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Each Miami Dolphins game this season has been felt as a scene in a movie about a space disaster or nuclear accident. The ball is broken and before you know what's going on, the bells are ringing: the line players are misplaced or an opposing player goes aimlessly towards a place he is not supposed to be, or the end zone, nor the Miami quarterback. A dolphin player presents himself as an authority figure, grabbing a megaphone to emphasize that everything is under control and urging everyone to remain calm. But he was soon dead, killed by the obvious disaster he was trying to make believe he did not exist. The football experience in Miami is the same for virtually every game. The spacecraft calculator does not work properly during the first descent; the airlock will not close properly during the second descent; an oxygen tank explodes in the third plane. Watching this happen at home allows us to consider the structural causes of the disaster. For players, however, there is not enough time for thorough critical reflection. The alarm bells are ringing and they are trying to survive.
The Dolphins allowed 1,498 yards in three weeks, a record in the history of the NFL. They scored a touchdown in three games. they allowed 16. They scored only 16 points in total; no other team this season has less than 33. She has awarded 133 points. No other team gave more than 94 points. The minus-117 points differential in Miami is the worst of all time in three weeks. The Jets, another football chess factory, have the second-worst differential with under 37. Miami is three times worse. The Dolphins are close to scoring the lowest points of any team since the NFL moved to a 16-game regular season, beating a 1992 record. on the pace to allow the greatest number of points of all teams in history, to score a record in 1981. It seems unfathomable that a team could break decades-old records to become the worst opponent and the worst in defense. Dolphins have a legitimate chance.
Of course, this is partly intentional. Like so many marine mammals in aquariums around the world, dolphins are in the aquarium. Miami overwhelmingly surpassed expectations last year by scoring 7-1 in the matches at one score and 0-8 in the games decided by several scores. Despite finishing 26th overall and 27 points, the playoffs were almost won. Some front-offices may have considered this exciting and were built around quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Miami thought it was disappointing to be such a shitty team without getting any material reward for its gloom. The Dolphins removed everything that was valuable: they made no effort to sign or write a quality QB, but let former Pro Bowler players Robert Quinn, Cameron Wake and Frank Gore walk around. independent agency (and lost a fourth, Josh Sitton, retired). and did not make remarkable dedications outside of the season. They changed coaches by bringing in Brian Flores, the Patriots' long-time assistant, who had never worked as a coordinator before. Disassembly continued in the season. Since the start of training camp, Miami has traded two of its top three players, Laremy Tunsil and Minkah Fitzpatrick, for future playoff selections. There is no danger of going 7-9 this time.
In the long run, this strategy is sound. I saw Tua Tagovailoa play football and I would gladly have my team at 0-16 to guarantee that it will become his quarterback of the future. The wealth of other choices offered by dolphins in exchange for spare parts should allow them to get into the race in a few years.
In the short term, however, life is dark. According to Pro Football Focus, a single receiver of dolphins and wide receiver, Preston Williams, is "above average," seven of them ranking in the "average," 10 to "below average" and four to the "mediocre". Only five of the 53 players list is made up of former first-round picks. One of them, quarterback Josh Rosen, had a performance so mediocre that the Cardinals traded it for a fifth in April; Taco Charlton, another defensive end, was cut by the Cowboys last week after just two seasons in the NFL. The veterans on the list would be trying to abandon the ship instead of losing a year of their career on this team.
I am fascinated by these dolphins. No bad-position group can sink a football team so completely. Even teams that have a bad quarter player, the most important position in the sport, are able to succeed. Sometimes they even win the Super Bowl! Being this bad requires total incompetence on the scale of the team. I have reviewed each game of the Dolphins this season and selected the ones that best demonstrated the failures of each group of positions in an attempt to illustrate Miami's failure. These dolphins are a symphony of sucking of 11 men.
