I'm going through some stuff at home so unfortunately, I probably won't post as much the next month or so. But I did want to share my general thoughts real fast since I've been doing that here for a long time. Overall, the Dolphins played a fairly complete game today. The defense gave up some stuff I didn't fully expect, but they also forced several key turnovers and sealed the game. It's not last year's defense quite yet but wow, a few young players made it look close to that level at times. The offense didn't do a whole lot and if I'm being honest, Tua threw 4 or 5 lousy passes (2 or 3 that should have been picked). However, you could see the explosiveness in the offense when needed to really flip the game on its head. If this is week one, then I'm really excited to see what they look like in week 5, week, 9, and week 13. It was plain to see that we're loaded with talent and so many of those plays were inches from turning into big gains/scores. Those will come in the near future. Also, I loved the discipline on that last drive- we just ate up the 4th quarter. I counted three times that ball carriers slid and surrendered themselves in-bounds...Miami easily could have scored on that drive if needed. The score was 20-7 but I felt like we beat them a lot more solidly than that. Not going to do my personal call-outs like usual. Waddle looked great. Tyreek looked great and they put a monster on him...not all teams have that type of monster. That rookie corner in the rotation is a pure stud (Alohu? Something like that). All the RB's had moments where you could see potential just oozing. The offensive line, ehh, it's week one and I won't give up quite yet. They were slightly improved over how we finished last season, but still gave up too much. Tua did well evading pressure on a few near guaranteed sacks. I think some of his throws were off as well for the same reason, he was playing too fast because the trust isn't there yet. Anyway, that's all I have time for- we're 1-0 baby! I hope I have time to join some discussions over the week.
No summary of this game is complete without gloating over beating Belichick. 1. Belichick at New England without Brady now has a losing record 35-36. Belichick post-Brady is at 17-17. Biggest mistake of Belichick's career was getting rid of Brady, who lol won a SB without Belichick. Still happy about this! 2. Mac Jones isn't anywhere close to a great QB. No need for the rest of the AFC East or the AFC or NFL to worry. 3. NE has now lost 4 straight times to the Dolphins! OK.. aside from gloating over beating NE, big shoutout to McDaniel. That was his first game as HC and it looked like the team was ready. Our issues are talent at OL and QB, not so much the coach. Anyway, the real test comes in the next 3 weeks. Ravens, Bills and Bengals. That's where we'll see what this team is really made of and how good the game planning is. Enjoy the win for now. 1-0 feels a lot better than 0-1.
He could still turn it around. But, yeah, at this moment, I don't wanna hear jack about how he's the best Alabama QB in the NFL right now (that would be Jalen Hurts).
Kahou is my surprise player of the game. Phillips is my disappointing player of the game. Defense was fun to watch. Offense was just more talented than the defense. They have a lot to work on, however, they did enough to beat the Patriots.
Hurts is scariest because of his running but when it comes to throwing the ball he is worse than anyone in the league
AJ Brown was a huge get for them, he came up really big today. But yeah, he seems to be one of those QBs that will feast on Lions-level defenses (aka: bad) but will struggle a lot more against elite teams or teams that can shut down his running ability without massively sacrificing the defensive backfield.
I thought we played a solid game but id be careful about the preliminary anointment of our “elite” defense. Mac Jones threw ducks all game, a stronger arm quarterback would have made us pay for some of our missed assignments defensively. We got to adjust and continue to improve.
I’m starting to get the vide that Tua is Ryan Tannehill ver 2.0. Regardless of the differences in their play styles, they’re both “great on script/struggle off script” QBs. I think Tua’s ability to avoid sacks makes him an upgrade over RT17, but like Tannehill if he gets forced into being one dimensional then there are opportunities for opposing Ds.
Yeah.. the similarities at this point are a bit concerning. Neither has shown he can "carry the team" when the rest of the team is failing except on rare occasion. To get through the playoffs you generally need to overcome adversity more than on rare occasion and neither QB seems to be able to do that. Tannehill for sure can't. Tua is slowly looking like that too. Statistically it's a bit uncanny too. Tannehill's first 3 years z-scores were: 2012: –0.8259 2013: –0.3630 2014: 0.3940 after which he leveled off, bouncing around average or very slightly above. Tua's: 2020: –0.5625 2021: –0.0562 2022: ? Similar improvement from 1st to 2nd year as Tannehill.. maybe in 3rd year he gets to 0.6 ish or so if he follows Tannehill's pattern? Statistically, QB's tend to reach a plateau around years 3-4 and if Tua ends up at 0.6 or so that's just not good enough. You need the QB to be around z-score = 1 on average, at least based on historical data if you don't want your QB to be below average for a SB winning QB. Anyway, we'll see. It's still early in season 3. But statistically he needs to get closer to z-score = 1 this year which I think will be a bit over 100 rating in 2022 (depends on how the season unfolds). And we need to see evidence he can test a defense instead of just being a game manager. Going to need that in the playoffs. 16 more games to find out.. or maybe more. I do think this team can make the playoffs.
I know you’re not allowed to say anything negative about Tyreek but I thought he took a ton of plays off. Whenever the offense was on the field Tyreek was on the sideline half the time.
Tyreek played great today. All he was missing was TD catches, but 98 yards and 11.8 Y/C are really good numbers if he can do this week in week out. He also had at least one fantastic catch, grabbing the ball away from what might have been an INT otherwise. Doesn't mean he's above criticism, but he was the best offensive player on the field today, and I suspect that will be the case many times this year. Maybe more impressive is Mahomes though. 5 TD's 0 INT's 360 yards passing with no Tyreek Hill. Mahomes is as elite as they get.
Maybe it was to keep him fresh in the 100 degree heat and humidity. Or maybe you should ask McDainels as Tyreek doesn't call his own plays. Not sure how that's a negative on a player if he's not in the package they are calling.
Pair the pass pro stat above with pedestrian run blocking. And we still don’t have any noticeable improvements by the offensive line. Offense performed admirably considering…. But Defense was the dominant factor in the win.
More like 33% of the time…. I would expect this is a coaches decision. Not sure you can criticize Tyreek for this, unless you saw it quoted he was tired and wanted off the field?? Hopefully him and Waddle see a higher snap % going forward. Most teams top 2 are well over 80%. And I hope we weren’t telegraphing our play calls (pass or run) by what personnel we had on the field. Teams will realize quickly if we go run heavy every time Tyreek is not on the field.
Still not sure about that one. A couple times they only rushed 3 and I was like what???? I still a few more games to agree
There a couple runs where the RB lined up what seemed like 20 yards behind the QB... those plays all got stuffed for no gain or a loss. I was wondering at the time if that was tipping off the defense.