know Chase Allen had an ankle, and Branch a knee, but I am not sure who else was injured.
Hayes injured his knee on a sack. The way he reacted - it looked bad. Sort of stretched and twisted it as he collapsed on Carr. AJ Derby injured his ankle but came back on later I think - or he was at least sighted on the sideline. Branch hurt his knee also, I think. Spence just got himself ejected. I think that was all the others.
The greatest part about Sunday's win was the team's ability to overcome adversity having lost two main D-lineman in the game and were already without Reshad. For a moment it looked as if the Raiders were just going to bludgeon them with Lynch all game.
Albert Wilson was a great pick up and Jakeem was just a great draft pick. I want to see Minkah, Gesicki, and Raekwon play better. I want to see Amendola for the winning TD against Pats. Would be hilarious, some vengeance.
Wilson is being given his chance to shine and he's taking it! He is so much more of a dynamic player than Landry ever was.
The amount of disrespect Tannehill has gotten from even his own fan base over the years with mostly an incompetent H.C, reveals how truly stupid some people are (many on this site) when it comes to NFL football.
Even though it wasn’t pretty you have to impressed with the way we’re winning games. We were pretty much robbed of some points based on horrible officiating and a couple of miscues. Previous Dolphins teams wouldn’t have been able to overcome that and this one did.
LOL, was he? I thought we had 2 fifth rounders and he was the 2nd one. I checked and you're 100% right....which does make it even sweeter!
Everyone is talking about the speed on offense, what about the D? Jerome Baker tracked down Nelson from 10 yds behind to save a TD. Looked like some 4.4 speed running down a WR in the open field