Offensive line
A bad offensive line aggravates bad players with every other offensive position. With a bad line, the bad quarters can not think before throwing, the bad riders rush into the human walls, and the bad receivers do not have time to open. Because all these things happen, the punt team plays all four games (except in case of rotation) and the defense is forced to stay on the field about 40 minutes per game.
It is therefore logical that Miami has by far the worst offensive line in the league, ravaged by attrition, trade and injury. PFF ranks the Dolphins at the bottom of the league in all categories, Miami coming in last place by blocking the passes and blocking the races. Let me demonstrate the complete failure of the Dolphins line with a piece of Sunday's 31-6 loss to the Cowboys. On this piece, the Cowboys do not blitz; they send only four smugglers. Three of them are going to the quarterback. About 2.5 seconds after Rosen touched the ball, former Dolphins star Robert Quinn drags him to the ground.
The most flagrant mistake here comes from rookie Michael Deiter, who plays the left tackle. Deiter should not play on the left. Although he played college at university, he told the press, after being recruited, that he was more comfortable playing "in the middle of three-thirds". After Sunday's game, he said, "I really did not expect to play on the left. He was playing nonetheless, in part because of an injury to the left tackle Jesse Davis.
It should be noted that Davis as well should not play against the southpaw – he started guarding the Dolphins right last year, but was suddenly asked to change sides and positions after Miami traded the left bull at the start, Tunsil, to Houston in August . ("It will be difficult to make the transition in about a week," said Davis at the team's website.) The Dolphins acquired the left tackle Julie's Davenport in Tunsil's trade, but Davenport suffered a knee hyperextended at training and is injured. Reserve. So, Deiter is.
Deiter's mission is to arrest Quinn, who aligns particularly broadly in a situation of obvious precipitation. Unsurprisingly, a novice indoor lineman struggles to keep pace with the Pro Bowl's passing rush. Deiter politely asks Quinn to go to the quarterback just to say hello.
However, do not let Deiter's flagrant failure here distract you from the rest of the line. Watch J'Marcus Webb, the good tackle. Before this fall, Webb had played only one game since being eliminated by the Seahawks in 2016; he was cut by the Colts after the training camp this year. Miami signed it after the deal with Tunsil, and after Davenport's injury, he was enrolled in the starter training. It was really bad! Authorized Webb ten 49 snapshots blocking passes against the Cowboys. He is already tied for second place in the NFL in terms of the pressures allowed despite his two games in the first three games.
Demarcus Lawrence, the defensive end of the Cowboys, beat Webb with ease and comedy. He briefly pretended to run outside before rushing over Webb's left shoulder. It's pretty pathetic, but Webb saved himself from this situation by overthrowing Kalen Ballage, who picks up Lawrence long enough to prevent a quick transfer. However, Webb falls while trying to recover. And falling, he removes the legs of the right guard Shaq Calhoun, an unprepared rookie who plays after an injury to Danny Isidora.
So when left-winger Evan Boehm pushes Cowboys defensive tackle Maliek Collins to the right side of the line, there is no one to stop him. Webb is on his ass and took Calhoun with him. Ballage deals with the player that Webb did not block. Collins goes to QB only to discover that he has already been sacked. Let's see everything on All-22 in slo-mo:
It's a circus of failure. Everyone is asking for reinforcements, but they are already dead.
There is no real hope for improvement. On Wednesday, the team announced that Isidora was absent for the season due to a foot injury. The Dolphins will advance from the start of a third round, fifth round, seventh round and two unmarked players. The third player is invited to play out of position, and the team's only natural tackle may well be the NFL's worst offensive lineman.
These are the Maginot dolphins: they will start each game with the defense violating their ill-prepared fortifications, and then it will get worse.
Strategist
It is difficult to classify the quarterbacks of the Dolphins. They often make quality shots that are dropped by incompetent receivers. They also make hideous throws that should be intercepted but somehow incomplete. These are the luckiest and most unlucky quarters on the planet, but when you take everything into account, the statistics tell the story: they are bad.
