The Dolphins had their first scrimmage today, and it was either a great day or a terrible day, depending on who you talked to.
“It went pretty good for the defense,” safety Yeremiah Bell said. “We’ll make fun of the offense a little bit.”
“We still got a lot of work to do,” running back Ronnie Brown countered.
It wasn’t a full-blown scrimmage – more of a situational thing. Even if Chad Henne threw an incomplete pass, Tony Sparano would move the ball ahead 10 yards and bark out the next scenario.
But even without accurate stats, it was pretty easy to tell that the defense gave all four quarterbacks fits today.
“I’m not sure today helped any of the quarterbacks out here,” Sparano said.
The good news: It’s still early. The first exhibition game is still a week away. The regular season is still five weeks away. And Sparano doesn’t take too much stock in one bad practice.
“I don’t really judge a whole lot from the 55-60 plays that we ran out here today,” Sparano said. “I have to go by the 700 plays that we’ve run to date.”
And it also must be noted that the Dolphins were very liberal with their substitutions, switching guys in and out on every play. While there seemed to be a definitive first team and second team, players like Jason Allen and Charlie Anderson took significant reps with the ones.
Let’s break down today’s scrimmage:
First team offensive line (L to R): Long, Incognito, Berger, Jerry, Carey
Second team offensive line: Gardner, Thomas, Hartline, Procter, Garner
Second team defense: McDaniel, Soliai, Douglas, Anderson, Folsom, Dobbins, Alama-Francis, W. Allen, Jones, Culver, Carroll
Quarterbacks, drive-by-drive:
Chad Henne: 2-for-5 (sack, no TD), 3-for-8 (sack, TD), 7-for-7 (TD, sack)
Chad Pennington: 4-for-8 (no TD),
Tyler Thigpen: 2-for-7 (INT and TD), 3-for-9
Pat White: 2-for-4 (TD), 1-for-2 (no TD)
Notable plays:
– Nice job by Nolan Carroll stepping in front of a Thigpen slant pass and deflecting it to Charlie Anderson for the interception.
– Brandon Marshall was targeted by Henne seven times, but had finished with as many catches as drops (two).
– Dan Carpenter missed his first three field goals all wide left, from 36, 39, 41. “He had a little hook going on, but I’m not worried about Carpenter right now,” Sparano said.
– Nice play by Pat White, hitting Marlon Moore on a slant pass in pressure, which Moore took to the house for a 40-yard score.
– Beautiful touchdown catch by Brian Hartline, dragging both feet in-bounds on a fade pass from Henne in the back left corner.
– Nice play by defensive back Nate Ness, batting down a pass intended for Moore.
– Almost all of Pennington’s throws were dump-offs underneath.
Other notes:
– Marshall was very hard on himself after practice. “I didn’t prepare myself coming out today mentally or physically, and I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed in the way I let my teammates down today,” he said. “I need to be more of a leader and make some of those plays that came my way.”
– Greg Camarillo (groin), Patrick Cobbs (unknown) and Jake Grove (leg) were all held out for precautionary reasons, Sparano said.
– Rookie seventh-round draft pick Austin Spitler finally returned after sitting out a week with an illness. Spitler, a middle linebacker, said that he came down with salmonella poisoning and had to spend two nights in the hospital. The team also quarantined Spitler by moving his roommate to a different room. “It was a really bad deal,” Spitler said. “I was in the hospital just dying.”
– A great day for Sean Smith, who was mostly responsible for shutting down Marshall. Smith got burned by Marshall on the first play of the day last Saturday, and today Marshall and Henne once again went right at Smith with a deep pass on the first play. This time, though Smith batted the ball away. “I actually wanted them to come after me the first play,” Smith said. “I definitely had to get some get-back.”
– Henne: “Today they played a little bit more zone coverage, but overall as an offense we didn’t get it done today.The defense took advantage, and we just need to get better, have to be more consistent, more efficient.”
– Sparano on Henne’s performance through eight days of training camp: “Going into today he had completed 75-76 percent of passes. He’s up in the high 80s to 90 attempts right now, completed a bunch of them and only had two interceptions. … He had a couple outstanding days during the course of the week.”
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