The Dolphins overcame a 1-3 start in 2020. Is another turnaround on the way?
If there’s any solace the Dolphins can possibly take in their 1-3 start to the 2021 season, it’s that they were in the same position last year and were able to overcome it, winning five games in a row and finishing 10-6.
Of course, the 2021 season is not the 2020 season, as coach Brian Flores said Wednesday.
Last year was a stepping-stone in a rebuild with one of the youngest rosters in the NFL and a first-round pick at quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, many hoped — and still do — will take the mantle as the face of the franchise.
This season was supposed to be the culmination of that rebuild, a breakthrough year with Tagovailoa under center and a playoff appearance for the first time since the 2016 season.
Those plans, for now, have been derailed. Tagovailoa has missed nearly three games with fractured ribs. An offense led by backup Jacoby Brissett has regressed, particularly along the offensive line, and a defense supposed to be among the NFL’s best has also taken a step back.
Flores and multiple players said this week that they won’t look back much at the rebound from last season’s slow start as they attempt to string wins together, starting with Sunday on the road against the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“Every year you’re trying to just find the right formula,” Flores said Monday, “or put the right pieces together on each team every year, and try to make them fit in a way that allows you to play good football. That’s every year. Every year is a little bit different.”
So far, the Dolphins’ ingredients in 2021 haven’t made for a digestible dish, with some issues carrying over from last year and others unexpected. Through four games of the 2020 season, the Dolphins had allowed 123.3 rushing yards. In 2021, the defense is allowing 136.8, which ranks 27nd in the NFL. The unit has played mostly without defensive tackle Raekwon Davis, who could make his return Sunday from a knee injury sustained in Week 1, but similar problems against the run were prevalent in 2020 when Davis played in all 16 games.
Maybe more concerning is the defense’s issues on third down, going from the best unit in such situations in 2020 to the second-worst in 2021, allowing opponents to convert 54.2 percent of opportunities, only better than the Washington Football Team.
“I’m not going to say it was a key or that it was a certain thing that happened,” linebacker Jerome Baker said Thursday of the 2020 turnaround. “I think it’s one of those things where we have guys that want to make the play, they want to make the interception, they want to make the tackle. But in this defense, that’s truly not what it is. It’s about doing your job. If that’s setting the edge, if that’s filling the block, if that’s taking on double-teams, whatever it is. If that’s knowing your leverage on a third down coverage, I think that’s the thing that we just need to focus on what our individual task is.
“It will work out for us. And that goes for pretty much the whole team — offense, defense and special teams. If we just do our job, the plays are going to come to us and the games will start going our way. I think that’s the main thing. That’s the sauce. It sounds simple, but that truly is the recipe for it.”
On offense, Brissett hasn’t been able to orchestrate any consistency with Tagovailoa sidelined, bringing questions about everything from his willingness to throw the ball downfield to Flores’ decision to appoint co-offensive coordinators and shroud the play-caller structure in mystery.
In Ryan Fitzpatrick last season, the Dolphins had a veteran signal-caller who was willing to take chances, for better or worse. And it was often to the team’s detriment, with five interceptions and a dead-even turnover differential after four games (The team had a plus-10 turnover differential the rest of the season; the defense had seven games with more than one takeaway during the next 12 matchups).
With Brissett, the Dolphins have a quarterback who has been among the least aggressive quarterbacks in the league in terms of throwing downfield. Tagovailoa can return from IR as early as Oct. 17 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, meaning Brissett will start for at least one more game Sunday. But even Tagovailoa’s return might not be enough to significantly boost an offense that hasn’t been able to effectively run or throw the ball through four games.
If the Dolphins do end a three-game losing streak and get their first win in a month on Sunday, it will come under circumstances that mirror 2020 and against a familiar face. Last season, the Dolphins traveled to San Francisco to face the 49ers as nine-point underdogs and left with a convincing 43-17 win in their most complete performance to date. They enter their Week 5 game against Tampa Bay as 10-point underdogs but having experienced recent success against quarterback Tom Brady, dating to his time with the New England Patriots. The Dolphins are 3-3 in their last six meetings against Brady, all with New England.
But as Flores said, the past isn’t the present That doesn’t mean the Dolphins wouldn’t like their future to replicate it.
“Every year the team is new and it’s a different team,” tight end Durham Smythe said Thursday. “At the same time, I think last year, what happened was we were doing the same things but things started to click. Once they did, we went on a little bit of a run and being on a team that did something like that, we know it’s possible. ... If we can be more on top of things and more consistent, things will start to click and hopefully we can go on a little bit of a run.”
This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 6:00 PM.
