Tuesday Afternoon Hair of the Dog - Did You Guys Know There was a Game Last Night?

 

What is going on with this Ravens team, and why does it have to be like this?

I was so ready to start rooting against them after the way the entire team comported itself against Denver. That's probably not fair, because it was really only three pays and the decisions made by three people that got the kibosh from me. And none of them was Lamar Jackson.

Maybe I should just be a Lamar fan. That way I can limit my proximity to Baltimore and Jim Harbaugh.

So let's talk about the game and then try to cure my hangover by diving back into yesterday's thoughts.

I thought this game was over in the third quarter.

I was telling my girlfriend that a blowout Colts victory wouldn't be fun for me. I wanted to see the Colts win, but I wanted the Ravens to at least put up a fight. Through three quarters, it didn't look like they were going to. Then she went and had a cigarette and the game was tied and we were both kind of stunned.

The Colts went into a Prevent defense in the fourth quarter and Overtime, and Lamar Jackson made them pay.

Man, talk about a guy rising up to the moment. It's common for football fans to say that one player can't do it all. Didn't Gisele say of the Buccaneers last year – or was the the Patriots his final season? – that Tom couldn't throw it and catch it too? I know Jackson didn't catch all 400 of his throwing yards last night. He didn't catch any of them. But talk about a guy who can't shoot straight killing a defense in the air.

And let's be real – he couldn't shoot straight in the first half.

Streaky. I called him as streaky as Cam Newton. Which is maybe not a fair comparison on my part – it definitely seems lazy and racially motivated. Really it just shows my overall quarterback ignorance. I'm not sure I know any other streaky QBs who are also former MVPs and who can also kill you on the ground? Mike Vick? See, seems racial. I didn't watch Steve Young or Warren Moon (ugh, I did it again) or... Johnny Unitas? I really don't have that wide a mobile-quarterback repertoire.

I should fix that – unless the problem has been the Jon Grudens of the past.

The Gruden news felt like it hit the Colts as hard as it did ESPN.

Actually – I feel like I have more to say about the halftime report than I do the actual game up to that point. (I know I've skipped over it, I'm just saying.) Am I the only person that saw Adam Schefter hold out his hand to try to get Booger to stop talking while he was on an exceptionally eloquent, inspiring, and frankly beautiful flow of his feelings regarding Gruden and men (and women) like him in the League? Did you hear Suzy Kolber shout his name to get Schefter to shut up when he was upstaging Booger? And then did you see that Schefter tweeted out the Interim Coach decision without crediting her for breaking it – when she broke it to him on the air?

What a dirtbag that guy is.

He creates the Aaron Rodgers situation on Draft Day, and now this. The bad is coming for Schefter. I don't like to wish bad on anyone, but it's coming for him. This kind of behavior catches up with you.

I wish I could say that I didn't think the Ravens were going to get the scores needed to tie the game up. The Colts had been so good against the run and kept Lamar Jackson pinned in the pocket for three quarters. But it looked like all that effort caught up to them when their offense couldn't score more than 3 points in the fourth.

And the Ravens winning the call looked like a foregone conclusion. Even Wentz looked crushed and hopeless after losing the toss.

And, as it turns out, it was.

Ravens march easily down the field and cap the game off with a touchdown.

But I really haven't given enough credit to Lamar Jackson.

Or talked about how Frank Reich choked on the final drive of the game.

It's one thing to win a game. It's one thing to beat a defeated opponent. It's another to find Mark Andrews over and over and over for chunk plays and to keep going back to Hollywood Brown no matter how many times he drops open and catchable passes.

Have I written about Calais Campbell yet in these hallowed pages yet?

Calais Campbell ended Tannehill's career with the Dolphins. It was the crown of his helmet that ruptured Tannehill's knee. It was he who forced me to watch Matt Moore end Miami's best season since 2008.

I have harbored a lot of negative emotion for Calais Campbell over the years.

