If you told me Sunday morning that we'd beat the Raiders by only 2 points, I would have groaned. I know winning in the NFL is tough, and that on any given Sunday, blah, blah, blah. We played a crappy team and I thought we would have killed them. However, I'm extremely pleased that we won this game. We held the Raiders offense to 6 points. 3 of those points came after a baloney pass interference call. Bottom line: Our D played great. Our O had some amazing drives and did enough to win. Finally, I LOVED how Sparano went for it on 4th down to get a better position for Carpenter. I read Gregg Easterbrook's TMQ column and he's constantly getting on coaches for not playing to win, rather, many coaches do enough to set their team up for a long FG, and then blame the kicker if he doesn't hit a 50 yarder. Not Sparano. I love this dude.
I feel so differently about this team this year, than I have in years. I truly believe they have the right personnel at the right time.
It seemed to me we ran the wildcat WAY too much during this game. I also think we should have put up more points, I don't like these close games, we need to put games away. But that 4th down call turned out to be great, and another win is another win
I really thought we lost the game when the Raider's guy ran our kickoff back for a TD....normally these type of games always kill us, but Chad didn't panic. The throw to Ginn on 4th and 5 was pure clutch. Last year we always seemed to lose the close ones, but we beat the Seahawks and Raiders by two and I think you take an ugly win and move on.
Look, I'd be disappointed if we did not win another game this season, but I'd still feel that the season was a success...How is that if we were 6-10....well, I'll tell you...because this team has shown that it has heart and we've done something that we haven't seen since Shues ran the show....We've gone into games, struggled and still won...we've played well and won (SD and NE) played well and lost (Texans) and played poorly and still won....the only game that I thought we reverted back to Wanny style play was against Arizona...every other game we've been in or won...now.... NE is going to be a buzz saw for us...they are mad and embarrassed from our last spanking we gave them....and Cassel has improved....we have to play very well against them this week to really get the NFL in an uproar about us...
I figured it would be close. Mostly because i was haunted by what the raiders did to us last year. i NEVER thought we would have to come from behind to have to beat the raiders though. Mind you we had to beat hochuli's crew at times too, but the raiders played tough, and we didnt play as well as we could have. Hopefully we were saving our outstanding play for this week against the pats though
I told myself going into the game that I'd be disappointed if we didn't win by at least 2 scores...but with the way we came back at the end after that deflating punt return was special. The team is playing with a ton of confidence right now and they believe in themselves. You gotta love the resiliency.
I love how passionate Sprano shows he is about football, and how bad he wants this team to win. I always see him jumping around and yelling, and that's what I've wanted to see in a Dolphins coach all my life, because I wasn't lucky enough to remember much of the Don Shula era because I'm only 17. y finest memory of the Shula era was the Thanksgiving Day Game win over the Cowboys with good ol' Leon Lett.
