Ten Thoughts After Week 8

Here are my thoughts:

1. Play calling - This was, I felt, the worst-called game of the season. I've been a Henning defender for the most part, but today just showed me that he's too stubborn. The tighter line splits and wishbone running package simply was not working. When I review the tape I would be willing to bet I find that on some of the more successful runs, the formationing and personnel had dictated the defense and offense space themselves wider. Some of those Wildcat calls (not all of them, most of them) were dumb bordering on inexcusable. The 3rd & 6 run call, same. But, all of that said, par for the course for Dan Henning is for him to make a few questionable calls but also to make a few that make you tip your hat, and he did still have a few of those. Considering how aggressively the Bengals were jumping our RBs, that WR reverse call to Hartline was a spiffy call. Also, though it was criticized, there was a 3rd & 1 call with a deeper pass up the middle to Fasano that had a real shot of creating a chunk play. That pass-back to Chad Henne very nearly created a touchdown. These were either potential or successful game-changing play calls that were properly set up and the only thing missing (if anything) was execution. I'm not saying Dan Henning isn't out there screwing up, like I said today was his WORST game plan of the season I felt...but we can win THIS YEAR with him calling the plays. He's not going to prevent us from making some noise. However, I am convinced this will be his final year in Miami. Parcells is gone, Henning is old, remember that they DID ultimately fire Pasqualoni for mediocre to sub-mediocre performance. They will go another direction in the off season. In the mean time we just live with some bone-headed calls BUT we also gladly accept the genius calls.

2. Jason Allen vs. Sean Smith - A coaching call I was almost even MORE disappointed in than Henning's game plan, was to start Jason Allen for this game after spending the entire week getting Sean Smith ready to resume his role. I felt like this was punative, because Sean Smith went and blabbed about his increased workload and this regime doesn't appreciate that sort of thing. Question is, who did it punish most? Sean Smith? Or the team? Note Terrell Owens' quote after the game "They put Sean Smith in the ball game. They realized 32 was a liability out there. Once we exploited that he saw no more of the field." He ain't just whistlin' dixie, Sean Smith was on lockdown for the entire game once he came in. He had a huge breakup on a deep ball intended for Owens, and he iced the game with that interception. You've got to hand it to the guy. He did well. Jason Allen has had two good games this year but four mediocre or much worse ones. Why be surprised that he goes out there and immediately has a target on his back for Terrell Owens to abuse? Even worse, WHY GIVE THE GUY THAT HAS HAD LESS WORK DURING THE WEEK THE OPENING REPS?

3. Special Teams - Mad props to Darren Rizzi. This guy has had the special teams not only improving from that New England disaster but in this game they were GENERALLY humming. The exceptions were obvious, Davone Bess' bad decisions. This is a guy that you usually count on to be extremely smart because he always has been. I'm not going to nail that one on Rizzi. I criticized Rizzi for continuing to start Bobby Carpenter on STs units even after Westhoff (correctly) identified that Carpenter has no business there, but now it's time to give him props for having turned around the STs units. It feels good.

4. Mike Nolan and In-Game Adjustments - This guy is FOR REAL as a defensive coordinator. To me, the mark of a guy that deserves to be called one of the best coordinators out there is the effectiveness of his in-game adjustments. Every coordinator comes in with parts of the game plan that get exposed a little bit. Can you adjust without giving up something else that kills you? For Mike Nolan, he's been able to. Look at the Vikings game. Visanthe Shiancoe KILLS us in the 2nd quarter, they've found something schematically and it's working. Yeremiah Bell talked about their halftime adjustments, but from that moment on Shiancoe was shut down and the Vikings generally stuffed. Jets game, same thing. Dustin Keller KILLING us in the first quarter or first half. Nolan makes an adjustment, Keller gets shut down, Jets offense not nearly as effective as before for the rest of the game (though good enough to beat us still, obviously). Also note during that game the coaches felt like they snookered Sanchez into several really bad decisions that certain players (ehrm, Bobby Carpenter, Yeremiah Bell, etc) just didn't execute. Well today we had a situation in the first half where the Bengals were finding cutback lanes all over the place against us. We made adjustments at the half, that cutback style running DRIED UP...and the cherry on top is they didn't give something up in order to get the better run defense. The defense in the second half was stellar. Truly stellar.

5. Pass Protection - Again, Henne had ALL DAY to throw, generally speaking. I kept waiting for the pass rush to get to him with how long he was holding the ball and scanning the field. The Bengals covered pretty well today but they couldn't get to Henne and he had a lot of time, and it hurt them.

6. Red Zone Issues - Are a myth. This team doesn't have red zone issues. They have chunk play issues. The most successful drives of the day were those where the offense was successfully able to SHORTEN THE FIELD either by a big return which provided good field position, or big chunk plays that move you down the field in a hurry. The important detail being commonly overlooked is, the Dolphins don't GET to the red zone. They generally fail right on the door step of the red zone. That's not a team having issues moving the ball within the tighter spaces. That's a team constantly having to lay out 10 or 12 successfully executed plays just to end up right outside the 20 yard line. That's too much pressure on the execution. On the play where Pat Cobbs got us onto the Bengals' 45 yard line, I really felt that was a touchdown. And it SHOULD have been a touchdown, but for Anthony Fasano's mind boggling drop. Yeah the ball was a little behind him, but Henne was on the move, it was fully catchable and it probably would have netted a touchdown one way or another. The fact that we were so close to scoring and didn't purely because of such a poorly executed catch, I think shows this offense's potential against mediocre defenses if we can shorten up the field with special teams or chunk plays. Believe it or not the team actually has the makings of a GOOD red zone offense, because they're really comfortable grinding out yardage in tight spaces, aka the "short box" offense that DOLFANMIKE talked about.