I still think that was an ugly and deliberate shot at Tannehill's knee. But Rich Eisen has done yeoman's work in repairing my respect for the man. But I have to keep reminding myself that one event in a man's life can't define him forever. And Calais Campbell put that game on his back. Patrick Queen was a part of it. Don't get me wrong – the whole team stepped up in the fourth. Even Anthony Averett, who had been picked on all night, contributed at the end.

But it was Calais that blocked that field goal. The eighth of his career. Did I hear right that no one has more than five before that? That's ATG stuff, right there.

The rush of blocking a kick– but especially a field goal – is unlike anything in football. I blocked a bunch of them in middle school. I was too small and too fast and could get through the line at the guard-center gap.

I said I thought the Ravens were done in the third quarter. The Colts really were after that block.

And what was going on with the Colt's kicker situation? Was it the punter attempting those kicks? Was the kicker hurt?

I think everyone watching that game got confused when they had the initial miss-penalty-kicker-swap-hit in the first. Oh well.

The whole time I was watching that game, I was thinking that the Dolphins might be alright after all. The bottom 75% of the AFC is just as bad as Miami right now. Which is how it should be.

I praise parity too much, too often, but this is the goal. You want a 1-4 team to feel “still in it”.

Switching Gears

Do we not think that coaches and front office executives get attached to the players they draft and sign directly out of college? The Dolphins are determined to make DeVante Parker a star in this League. When really what they should have done is dumped his ass like a hot rock and targeted AJ Green before he could get to Arizona and widen the gap further between that young quarterback and the Dolphins'.

Instead what they did is doubled down on Parker's hamstrings – and his hamstrings have done what they do every year and rested on the bench during gutty losses where he could and should be making a difference as the difference-maker he was drafted six years ago to be.

But I get in my feelings when I think about DeVante Parker.

Dolphins fans act like first round busts are a new kind of disappointment from this organization. Have they hit on a first round pick since Marino?

Jake Long, you start to say, but his career was cut in half by shoulder and knee injuries. And then I'll wait.

Tannehill is playing at the same level he played for Miami all these years, but winning in Tennessee now. Charles Harris is finally having his breakout year, and Dion Jones is out of the League after spending time with Seattle.

The thing is, most teams don't hit on most of their first round picks. I was looking through Ron Wolf's draft history. You know in ten years he never drafted a Hall of Famer? I think he's got a gold jacket himself, but never drafted anyone who wears one.

It's almost like the NFL fraternity know what good is, and the fans don't, when it comes to a General Manager.

I mean, just look at Jerry Jones. Everybody in the universe knows his struggles as GM. His QB isn't a first round pick – neither was the one before that, by the way. Everyone thought he was insane for taking a running back with a One, then trading for someone else's Number One receiver with a One. Then he lets all of his corners walk. Keeps drafting high upside linebackers and wide receivers with speed.... And look at the Cowboys this season. Legitimately, Stephen Jones in the sidecar role has done a phenomenal job. (God, I wish I were Photoshop funny, I would totally have a picture of the two of them riding tandem in motorcycle and sidecar.)

We know the Cowboys have suffered the last twenty years because of Jerry's attachment to his players.

He runs his team like a family. If he decides you're in the family, it's almost impossible to get cut from the team for on-field performance reasons. I can only name two, because I am not a prolific historian of the Cowboys. I don't particularly like this team, but I find the similarities in their struggles – remember yesterday I was telling you the Dolphins think they're on the same level as the Cowboys vis-a-vis Super Bowl legacies:

Dez and Wade Phillips.

More even than that, though - I feel like coaches hate it even more than fans do when a player goes to another team and flourishes. Billionaires, front office executives, and coaches are men and women at the tops of their professions.

Like Matt Nagy and Kyle Shanahan, sometimes these men and women make promises to their players – or just to themselves – that they're going to stick behind someone no matter what. When you tell yourself you're going to support someone and that's going to make them flourish, you can't also drop that person like a hot rock after they don't develop in three years. Even if it costs you your job, sometimes.

