Well Dolfans, that was a tough pill to swallow. I was friends with the QB of UD's football team. After a bad loss early in the season, I asked him what he thought about the game. His response was, "You can't polish a turd." Fortunately, UD's team got it turned around and went on to knock off the University of San Diego - then coached by Jim Harbaugh - on their way to defeating the University of Albany - whose center was Tony Sparano's son - on their way to winning the I-AA, non-mid major National Championship.
Unfortunately, the Miami Dolphins are more like the scene in "We Were Soldiers" where the director in Washington says, "My God, there's no hiding it now." when Mel Gibson calls in "Broken Arrow". There's not much hiding the Dolphins can really do. I saw RockyRaccoon posting that there was no defending Joe Philbin after today's game. That's how I know it's bad as Rocky and I have battled before in these boards re: Joe Philbin. While I wanted him removed after last year's defeat I grew somewhat optimistic after week 1 this year; I should have known better by halftime of the Buffalo game. Same old Dolphins.
I'll keep it simple this week and just list the Good, Bad, and Awful. Sorry for not posting after last week's game, but I had...well still am...traveling quite a bit for work and was too tired to really care about the review last week. Today though, today, it was bad and I think it's worth pointing out certain things to indicate how bad it really is. Here goes.
Good
- Earl Mitchell. This signing is a coup and he's been absolutely fantastic so far. Easily the best/most consistent player over 3 games.
- Lamar Miller. 2nd career 100 yard game and I thought he was pretty decisive in his runs today.
- Mike Wallace. He gets a lot of flak on here, from me included, but he seemed like he was about the only player on offense that cared today.
- Randy Starks. Savvy vet and just a pro's pro. Jared Odrick is the team's 3rd best DT, and I'd argue by a good margin behind Mitchell and Starks.
- Derrick Shelby. Was about as good as Olivier Vernon was today.
- Philip Wheeler actually played pretty well today if you cared to watch.
- *Edit* - one late addition, with a caveat. Jelani Jenkins, when playing downhill is pretty good. His coverage is not there though.
Bad
- Branden Albert & Ja'Wuan James. Tough task today and they both got beat. James in particular struggled with Justin Houston's bull-rush.
- Samson Satele. Anyone suggesting moving Mike Pouncey should move to guard is WAY offbase. He struggled today.
- Dallas Thomas...from play to play...what is he doing? He's either a catastrophe or stays on his man just long enough.
- Brian Hartline. Meeeoooowwww. That's all that need be said. Terrible celebration, take notes.
- Brent Grimes missed like 5 tackles today and hasn't really looked right, IMO, so far this year. I hope this isn't the beginning of his decline.
- Will Davis aka "China Doll". He is SOFT. Gutless effort on Davis' 1st half TD.
- Joe Philbin's post-game presser was epic. No, seriously, it was epic...for Joe Philbin.
Awful
- Bill Lazor's play-calling was absolute dog$h!t today. Miami, chiefly Ryan Tannehill, did not execute well at all, but Lazor certainly did no favors with his play-calling. The screen pass after getting the ball back after the safety was the epitome of him today. How much these plays are "on" Tannehill is a factor, but if that's what Tannehill's checking to...or keeping...yikes. Mike Sherman cracked a cold one with his feet up today.
- Ryan Tannehill. I think this experiment is over. His pocket presence is awful, his feet are awful, his reads for the most part were awful. He didn't even turn the ball over and was awful. Watching Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning do battle in the background really drove home the point for me that Tannehill is not the guy. Sorry folks.
- Kevin Coyle is a master of out-thinking himself. I'm sure you've seen Adam Beasley's tweets by now about the players being "irate". But, seriously, what in the world are you doing having guys like Cameron Wake and Olivier Vernon BOTH dropping into short zone coverage on 3rd downs. Why would you bastardize your pass-rush by making Wake try and cover an athlete like McKnight in space.
- As bad as Philip Wheeler and Dannell Ellerbe were in games at times last year, Jimmy Wilson made them look like pro bowlers today. He was a catastrophe on damn near every play. He CAN'T tackle and takes bad angles ALL THE TIME.
- Louis Delmas was just about as bad today.
- Tom Garfinkel. Shouldn't you do an "AquaOut" when the team wears...oh, I dunno, AQUA? How about a "WhiteOut"? Or is that not PC enough? Either way, there were a bunch of people dressed like orange seats even before the mass exodus.
