The Miami Dolphins have played two “one-half” games in the last two weeks. A “half-game” was good enough against the hapless New York Jets but a “half game” was NOWHERE near good enough against the incredible New England Patriots. How they made it to the Super Bowl last year just goes to show that lady luck and buffoonery still reign supreme in the NFL.
The zebras went wild – Courtesy of the Greek and Latin writers:
And let’s not forget how the Patriots take every close call, especially against us. I literally think that for EVERY single foul play penalty, the refs are calling Goodell and Satan for permission to charge the Patriots with a penalty. I’m not kidding. A group of blind shamans from Mongolia will do a better job officiating. How in the name of God do the field refs rule the NE dude short and then go to commercial and then when we come back from the commercial we have a “Deux et Machina” moment where NE is GIVEN a first down AND Steve Ross is kicked in the groin to boot. For those of you who may not know “Deux et Machina” ….it is a Latin phrase written in plays/stories thousands of years ago to explain how a character can be in the Aegean Sea one moment and the next scene the character is sitting on top of Mount Vesuvius. The term translates to God and Machine. It takes a God and a Machine to stop the Miami Dolphins.
And the networks and the NFL ran out Gene Steratore (remember he’s the Phins’ main opponent Zerba) to say how stupid Dolphins fans are for even questioning the infinite wisdom of the NFL. In the offseason, I’ll rack my brains and rewatch games where the Fins are completely destroyed by the refs. I will try to write a treatise on it.
I HATE having to sound whiny about the officiating, but IT IS A NATIONWIDE STORY. Armando Salguero et al discussed the wastes pretending to be officiating.
As D’Attaglia in godfatherNE is not our real enemy; just teasing. Buffalo is our Barzini!
In the game itself: NE is NOT very much better than us. Don’t forget that. The announcers are pandering to the overrated Drake Maye. He’s not that good. He throws a decent long ball but remember NE got the matchups they wanted. It’s not hard to throw. He is not 1/100th QB Tom Brady. Know this: it is 10,000 times harder to thread a 3street and 18-yard deep-square-in under a withering pass rush (one of the routes that put Aikman and Irvin in the HOF) versus throwing a deep ball when he has 5 seconds to throw with very little pressure. Generally, those throws are not in the playoffs when it freezes in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. It’s one reason the Phins haven’t won a playoff game, much less a road playoff game in 10,000 years since a dome playoff game against Seattle (lost in memory). Yes, Seattle used to be in the AFC. Chuck Knox, Jim Zorn, Davie Krieg come to mind.
Moving on, I want to give a simple sign if your team is good or bad. What I will say is it doesn’t guarantee a Super Bowl or a playoff win but it tells you if you have a chance.
I didn’t see the sign – Not Ace of Base
The sign is this: if you can run the ball 2 yards when the opponent KNOWS it’s coming, you have a chance to be good. The opposite: can you stop a team from getting 2 yards when everyone knows they’re going to run. That’s the sign. If you remember on all those McDaniel teams, we would come out with 30, 40 and 50 yard runs BUT when we tried to run two yards with Ollie Gordon, he got BLOW UP in the back field. What a pity! We couldn’t get those two yards when the other team KNEW it was coming.
I see improvement in this area in our OLINE. I see improvement in this team. So many good signs. EXCEPT special teams. Our kicker catches 1 pass. He spent it on the doink. He killed us with a bad miss. We didn’t spend the game but imagine if it was close. Don’t forget, Borregales also missed and he kicked in the stadium for YEARS. Will we get a punt block or a kick return? And someone needs to find Carlos Huerta (kicker for the Canes about 30 years ago). Huerta is the GREATEST ON-SIDE KICKER ever. The Canes lost to the Univ of Michigan 15 to 4th qtr in 1988. After the Canes score, he drives the ball straight down the ground and the ball shoots so high and then it’s a free-for-all ( I passed a Ted Nugent reference here, so there! )……the Canes recover and Huerta kicks the FG to win 31-30. But no, the Dolphins tried the dribble and failed. Special teams COULD be to our advantage BUT NO, Sullivan and Hafley settle for mediocrity.
Back to improvements: Before we jump down the Phins throat let’s remember that there were many games against the Pats where we led in the first half and Belichick did his half-time improvement and we lost. This happened while Jacoby was their QB.
Our loss to them yesterday is nothing new. Vrabel learned a lot from Belichick.
Did you notice that on first downs, many of Ollie’s runs went for 0 or 1 yard? Then on second down he would get 6-8 yards, still good, but we didn’t run them out. This is good news, NE actively had to respect our run game but they never got tired. We had a few manageable 3street down On the flip side, we got tired while on defense. They found a weakness where the RB seemed to be heading towards the initial run read but then almost invariably cut BEHIND the line and way from the initial run read. I haven’t seen the film but it tells me that the DEs and/or the LBs (who are away from the ball) are not getting through and/or they are over-committing aka racing the ball but behind their own DL ( where the LBs are ) not in the backfield (easier said than done). It sounds ridiculous based on our talent but back in the day, believe it or not, teams would run at Lawrence Taylor (LB Goat) to try and get him. If they run away from him, he just runs down the back from behind. He is almost unblocked. We need to get that edge (playing away from the ball to penetrate) A BIT (in the Goldilocks zone) to eliminate the cutbacks we saw yesterday. We don’t have that talent. anyway. Uche and Chop played well but they had their limitations. We all know TALENT always wins. We are headed in the right direction, EXCEPT on special teams.
Malik played well: he made two really bad throws and if he only makes two bad throws per game, I can live with that. Who’s out there in college (outside of Mestemaker giving you the thrills? All the current QB dudes (Chambliss, Leavitt, etc. are system QBs from sissy 7-on-7 schools…same as Maye).
The Pats made an obvious choice yesterday: funnel everyone inside and set their DEs to stay outside to prevent the Malik run. They dared us to run straight and throw. Their first half, we did. I have to watch the film but NE went to 9 on the intensity level and we are simply not compatible. The little Malik runs weren’t there and we didn’t exploit the middle of the field like we should have.
In conclusion, NE is a good team, not great. We need to set the organizational sights on getting past NE and eventually Buffalo and to compete against a fully charged Baltimore(with Lamar?) and KC(I fear 10 more years of Mahomes). And then being able to take on the LA Rams, Seattle, San Francisco and the Bears (this is the team that scares me for a long time because Williams is young and they are improving).
We shoot for the stars! Go Finns!