7. Play Action - I don't know why but it's generally not working. There has to be an adjustment. What I mean when I say it's not working is, no defenders are BITING. When Chad Henne whips his head around he finds linebackers still backed up, safeties still out in coverage, the only difference is that Henne has had a whole lot less opportunity to read the field before he gets rid of the ball. I'm with Michael Irvin on this one. Maybe you don't scrap it altogether but it has to change somehow. The only play-actions I see working are of the bootleggish variety which are not at all designed to go deep. But if all you can get are short plays on play-action, you really have to question the cost-benefit because every play-action call carries with it a more significant risk of lost yardage or turnover.

8. Patrick Cobbs - I know, he dropped an important one today. But, I would still try and get him the ball more. The bottom line is he's making noise, on special teams and elsewhere, getting open on pass patterns. He needs the ball in his hands more. He seems fully recovered from his knee injury and honestly he's the tailback on roster right now that looks the most full of life. He's really waiting to make some plays out there. He needs CARRIES. The ground game really isn't doing it for us in most ways right now. Sometimes you're looking for a spark, and today this guy was all over the place making plays on kick coverage, making plays on kick returns, getting open in the passing game and even though he dropped the one, I'd have made more effort to get him with the ball in his hands and see if he couldn't provide a spark. Lousaka Polite meanwhile gets too many balls thrown his way and for the life of me I have NO idea why. He presents NOTHING in the passing game.

9. The Officials - GAH!!! What the F--K, man??? Three weeks in a row the officiall try and screw over the Dolphins in a critical moment of the game. Against the Packers, it was the infamous Ronnie Brown no-conversion-that-was-actually-quite-clearly-a-conversion. If we wouldn't have produced the stones to win the game in overtime, that might have been a game-influencing bad call. Against the Steelers, well let's not get into that horse sh-t. Nice disgraceful way to finish one of the most poorly officiated games in the history of the modern NFL with a cherry-on-top "we refuse to actually do our jobs on this play because we just want to go home" interception call and no-review. Just had to get that out there. Screw the officials, there's no excuse for that. But anyway today, holy crap why is this continuing for a third straight week? I'm not one to complain about the officiating generally speaking. I think the bad calls tend to even out in the end and generally don't impact the game outcome as much as most people tend to think. But this three week stretch has been 'special' alright (as in, retarded). Let's not talk about the OBVIOUS and BLATANT no-call on Chad OchoCinco's @ss rape of Tyrone Culver on the deep ball, because that probably didn't influence the game. Let's talk about the total and complete BS phantom roughing the passer call that genuinely DID keep the game alive longer than it should. What...the...F--K...was that???

10. The Future - I am now officially 6 of 6 on my predictions of the outcome of Dolphins' games. I should be 5-1, because I predicted the Dolphins would lose to the Steelers and they actually won on the field, as we all know the officials executed one of the most disgracefully officiated games in modern NFL history. Since my vision for what the Dolphins will do has generally proven pretty accurate...if I do say so myself...let me reiterate how I see the Dolphins and what I see them doing. I've said this before. I also said that if the Dolphins lost today that'd be a game-changer for me, I'd have to revise my expectations and change my view of the team. Well, they didn't lose. They won by 8 points, going 4-0 on the road. I think this team is a good team. I think they're showing a LOT of the qualities they did in 2008 when they went near-perfect against the kinds of teams that they "should" beat. They focus on execution, yes it's a "small box" offense as DOLFANMIKE identified, but the upside to that is that the offense tends to do better against awesome defenses than one would think. The downside is an annoying habit to score down with a team that you should be beating soundly. Either way, in 2008 they displayed the consistency to beat all the teams they should beat, and I see that same consistency this year. That means teams like the Lions, Raiders, Browns, Bills, I would personally insist the Bears...the teams that are good at beating themselves...should be for the most part penciled in as W's. I felt the Bengals were one of those teams. From there you have four more "good" teams on the schedule, the Ravens, Titans, Jets and Patriots. In 2008 the Dolphins had genuine trouble trying to steal games from good teams. In 2009, they didn't have as much trouble competing with good teams, but they did have trouble winning the games they "should" have won. I think 2010 is a little bit of both worlds. We're good enough to consistently beat the teams we "should" beat. We're good enough to compete with the teams that are genuinely good. Competing with the remaining "good" teams means going 2-2 against them. If we beat every team I think we should beat, that would give us an 11-5 record. I don't see 11-5 personally, because I believe the team is not execution-savvy enough to beat EVERY team they "should" beat...but 10-6 would be a good third year outcome for this crew, considering we appear set to do much better in 2011 than 2010 (IMO). As for next week against the Ravens, you'll have to wait a bit to get my thoughts on them. Not 100% sure yet.