- Joe Philbin. What in the blue hell does he bring to the table? He's not an X's and O's guy. He's not a play-caller. He's not a motivator. His background is in the O-line, which had it's worst year in history last year. Just about every unit that's performing poorly is coached by someone he's handpicked - QBs = Zach Taylor, WRs = Ken O'Keefe, DBs = Lou Anarumo. Last year the offense was dialed up by Mike Sherman and the O-line was coached by Jim Turner. If his supposed strength is/was organization, from the top down, there's not much to like there. Kacy Rodgers has the best unit, and he's not one of Philbin's hires; he's a holdover.
In short, there's not a lot that you can take positively out of this game. I think you look at the big picture, and I'm left with the conclusion that I had at the end of last season, Joe Philbin should not be the coach of the Miami Dolphins. He's 16-19. In Miami's last 5 games he's 1-4 and the team has been outscored 122-65. More than half of those 65 points came in the New England game week 1 of this season (33). After the game Adam Beasley is reporting that players are questioning the game plan and adjustments made on defense. As an aside, watching some of the better defenses out there - Seattle, SF, Arizona, Carolina, Denver - most of them play relatively simplistic schemes and are just sound; I feel like Coyle's trying to get too cute and this team is about as FAR fundamentally unsound as you can get. I'm watching Luke Kuechly and longing for the days of having Zach Thomas raging around sideline to sideline...slash thinking about what might have been. If you really think about it, how about this: Miami's taken Ted Ginn and Ryan Tannehill over Patrick Willis and Luke Kuechly. Just to pile on to try and flush this all out of my system today, Ryan Tannehill to this point is on pace for career lows in completion percentage (56.5%), passer rating (74.1%), and yards per attempt (5.0).
On top of that we've seen questionable clock management decisions and him coaching not to lose - 1st half last week, 1st half this week...if you remember the 1st half of the Carolina game last year - get the theme? It's going to get worse before it gets better folks, as I think today's game is more akin to the first compartment flooding on the Titanic (the iceberg was the Buffalo and Jets games to close out 2014). Who knows, maybe Miami will leave him at Wembley when they leave London next week.
With that, I'll sign off as I'm really not sure how to continue this. At least I got to enjoy Octoberfest last night.
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As always thanks for the analysis. Agree with most, if not all of it.Bpk, MAFishFan, ASOT and 1 other person like this. -
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MAFishFan likes this.
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just awful today. D let some big plays up but they also made plays. Juice with that 72 yard return and you settle for 3 points, before the half you settle for 3 points just awful you need touchdowns. Rizzi as intern coach players will play for him. disgusting performance with all there injuries you get embarrassed at home wow just wow. I actually started laughing at one point.
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phinsjn likes this.
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Can't say I disagree with anything here.
.....brb
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I'll say it again...we are #1 in the entire NFL in rushing yards per attempt. This is what we do well. We ran the ball damn near 40 times in week 1 and won. Since week 1, we have decided that we are a passing team. The only problem is we suck at passing. There is our season in a nutshell. Our coaches are idiots and our QB is below mediocre.
MAFishFan likes this. -
i don't see where tannehill was awful in this game. Pocket awareness wasn't great but the drops by the wrs killed drives and Lazor's playcalling was just absurd. But whatever, lets cut him and he'll go make the playoffs for the texans or something.
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PhinFan1968 To 2020, and BEYOND! Club Member
I'd LOVE to see some true, real, unbiased professional analysis of how he did. Beat-writers and fans don't count as the end-all info, we're biased one way or the other. Is there a site that doesn't just say, "derrr his QB rating was bla bla, horrible day" and actually looks at the play within the scope of everything that was going on (separation, line, read) besides PFF?dolfan22 likes this. -
LI phinfan likes this.
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PhinFan1968 To 2020, and BEYOND! Club Member
MrClean likes this. -
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Just wait till you play us. That will get your team on a roll. We only put up 7 points against a bad Detroit team. You guys played a KC team that won 11 games last year. Your in a slump but you guys will get out of it. You will be fine.
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We really lost the game when we were only down by 6 with a little over 8 minutes left. Driving, just got into their territory and on 3rd and less than 1 we run play-action and take a sack. We were running the ball all game and we call play-action there? Bull****, then they drain the clock and score a TD.
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xphinfanx and LI phinfan like this.
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