Hill rips Pats’ fan behavior. A Patriot downplays Tua impact. And more insight from Game 2
A six-pack of reaction, on various notable topics, in the aftermath of the Dolphins’ 24-17 win at the New England Patriots on Sunday:
▪ Boston fans have been criticized, through the years, for unleashing personal or profane attacks toward opposing players during games. Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill was apparently the latest target of that derision.
Hill waived goodbye to Patriots fans late in the game Sunday and said that “felt tremendous, man.”
Why so?
“Those fans are some of the worst fans in the NFL and I’m going to stand on that. They are real nasty ... So yeah, it felt great to wave goodbye to the fans and I’ll do it again. Bye.”
▪ Even tough Tua Tagovailoa is 5-0 against Bill Belichick, at least one Patriots player wasn’t too impressed.
“He doesn’t do anything special against us,” defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr. said, while acknowledging that Tagovailoa is a good quarterback.
Tagovailoa completed 21 of 30 passes for 249 yards, which included one touchdown pass and one interception. He had a 92.2 passer rating. His 102.9 rating for the season is seventh in the league through two weeks, entering the two games Monday night.
▪ Patriots players — and two Dolphins — who were involved in the peculiar final New England offensive play weighed in afterward.
To recap:
The Dolphins pressured quarterback Mac Jones on a fourth-and-3, and he hit Mike Gesicki on a pass that was short of the first-down line. As Justin Bethel was tackling him, Gesicki lateraled to guard Cole Strange, who was stopped by Jevon Holland and Andrew Van Ginkel, who wisely tugged on the ball.
After a replay review, it was ruled that Strange did not make a first down. The Dolphins took over and kneeled to run out the clock.
Here’s how Gesicki — the former Dolphins tight end — described it: “I felt like I came back to it, so I had a feeling I was short. I also was on their sideline and heard people cheering as if it was short, so right then and there, I was like, ‘I can’t go down with the ball.’
“I knew I could toss it back to somebody, and I just saw one of the biggest people on the field in our offensive line, and it ended up being Cole. I thought we had it, but unfortunately, we didn’t.”
The 6-5, 310-pound Strange said: “I caught it, ran it, and I didn’t get it. I didn’t make a first down, so that’s all there is to it.”
Van Ginkel’s take: “I kind of went for the ball. I should have just tried knocking him back, but obviously it was a great play to get the stop and won the game off that.”
Holland said when he was trying to tackle Strange, he thought “This guy is heavy!”
▪ Van Ginkel, who played inside linebacker in the opener, made a big impact playing outside linebacker (his more natural position) while filling in for injured Jaelan Phillips on Sunday. No wonder defensive coordinator Vic Fangio called Van Ginkel when the linebacker was a free agent and implored him to return.
“Van Ginkel probably knows the defense better than anyone because of the multiplicity,” coach McDaniel said. “For him to be able to come in — and not just play but be an impactful force says everything about him … I figured he’d have a pretty good game. He’s a really good player.”
▪ The Patriots had the most creative special teams play of the early season when Brenden Schooler ran on the field and blocked Jason Sanders’ 49-yard field goal.
Schooler went unblocked on the play; Christian Wilkins was the nearest Dolphin.
“It was a really cool schematic adjustment by the Patriots,” McDaniel said. “Hats off to them. [Dolphins special teams coach] Danny [Crossman] was on it and knew that we needed to adjust the snap count. They tried to do the same thing on the last field goal that we missed. He wasn’t an impact on that play because we made the appropriate adjustments. But that was a great design. They kind of used one of the motions that we use on offense all the time. Hadn’t seen that before. So that was a great job by them.”
▪ How did the defense improve so much from Week 1 to Week 2?
Wilkins said it was combination of schematic/strategic changes and just playing better:
Wilkins said Zach Sieler “hit us with some real [expletive] before the game. Message received. When he does talk, we listen. We knew we had to play better. You want to be known as an intimidating front.”
Holland said the difference from Week 1 is “we hit the details. We emphasized details. When you miss details, that’s when chaos happens.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2023 at 2:31 PM.
