Dolphins overcome early deficit, beat Jets to move to 7-7 as playoff push continues
An unusual, unpredictable week in the NFL seeped into the Dolphins’ Week 15 game against the New York Jets, threatening their slim playoff hopes.
And yet, a defense that put forth an uncharacteristic showing in the first half was on the field with a seven-point lead, 1:52 remaining and the chance to preserve a victory in a must-win game for the Dolphins.
To that point, the Jets could only muster 45 total yards past halftime and they only added nine on the decisive drive; New York didn’t pick up a single first down, quarterback Zach Wilson’s fourth-and-10 pass to wide receiver Keelan Cole came 1 yard short of the first-down marker and the Dolphins left Hard Rock Stadium with a 31-24 win.
The victory gives the Dolphins (7-7) their sixth consecutive win after a 1-7 start as they hold tight to a chance at the playoffs. Miami entered Sunday one game back of the seventh and final wild-card spot in the AFC and a loss to the Jets (3-11) would’ve sunk the team’s postseason aspirations by most projections, even if they were able to win the final three games of the regular season.
“It was the game we thought it was going to be, a 60-minute battle against a division opponent,” said coach Brian Flores, whose six-game winning streak is his longest as a head coach. “They were ready. They threw the kitchen sink at us.”
In the Dolphins’ previous five games, the team hadn’t trailed by more than three points but faced a 10-0 deficit at the end of the first quarter.
The Dolphins’ first three possessions totaled just seven yards and a defense that was allowing an average of 11 points during the win streak looked one step behind the Jets’ assortment of trick plays in the first half.
“I think as a team, we were rusty in a lot of areas,” Flores said of his team, which trailed 17-10 at halftime.
Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa struggled for parts of the afternoon without his trusted pass-catcher Jaylen Waddle, who was sidelined by coronavirus protocols. Tagovailoa completed 16-of-27 passes — his lowest completion percentage since Week 8 against the Buffalo Bills — with 196 yards, two touchdowns and two inceptions, which included a pick-six that tied the score at 24 with under eight minutes remaining.
But Tagovailoa was propped by the offense’s best rushing performance of the game, led by Duke Johnson, elevated from the practice squad as a COVID-19 replacement.
The Dolphins ran for a season-high 183 yards and Johnson rushed for a career-high 107 yards and two touchdowns.
“He played well. Definitely gave us a spark,” Flores said of Johnson, a Miami native and University of Miami alum who grew up about 15 minutes from Hard Rock Stadium.
“I think it was just adjustments in the second half for us,” Tagovailoa said. “We just started to look at our matchups more, and then, obviously, with their coverages, they mixed in some man coverages on second-and-long, so we were kind of prepared for that if that ever occurred, but more often than not, they played quarters [coverage]. Sometimes they play [cover-6] and really we just try to run the ball and block primary and have their secondary guys make tackles.”
As the Dolphins offense picked up in the second half — a 1-yard touchdown run by Johnson and a 2-yard touchdown pass to defensive lineman Christian Wilkins gave them a 24-17 lead early in the fourth quarter — the Jets could only put together three first downs in the second half against a defense that sacked Wilson six times. It was the third straight game the Dolphins allowed fewer than 250 yards.
“They kind of switched up their defense a little bit,” Jets center Connor McGovern said. “It wasn’t quite that zero pressure we were expecting. They were bringing a little bit different forms of pressure.”
Tagovailoa and the offense responded to the pick-six with a nine-play, 75-yard drive and Tagovailoa found wide receiver DeVante Parker for the 11-yard, go-ahead touchdown. An inability to run out the game clock gave the ball back to the Jets but the defense was more than capable of finishing the job.
The game, in a sense, was a microcosm of the entire week, full of changes and shifts that tested the Dolphins’ resolve and ability to adjust. The team played without Wadle or rookie safety Jevon Holland and Tagovailoa had arguably his worst outing since the start of the winning streak.
“Bye week is obviously good to get off your feet and things like that,” Wilkins said, “but we definitely started off – we were just shaking off the rust, I guess, and we did a good job of making adjustments and everybody just stuck with it. We dug ourselves in a little bit of a hole, but that’s what’s good about this team. We always just stick together and just try to get better.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2021 at 4:19 PM.
