West Coast Magic: Ryan Fitzpatrick isn’t giving up his starting job without a fight
The Miami Dolphins proved in the season’s first four games that they’re one of the league’s most improved teams.
And now the result is catching up with their performance.
For the second time in three weeks, they went on the road as an underdog and absolutely dismantled the opposition, this time blitzing and bombing the heavily favored San Francisco 49ers 43-17.
The game MVP? The guy half the town wanted benched seven days prior.
Tua Time, delayed again.
There’s no way Brian Flores — who called Sunday’s win the most complete of his short head coaching career— can sit Ryan Fitzpatrick after what he did Sunday:
Complete 22 of 28 passes for 350 yards and three touchdowns. And out-duel the guy who led the 49ers to the Super Bowl just last year.
Not bad for a “placeholder,” as Fitzpatrick described himself before the season.
He knows Tua Tagovailoa is the future.
But if Fitzpatrick keeps playing like he did Sunday, and that future will remain on hold indefinitely.
“The vibe throughout practice, even though we’ve lost a few, there’s been a lot of confidence,” Fitzpatrick said. “This is a team that’s very resilient, [so] this didn’t surprise us at all.”
Perhaps. But it surprised the betting public, which made the Dolphins 9-point road ‘dogs.
The young Dolphins didn’t care.
They are confident because Fitzpatrick is confident. He leads. They follow.
And he was “piped up” all day Sunday — and even on cross-continental the flight Friday.
That’s according to receiver Preston Williams, who on Sunday had his I’m back! game.
Williams finally looked like he did pre-ACL tear 12 months back, setting a career high with 106 yards on four catches after an uneven first four weeks to the season.
How did that breakthrough, which included a 47-yard catch on the game’s opening drive, come about?
By stressing the need to take deep shots all week in meetings and practices.
The message got through.
The Dolphins opened the game with their longest pass play of the season. And then they followed it up with their longest pass play in nearly two years.
Fitzpatrick’s deep completion to Williams that gave Miami an early lead the club would not relinquish.
About an hour, he hooked up with Mike Gesicki on a 70-yard bomb, which was the team’s most explosive passing play since Nov. 25, 2018.
“I felt like we always had the talent,” Williams said. “We just had to execute. We weren’t executing this year or last year. Now we’re figuring it out.”
The Dolphins entered the game solid, but not scary, on offense. They ranked 23rd in yards (347.0 per game), 24th in yards per play (5.4), 20th in passing (240.3), 21st in yards per pass (21).
But Miami was also top 10 in sacks per pass attempt (4.2 percent) and first downs per game (24).
That trend continued Sunday. Even without starting left tackle Austin Jackson, they allowed just two sacks and added another 22 first downs to their season total. Miami out-gained San Francisco by an astounding margin: 436-259.
It’s this simple for Chan Gailey’s offense: When Fitzpatrick plays well, the offense plays well.
And for the third time this year, he played really well.
“Fitz has played well most of the year,” said Dolphins coach Brian Flores. “... Every player in the locker room has had some rough [moments], but he’s been pretty consistent the whole way through.
“We said earlier in the week we feel like he gives us the best chance to win,” Flores added. “I think he played well today. Guys rallied around him and his energy.”
In 2019, the Dolphins needed efforts like that from Fitzpatrick just to keep games close. A year later, when he’s playing at the top of his game, they look like legit playoff contenders.
Another sign of just how far Miami has come: In 2019, the Dolphins were winless through five weeks and had been outscored by 138 points.
One year later, they’re 2-3 — with three road games in the first five — and have outscored their opponents by 23 points. That’s tied with the Bills for the best point differential in the AFC East.
They did the heavy lifting in the first half, which was the best of the Flores era — and the team’s second highest-scoring two quarters in the last two decades. They put up 30 points before halftime — the most since dropping 41 on the Texans in 2015.
The Dolphins put points on the board on six of seven drives, including two Fitzpatrick touchdown passes and three Jason Sanders field goals — the last two set up by interceptions by Bobby McCain and Xavien Howard.
Fitzpatrick was lights out, completing 15 of 20 passes for 251 yards before the break. He threw touchdowns to DeVante Parker and Adam Shaheen. The Dolphins had six scoring drives in a half for just the second time this century.
Jimmy Garoppolo, meanwhile, was absolutely dreadful in his first game back from a high-ankle sprain. Along with his two picks, he misfired on 10 of his 17 passes for 77 yards and no touchdowns (a passer rating of 15.7). He was also sacked three times.
That was enough for 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan to bench him in the second half, going instead with C.J. Beathard.
The backup made a few plays in the second half to make the score closer than it should have been, but ultimately, there was simply no stopping Fitzpatrick and the Dolphins, who put 13 more on the board in the second half to win comfortably.
Now, with an unexpected Week 6 showdown against the spiraling Jets, the Dolphins have a chance to do win back-to-back games for just the third time in the last two seasons.
“There’s a long way to go and we have to start stringing wins together,” Fitzpatrick said. “We need to carry it over.”
This story was originally published October 11, 2020 at 7:09 PM.
