1. It’s Ryan Tannehill’s job to take now. It’s not just that he keeps progressing nicely, as his 14-for-21, 167-yard performance in his first preseason game showed, as I wrote in my column today. David Garrard’s out 2-4 weeks with arthoscopic knee surgery. Matt Moore wasn’t considered the answer even after his good finish last year.
Tannehill received good reports about handling the team, managing the game and reading what he admitted after were vanilla, preseason defenses. But Joe Philbin pointed out one play of note.
“They had a blitz called,’’ Philbin said. “Clearly, had he handed the ball off, it would have been a minus play, a minus four. He got the ball – I think it might have been J.P. [WR Julius Pruitt] he got the ball to, I can’t remember exactly – but, it was a quick decision. No hesitation. He saw it, clearly, and got the ball out and he got a seven, eight-yard gain. Those kinds of things you like to see from a rookie quarterback in the first game, that he’s not just kind of blindly handing the ball off and not really recognizing front coverage and those types of things.”
The next progression is for Tannehill to work against a first-team defense like Carolina next week.
2. It’s not just a message to Vontae Davis anymore. It’s a clear demotion. And Richard Marshall didn’t have any issues Friday in his start against Tampa Bay. There remains four weeks until the opener, so we’ll see if this sticks. But if Davis is extra-motivated by it, his play didn’t show. He was busted for 23 yards on a third-and-five by the unheralded combination of back-up quarterback Dan Orlovsky and receiver Tiquan Underwood. We’re past the message-sending portion of camp. Now Davis has to win his job back.
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