Even after his best game of year, Dolphins’ Baker learning to ‘start over’ every week
Jerome Baker sped past the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offensive line, sidestepping right tackle Matt Feiler in the process, as he made his way to the backfield on his way to quarterback Mason Rudolph.
It was third-and-5 early in the second quarter of the Miami Dolphins’ lone prime-time game of the season on Monday night. Baker had family make the two-hour trip from Cleveland to see him in person at Heinz Field.
Once Baker, the Dolphins’ speedy second-year linebacker, had Rudolph in his grasps, defensive lineman Taco Charlton poked the ball out from Rudolph’s right hand for a strip sack.
The defense got off the field. The Dolphins’ two-touchdown lead — at least for the moment — was preserved even though the game ended the same way all Dolphins games have this year. Miami lost 27-14 in Pittsburgh and is now 0-7 on the year.
But the game served as a highlight reel of a night for Baker.
Nine tackles. Two tackles for loss. Two quarterback hits.
“I was hyped up,” Baker said. “I had a great week. It showed up. That was definitely one of my best performances this year.”
And now, Baker will do what he has tried to do all season: Forget about it and move on.
There are more games to play — Miami hosts the New York Jets (1-6) and former coach Adam Gase at 1 p.m. Sunday — so his performance on Monday (or in any other game so far, for that matter) is irrelevant in the grand schemes of what remains in the 2019 season.
“Every week is a new week,” said Baker, a third-round pick out of Ohio State in 2018. “You have to go out there with a fresh mindset. You have to pretty much start over every single week.”
That’s not to say Baker hasn’t acknowledged what he has brought to the team this season.
He leads the youth-laden Dolphins with 47 tackles through seven games and is tied for second with four quarterback hits.
This comes after a rookie season in which Baker had 79 tackles, three sacks and an interception over a full 16 game season with 11 starts.
He has played more than 90 percent of Miami’s defensive snaps this season after being on the field with the defense just 62.8 percent of the time in 2018.
“He’s hungry right now,” Dolphins defensive coordinator Patrick Graham said. “Just by his play, he was running around, attempting to do the stuff that we’re asking him to do.”
The Dolphins hope Baker’s hunger to succeed rubs off on the rest of the defense, which enters the week giving up on average the most points per game (34), the second-most yards per play (6.5) and the third-most yards per game (414).
“He’s definitely improving, getting better, taking on more of a leadership role week after week after week and he played well [Monday],” Dolphins coach Brian Flores said, “but the individual efforts – I think he’d even say that – they’re great. We need good individual efforts, but we need more of a better team effort and we need more guys having better individual efforts and us all collectively playing better as a team.”
Finding ways to finish games would help. The Dolphins have squandered second-half leads in back-to-back games. They have also been outscored 120-20 in the second half this year and have given up at least 14 points four times over the final 30 minutes of games.
“It’s all a mentality thing,” Baker said. “We’ve shown ourselves that we can play in the first half, we can play with anybody. The second half, we’ve got to have that mentality of we can’t let it slip away. We have to do the same things we’ve been doing, we have to up our game more and more and more. We can’t just ooze out and hope for the best. It’s all a mentality.”
Baker’s mentality: Keep pushing forward.
There are more games to play.
“In this league, it’s about next week,” Baker said. “I have to go out there and have the same performance.”
This story was originally published October 31, 2019 at 3:58 PM.
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