Reasons for Miami Dolphins’ failures? New one every week
So, who to blame this week? Because there are multiple candidates, you know.
The Miami Dolphins lost to the Detroit Lions 32-21 on Sunday and one supposes you can pin this one on the run defense because those 248 rushing yards the Lions racked up were their most running the football since 1997, when Barry Sanders was in the middle of his 2,000-yard season.
You can also put this on the Dolphins’ pass defense - linebackers, pass rush and secondary - because Detroit quarterback Matt Stafford lit them up. Stafford missed a grand total of four passes in his 22 attempts. He threw two touchdown passes but almost casually picked out one open receiver after another all game long.
“It didn’t seem like he got out of rhythm,” Dolphins coach Adam Gase said. “That was really the No. 1 thing we were talking about all week, and that guy, if you give him time and he doesn’t feel the pressure up front and we’re not tight enough in coverage, you’re going to have problems.”
The Dolphins had problems. And you can count Gase’s offense among them. No, it wasn’t a bad outing for quarterback Brock Osweiler and the boys on that side of the ball. They scored three touchdowns, which two or three weeks ago would have qualified as an explosion of points.
The problem is, as many said, it wasn’t bad but it also wasn’t good. It certainly wasn’t good enough.
“I don’t care about stats,” said Osweiler, who threw two touchdowns and had a 114.9 quarterback rating this game. “I don’t care about stats at all. The only thing I care about is wins and losses, and so when we win, it’s a great day. When we lose, it’s a bad day, and it’s really that simple for me.
“I think there’s a lot of people that get into passer ratings and third-down efficiency and red zone, and obviously those things matter at the end of the day. But the biggest stat is wins and losses in this league in my opinion, and today we lost and we didn’t do enough on offense to put our team in a position to win the game.”
And in all of this we can see the overarching problem these Dolphins have right now: They don’t have an identity. They don’t do anything exceptionally well with consistency.
They don’t have anything they can rely on game after game.
What they have is the ability to one week run the football as they did last week against Chicago, with 101 yards from Frank Gore.
This week Gore gained 29 yards.
When Ryan Tannehill was healthy, the Dolphins got good performances from him against Tennessee and Oakland. And stinkers against New England and Cincinnati.
The defense has been on a roller coaster as well. We saw signs of trouble in the run defense against New England and last week against Chicago before the the problem escalated Sunday against Detroit.
The other games? Fine.
The pass defense was good against Tennessee and Cincinnati (more or less).
The other games? Not good.
So what do the Dolphins do really well?
Like, practically all the time?
What can they count on? What do they know, that they know, that they know is going to work, even when times are tough? Especially, I might add, when times are tough?
Well, there’s ...
Yeah, nothing so far.
And while this team doesn’t have an amazing run game, or a scary pass rush, or an impenetrable run defense it can always rely on, it does have problems here and there that show up at the most inopportune times.
It’s like the Dolphins are a little boat that looks sturdy until it gets on the water and one trip it has a leak over here and, when that’s plugged, the next trip it has one over there.
This game, again, it was the run defense. The Lions started this game 23rd in the NFL running the football. And yet, there was Kerryon Johnson gaining 71 yards on one play. And there was LeGarrette Blount prancing into the end zone untouched on a 2-yard touchdown.
“There’s no way you could have told me that would be something that would happen today,” defensive end Cameron Wake said. “I’m pretty sure, I don’t know the stats either, but that hasn’t been something we’ve encountered in the past this season and maybe if you probably look back to last season before you find something like that or numbers like that.
“If it was a recurring thing, then I’d be a little nervous. But it’s not. So it has to be miscommunication, out of position, wrong fit, whatever it is. That’s the only way I can explain without seeing the tape; but at the same time, as frustrating as that is, that means it’s very easily fixable.”
Raise your hand if you’ve heard a Dolphins player or coach say after a loss that stuff is fixable.
I have.
And the truth is, that problem often gets fixed. It does.
But just as often, something else breaks down.
And when that gets fixed, it’s something else. And there’s never anything that just works 80 or 90 percent of the time with this franchise. There’s nothing the Dolphins can tell you will usually work -- not the pass rush with Robert Quinn and Wake and others, not the offensive line that’s good one week, bad the next, not anything.
Not the coaching, either, by the way.
And you wonder why, with the exception of two years in 2008 and 2016, this team has lost as often as it won? Because it’s up and down and up and down.
Give them credit, when stuff breaks down, Dolphins people raise their hands and tell you it’s their fault. But that’s about the only thing that happens with any consistency.
“We have a lot of work to do, but we have a lot of time, as well,” Wake said. “I’m not panicking yet. We’ve got a lot of time but at the same time, we have to make sure we don’t play like this on both sides of the ball. So it’s not an impossible task. I think we’ve shown what we’re capable of, but you’ve got to do it consistently.
“You can’t be up, down, up, down. You’ve got to play every week, play together and start stacking wins so that whenever it comes down the line, Week 13, you’re not saying, ‘Oh, we should have, or I wish we would have.’ You [have to] put yourself in a place so that you don’t have to worry about that.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2018 at 7:13 PM.