In the shadow of their 11-5, AFC East-winning campaign, the
Miami Dolphins' 3-4 start to the 2009 season comes off as something of a
disappointment.
With a win over the sinking ship that is the Buffalo Bills, and two over the
New York Jets and their rookie quarterback and head coach, there isn't much for
Fins fans to hang onto to suggest the arrow is pointing up for this team.
Which is why Sunday's trip to meet the New England Patriots is so
extraordinarily important for Tony Sparano and his charges.
Win, as Miami did last year when it unveiled the "Wildcat" in a shocking 38-13
win at Gillette Stadium, and the Dolphins will find themselves at 4-4 and just
one game back in the AFC East standings heading into the second half of the
campaign.
Then, with upcoming games against the Buccaneers (0-7), Panthers (3-4), and
Bills (3-5), Miami will have a golden opportunity to take over the AFC East on
or before Dec. 6th, when New England makes its annual trip to south Florida.
Lose this week, and the Dolphins fall to 3-5 entering the second half, taking
the AFC East title off the table barring an unforeseen collapse by the
Patriots, and significantly reducing the team's margin for error in becoming a
Wild Card.
Clearly, the stakes are high for Miami this Sunday,
"Really hard challenge for us," Sparano said of the upcoming Patriots affair.
"Very well-coached team, always. Not going to make a lot of mistakes. Not going
to find those kinds of things, penalties, turnovers. They just don't do them.
Going into that type of environment, once again, will be another test for us."
The Dolphins picked up some positive momentum heading into New England in the
form of their very strange 30-25 win over the Jets at the Meadowlands on
Sunday.
Miami had its worst day of the year offensively by far, managing just 10 first
downs and 104 total yards for the day. Quarterback Chad Henne (12-of-21, 112
yards, 1 TD) was sacked five times and the running game (23 carries, 52 yards)
never got going on a day that saw the Dolphins' usual monopoly on the clock
account for just 25:54 in time of possession.
Defensively, the Dolphins gave up 102 yards on 27 carries to Thomas Jones, and
let rookie Mark Sanchez (20-of-35, 265 yards, 2 TD) have a turnover-free day.
So how in the world did Miami win this game? Twenty-one points that turned a
3-3 game at halftime into a 24-19 lead during a wild third quarter were the
difference, with a 48-yard fumble return for a touchdown by Jason Taylor and
two 100-plus-yard kickoff returns for touchdowns by the much-maligned Ted Ginn
serving as the big blows for Sparano's squad.
It had been a rough week for Ginn, who was demoted from his starting wideout
position after a poor showing against the Saints last week and had his
toughness publicly questioned by a number of former Dolphins. All the former
first-rounder did in response was become the eighth player in NFL history to
have two kickoff returns for touchdowns in a single game, and the first since
Green Bay's Travis Williams in 1967 to do it in the same quarter.
Said Sparano, "All you've been preaching all week long with these guys is to
keep grinding and finish games, keep grinding and finishing games, keep your
head down and finish games. They did that. We had a great week of practice. It
didn't show in some phases, but they fought, they fought hard during the course
of this game. Their effort was outstanding all over the place."
It's the same type of effort that is going to be required this Sunday, if Miami
wishes to involve itself again in the discussion for the AFC East title.
"I think we have a heck of a challenge ahead of us but this team will be
excited about it," said Sparano. "We gave ourselves something to be excited
about right now. We will just put our head down and keep grinding the way we
do."
BILLS: That silver lining that had begun to emerge for the Buffalo Bills turned
out not to be a predictor of an imminent turnaround for the team. Instead, it
looks the clouds contained acid rain for Dick Jauron's squad.
After notching road wins on back-to-back weeks for the first time since 2004,
Buffalo needed only to return home with a victory over the inconsistent Houston
Texans in order to get back to .500 for the first time since Week 2.
But the Bills (3-5) could not hang onto a 10-9 lead as the fourth-quarter
began, surrendering 22 final-frame points in a 31-10 loss that had the faithful
in Western New York once again questioning the direction of the team's offense.
Buffalo had just 204 yards, nine first downs, and held the football for a mere
20:52 on a day in which Ryan Fitzpatrick (15-of-23, 117 yards, 2 INT) failed to
prove he was any more capable of leading the attack than was predecessor Trent
Edwards.
Buffalo is now 29th in NFL total offense (264.8 yards per game), 28th in
passing (154.8 yards per game) and 26th in scoring (15.4 points per game).
"There is just no spark out there," said Fitzpatrick. "It's hard to get
momentum when you can't stay on the field. We're not converting on third downs
and luckily we have this bye week coming up to figure it out. We're going to
try and get some answers, try to get the ball to our playmakers and hopefully
get some more answers."
Fitzpatrick could find himself back on the bench when Buffalo travels to
Tennessee following the bye. Edwards missed his second straight start with a
concussion, but logic suggests that the team's two-game win streak, with
Fitzpatrick finishing both games, had something to do with the team's
conservative approach to handling Edwards' injury.
But despite the fact that Buffalo appears likely to make another change under
center next time out, Jauron cautioned that that alone isn't going to solve the
team's offensive woes.