The Dolphins started the season with Ryan Fitzpatrick as a starter, perhaps hoping for a part of the Fitzmagic he showed at the start of last season with Tampa Bay. Instead, they had the guy who drove the NFL in interception percentage in 2018. Fitz made four choices out of just 52 passes before being benched in Rosen's favor. Here is his worst:
It must be the closest target to any intercepted pass, right? I mean, Fitzpatrick throws the ball from his own 45-yard line. Gilmore corrects him on the 46-yard line, 9 yards from the field. I guess the ball has traveled 2 or 3 meters horizontally. This means that in total the ball flew 10, maybe 11 yards, and yet Fitzpatrick was still removed. An NFL field is as long as the distance between the marble and the post, and Fitzpatrick failed to notice another human being equivalent to half the distance between the marble and the pitcher's mound. What makes the game more blatant is the tight back, Mike Gesicki, who runs unattended just yards from the field.
I watched every shot from Rosen and, honestly, I'm pretty impressed. Or, at least, I'm as impressed as I can by a quarterback who has completed less than half of his attempts and has not touched a touchdown this season yet. I do not want to roast it.
Alas, here is a blow he made against the Patriots and that was so overturned that security can not intercept him, a 30-yard pass reversed by about 7 yards.
Wide receivers
The Patriots eliminated the Dolphins 43-0 in the second week, but Miami should have scored at least seven points. In the fourth quarter, Rosen made two consecutive passes to Jakeem Grant and Preston Williams that should have been touchdowns. Both were dropped:
Grant was a disaster. The Dolphins' defense made just one shutout in the first week against the Ravens, and Grant Grant canceled the punt that followed, meaning the Dolphins did not actually stop. He is 5 feet 7 inches, so he is not an easy target for QB, yet he loses 20% of the passes that hit him in the hands. Miami has just given him a $ 24 million contract over four years.
Williams, a non-traded free agent of this year's class, has been a brilliant flash. The only touchdown race of the year in Miami culminated with three consecutive wins at Williams. The fact that an unprepared rookie is probably the best receiver of the team is revealing: of the six receivers on the list, three were not scored, one in the sixth round and one in the seventh. DeVante Parker was already a first-round pick, but he failed to get the expected result, as Miami hoped.
Running Backs
I know I said I would present a representative piece for each group of positions. However, for the Dolphins halves, I leave with this two-minute session of Kalen Ballage to try to catch some passes out of the backfield. That's right, it's time to mount a fitting montage!
Ballage is perhaps the worst catch-up in football history. He does not know how to manage the routes, he does not know how to catch, and at a given moment of the montage, he ducks out of the way of a football thrown in his direction. Against the Patriots, he swayed a ball directly in the hands of a defender from New England, who returned it for a choice of six.
It only has three out of nine targets this year. It's confusing, as Ballage had 44 catches for 469 yards as a junior at Arizona State. Now, he treats footballs as infomercial actors deal with messy food plates. He did not run well either. He has 17 runs for 22 yards.
Ballage is Miami's replacement behind Kenyan Drake, who was also disappointing. The Dolphins made just two outings on the 10-yard line all season: one ended with two straight downhill laps, and the other with a Drake fumble. (I'm just saying you could do better.) (This is a 2011 Drake joke.) The two men combined to score a total three-game goal, and the team did not still recorded a quick game of 10 yards or more.
Defensive line
The most entertaining match on Miami's defensive line this season was Lamar Jackson's 83-yard pass to Hollywood Brown in the Dolphins' 59-10 loss to the Ravens. The main objective is obviously Minkah Fitzpatrick, who is burned by Brown, but he is no longer on the team. Instead, let's look at the line:
The player on the left side of the Miami line is Avery Moss, who was selected in the fifth round of the 2017 draft by the Giants. Moss played a year in New York and could not find a team during the 2018 season. In this game, he is doing a good job by engaging with Baltimore's left guard until the tackle left Ronnie Stanley hits him on the buttocks. Davon Godchaux, also selected for the fifth round of the draw in 2017, is in the middle of the line. He's not going anywhere. Christian Wilkins, the first-round selection of the Dolphins this season and one of the two national title teams Clemson, is right on the line. Wilkins makes jerky steps and fakes that do not deceive the Ravens, even a little bit. Looks like he's right there.
