Stampede! Miami Dolphins awful, Tagovailoa shaky in season-ending loss to Bills
In a perverse way, the Buffalo Bills might have done the Miami Dolphins a favor Sunday.
They smoked the Dolphins in the first half Sunday to spare them the embarrassment of a 60-minute drubbing in the playoffs.
The Dolphins picked the worst possible time to play their worst game of the year, blown out by the Bills 56-26 on Sunday to put their postseason hopes on life support.
The Dolphins loss, combined with wins by the Browns, Ravens and Colts Sunday, means they have missed the playoffs with 10 wins for the third time in franchise history. If one of those teams had lost Sunday, the Dolphins would be right back in Buffalo next weekend for the Wild Card round.
And get this: For as lopsided the score Sunday, the Bills called off the dogs at halftime.
“We’re disappointed in our performance today,” said Dolphins coach Brian Flores, who finishes his second season with a 10-6 record. “ ... [It] wasn’t good enough in any phase.”
That’s true. The Dolphins gave up a touchdown on offense, defense and special teams Sunday. And the Bills romped without really even trying. They sat a number of key starters.
And after Josh Allen lit up the Dolphins for three touchdown passes in the first half, he was a spectator the rest of the way.
He watched the backups largely out-play Miami’s starters.
The Bills outscored the Dolphins 28-20 in the second half.
Why? Because Tua Tagovailoa had the worst game, by far, his his career. With Ryan Fitzpatrick unavailable due to COVID-19, Tagovailoa knew he had no safety net.
He needed one. The rookie threw three second-half interceptions — one more than he had all season entering the game.
One of those picks went to Josh Norman, who returned it for a touchdown after DeVante Parker fell down on his route.
It should be said that his stats — 35 of 58 for 361 yards, a garbage-time touchdown to Malcolm Perry and those three picks — didn’t reflect a bunch of drops, including multiple by Isaiah Ford.
But Tagovailoa was part of the problem and not the solution.
And it capped a brutal closing six-start stretch that included two benchings and Sunday’s debacle.
Maybe Mike Tannenbaum, who ran this team for much of the last decade, was onto something. Maybe the Dolphins take a close look at the top quarterbacks in the draft, including Justin Fields, who just had a fantastic game in the national semifinal.
The Dolphins own the third pick in April, and the draft seems to have three high-level quarterbacks in Fields, Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson.
“I don’t have control over any of those things,” Tagovailoa said, when asked if expects to be the team’s starter next season. “I think all I can do is continue to grow and continue to get better. All offseason, get with a good amount of the guys and see what we can do from there, going into next year.”
Did Tagovailoa regress throughout the course of the season?
The stats suggest he did. Over his final six starts, which include two benchings, he threw six touchdowns, five interceptions and averaged 6.1 yards per pass for an ugly rating of 80.6.
“We didn’t play well as a team,” Flores said. “We didn’t coach it well, we didn’t play well. I’m not going to sit here and put it on one player. It’s a team effort. We could have blocked it better. ... There’s a lot of things [at play] here. And that includes Tua. He’s got to play better. But everyone’s part of that. He’s played well during the course of the season. We as a team have played well. But we didn’t have it today.”
The Dolphins were simply non competitive Sunday after like the third possession of the game.
They led 3-0 after the first quarter, but that Jason Sanders field goal happened because of a nimble sideline interception by Byron Jones.
Then, the onslaught. Twenty eight points in 11 minutes, 9 seconds for Buffalo, including three touchdown passes by Allen — two to Isaiah McKenzie — and an 84-yard punt return for a score by McKenzie.
Allen finished the half in which many believed he wouldn’t even play 18 of 26 for 224 yards and three touchdowns. Nik Needham had a particularly rough go of it, giving up McKenzie’s two scores.
But Jones also had his issues. John Brown roasted him for a 32-yard score in a two-minute situation.
Getting torn apart by Allen is unfortunate, but not surprising. He’s one of the best 10 players in the world, regardless of position. But even his backup Matt Barkley went for 164 yards and a touchdown on just 13 attempts Sunday.
That was out of character for the Dolphins’ defense, which gave up the most points since the Ravens hung 59 on them in the 2019 opener.
What wasn’t out of character: An uneven and uninspiring offensive performance which will raise all kinds of questions about Chan Gailey’s future with the organization.
Both Gailey, who turns 69 Tuesday, and Flores have declined to commit to his return as offensive coordinator in 2021, and the sense from the outside is Tagovailoa could benefit from a fresh perspective.
“I think Tua made a lot of improvement over the course of the year under Chan’s tutelage,” Flores said. “We’re all disappointed [but] I think Tua has made a lot of improvement over the course of the year. We’ll just try to continue to make those improvements.”
This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 4:17 PM.