"It's not consistently one thing," said Jauron of the offense's struggles.
"Clearly if you're going to be successful you have to play at a high level at
the quarterback position, and to do that you've got to protect him
consistently. We struggle up front obviously. They play hard and they play well
in spurts and we're just not getting it done on a consistent basis, but it's
never one thing, it doesn't appear to be."
The loss will make for another rough couple of weeks for Jauron, whose support
level in and around Buffalo now resides in the same valley where it was after
the Bills dropped to 1-4 with that dismal 6-3 loss to the Cleveland Browns back
on Oct. 11th. Not that Jauron is ducking or deflecting responsibility for his
club's performance.
"I think the whole thing falls on me," conceded Jauron. "I don't think there's
any doubt. I take full responsibility for it."
JETS: Say this about the New York Jets: almost every time they lose, they give
fans someone different to blame.
In Sunday's 30-25 loss to the Dolphins, it wasn't Mark Sanchez, the young
signal-caller whose miscues helped sink the team in previous defeat to the
Saints and Bills. Sanchez didn't commit a turnover against Miami, set a season-
high for completions (20), and posted his second straight 100-plus passer
rating.
And it wasn't the defense, which had such a hard time getting Miami and its
offense off the field in a Monday night loss to the Dolphins back in Week 5.
The Jets finished the rematch with six sacks and never let the Fins' running
game get untracked.
Instead, this time it was a usually reliable special teams that was the focus
of criticism, as Ted Ginn's two kickoff returns for touchdowns were clearly the
difference between 5-3 and 4-4 as the Jets head into the bye.
Of the kicks, head coach Rex Ryan said, "The first one, I think Jay [Feely]
kind of kicked a low ball. He kind of drove it. It was a returnable ball and
[Ginn] obviously did a good job. The kid made a play. The second one, I thought
we had them down at the 20, but you've got to really credit that young man. He
broke a lot of tackles, and then he was out the gate on us. The young man
should get a lot of credit for that.
"We have a lot of faith in our coverage. We're one of the best coverage teams
in the league. We thought that we had a good plan. We just think that our guys
can cover the kicks, which we normally do. The kid made a great run on us,
especially the second one."
The Jets will have an extra week to stew about the odd loss, as Ryan and
company try to enjoy their Week 9 bye. A young Jacksonville team will come to
the Meadowlands on Nov. 15th, a game New York simply must have if it wishes to
recover and re-emerge in the playoff race.
Though some coaches would be stressing one-game-at-a-time-styled cliches
following the dispiriting setback, Ryan was not afraid to stress the big
picture in respect to his team's prospects.
"I think we can get back on a roll," Ryan said. "I truly believe that. Our M.O.
is good. I think we can run the football, Sanchez is coming around a little
bit, and with Braylon [Edwards] and [Jerricho] Cotchery in there at wide
receiver and Dustin Keller in there...I feel confident in our passing game.
I've always felt confident in our defense. Special teams is usually a strength,
but obviously we've got to pick it up.
"Obviously, we've got a ton of work to do. We've put ourselves in a hole here.
We're at .500, and the only way to get out is to come out playing with our hair
on fire. That's the only way we can make the playoffs."
PATRIOTS: The New England Patriots' loss to the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 21,
2008 will go down as one of the strangest of head coach Bill Belichick's
career.
Strange not just because New England was thoroughly whipped at home, 38-13,
something that never happens to Belichick-led teams. Remember that the game
marked just the second start of the Matt Cassel era, and at that the time, no
one was quite sure in which direction Cassel would lead the Patriots.
What was strange was that the Patriots looked thoroughly unprepared against the
Dolphins, a circumstance that you'll find on precious few occasions for a
Belichick-coached team since the revered head man first walked an NFL sideline
as an assistant with the Baltimore Colts in 1975.
The problem, in a game that ultimately cost New England the division title and
a playoff berth, was the Wildcat offense, which Miami used in all its glory for
the first time that day. The Dolphins rolled up 461 yards of total offense in
the Gillette Stadium rout, including 216 on the ground, with Ronnie Brown
rushing for four touchdowns and throwing for another against a stunned Patriots
defense.
The Pats did a better job against the Wildcat when they saw it again in Miami
in Week 12, a game in which New England rolled by a 48-28 margin, though their
preoccupation with stopping the run may have had something to do with a 341-
yard, three touchdown effort for Chad Pennington.
Long story short is that the Dolphins attack certainly has Belichick's
attention, and the fact that New England (5-2) had an extra week to prepare
compliments of a Week 8 bye certainly can't hurt.
"I think the most important thing is that we're sound on it and we're prepared
for it," said Belichick of the scheme. "If we get it, we at least know how to
play it and the different things that come out of it, but they certainly do a
lot of other offensive groups - formations and personnel grouping besides that
and we have to be ready for all those.
"It's certainly a challenging aspect to the whole preparation process. We
want to be able to defend that, but at the same time we don't want to commit so
much time to it that we don't do a good job on the other things they do as
well. Hopefully, we'll be able to use a little bit of the extra time this week
to get those bases covered."
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