Jackson launches it in about three seconds, giving Brown enough time to cross the roadway to Miami Beach. But he could have taken as long as he wanted. Moss tries his luck at Jackson while he drops the ball, mainly because the Ravens have forgotten him after knocking him out. I will not have as well angry at the Miami D-line for its horrible game here, because the real sin comes from its coaching staff: rushing three men to third place is a classic football shot that makes the quarterback still has time to launch and finish a pass against a defense too conservative. And even!
Miami is not good either to defend the race. Let's talk about that then!
linebacker
It's really difficult to showcase games in which only part of the defense has a problem. Generally, an unrestrained pass makes it possible to reveal a terrible cover, or a non-existent race defense opens the way to a linebacker who does something stupid. Here are two pieces of defeat Sunday in Dallas in which the Dolphins line is torn apart by the Cowboys offense. Miami linebackers do not know what to do.
On this first game, Dallas opens a huge hole in the Miami front. Linebacker Jerome Baker does not fill him because he's staring at a receiver who is beckoning at the back of the field. Ezekiel Elliott goes through the hole:
On this second play, Dallas opens two Huge holes in the Miami front, one between the guards and a security lane between the left guard and the left tackle. Ideally, these two holes would be filled by the players supporting the line, known as "linebackers". Once again, they can not be found:
Let's go see Jerome for an analysis:
Secondary
The most embarrassing game involving the Dolphins secondary player this season was not even a passing game. It was the first scrimmage match of the season, when Ravens running back Mark Ingram took cornerback Eric Rowe to the grass and then ran 39 yards. The season in Miami has not improved much since.
But the defense of the pass at was absolutely abominable. The Dolphins made 10 touchdowns and only managed one interception. The opposing quarter completes 72% of their passes and has an average of more than 10 yards per attempt. There are eight defensemen for the Dolphins against which the quarterbacks have completed 100% of their passes – and that does not even include cornerback Jomal Wiltz, against whom they have a perfect ranking of 158.3.
So let's go to the other Hit by Hollywood Brown from week 1. This is a play-action pass, and, let's just say, the dolphin bit.
(To be fair, the guy who is also filming bit 22).
The biggest mistake here is made by the free security Bobby McCain. McCain is not a free security by trading: he was a college halfback, a corner in his first three years in the NFL and a half-corner of the outside last year. This season, Flores made the unexpected choice to place McCain safe. It's vague Why This decision was made considering that the highest paid player on the team, Reshad Jones, and the best player, Fitzpatrick, were already safe. But the move has nevertheless been made. Week 1 was McCain's first regular season game in safety as the team's last line of defense.
McCain does not seem to be aware of this on this piece. Even if McCain is a high security player and no other player is willing to defend the deepest part of the field, he aggressively pursues a run that does not happen. In fact, he continues to break in to stop the race when Jackson throws a pass.
This means that the only person who could possibly prevent Brown from reaching the end zone is Eric Rowe, a cornerback shot by the Patriots during the off season. Rowe fails. He is jostled when Brown travels a road in the middle of the field, loses a step on the speedster while returning his hips to the inside. Then he chooses to dive into an all-or-nothing effort to break the pass. Maybe if Rowe had some security help, that would be an acceptable choice, because there would have been another defender out there to clean up his mess. But McCain went to defend the ghosts.
There are so many brutal games here. There was the moment when Xavien Howard made a mistake:
The weather Eric Rowe malfunctioned:
the other Eric Rowe's time went wrong:
And the moment when Walt Aikens went wrong:
I can continue, but I choose to stop. This is not a luxury reserved for these dolphins. They must play 13 other games. The team management would probably prefer to advance quickly in the season, but I can not look away.
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