The NFL is an emotion- and relationship-driven economy. I can't blame coaches for not giving up on players. How can they have any credibility if they give up on guys?

Look at those same Cowboys. Last year, the defense is garbage. This year, Dan Quinn, a Falcons castoff, has Keanu Neal (a Falcons bust) playing like the centerpiece of a very good defense. I mean they cut Jaelen Smith because of him.

This is kind of why Dolphins fans are upset at Brian Flores. There are a lot of indicators he doesn't believe in Tua Tagovailoa. His words say he does, but if all the actions of the team are actions of its head coach, it seems like there's a disconnect between Flores and Tua.

Unless the disconnect is between ownership and Flores. Then everything is broken.

We'll see. They should have taken one of the quarterbacks in this class instead of Waddle or Phillips. Neither has been an impact player thus far in the season, and if they could have had a legitimate quarterback competition in camp, we could be talking as fans about at least our quarterback actually won the competition in camp.

Because Tua hasn't done that. He's been handed the keys to the car. A car that the previous quarterback(s) were able to keep respectable through 14 weeks of the season. Tua hasn't been able to do that so far.

Would I rather have Fields right now? You bet your ass I would. Hyper-extended knee and all.

But this, as I've repeatedly said, is indicative of a change in plan. Either a misevaluation of the roster by the front office and coaching staff – or an owner who thinks that if he looks like he's doing something, the team will get better on its own. That's how the real estate business works – we talked about it yesterday and you remember, so I'm not going back.

But it's not how the NFL works.

Every season is a new season. Every team has to learn how to play together and to win every season.

Miami hasn't learned how to win yet.

In that same post, I said that if I were Brian Flores I would have walked into Stephen Ross's office yesterday with my resignation letter in-hand. I'd slap it on his desk, effective date the end of the Dolphins' season. And I'd force a conversation about the plan moving forward: Either we're going to draft and develop and we're going to take the lumps and losses that come along the way – or I'm out.

No more undermining me and my roster decisions with leaks and rumors to the press about quarterbacks on other teams. No more Owner Picks. We either do it my way and we get to the five year mark and re-evaluate where we are moving forward, or I'm out now.

I don't rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

But that's also why I'm not currently employed and don't have anyone desperate to go to bat for me.

That's probably not true.

The owner's job is to make the players happy with the coach. Not to side with them against him or her.

Flores is too good a coach, has too much integrity, has worked too hard to climb from the bottom of the organization to the top of another, has earned too much of the rest of the League's respect as a man, a coach, and a leader to let Ross ruin his career by having the whole world questioning the job he's doing.

While I'm revisiting yesterday: Joe Brady? Really? Dolphins fans want the offensive coordinator for the Panthers. The same Panthers team whose only offense is feeding the ball to DJ Moore and Sam Darnold rushing for TDs? I actually like the Panthers and what they've done through five weeks. But Joe Brady hasn't impressed literally anyone in the League – how has he impressed Dolphins fans by being anything other than white? You know he's not Tom, right? Wrong Brady.

Panthers fans want Joe Brady canned. Is there any more resounding an indictment of a fanbase than that they would clamor for another team's trash just because their coach is black?

I find that extremely problematic. Especially given the owner's penchant for hanging out with people that would make Jon Gruden look like a Saint.

And that feels like all I've got to say today. I tried to keep this one to topics, at least. Even though I'm sure they bled together more maybe than another writer would like.

I'm going to revisit the other topics I've promised to touch on later in the week. I might need a break from talking at you about football for the rest of the day, though. I'm in my feelings about a lot of things, and questioning the NFL about a lot of others. I want to wait for the Gruden fallout to settle before I burn him or anyone else in effigy for it all.

I'm not feeling the best about my comparisons of Ross to Football Team owner Dan Snyder. Largely because I hope I'm wrong. But I'm also thinking about Richie Incognito's sexual misconduct (to say nothing of his professional misconduct) during his time in Miami. And I'm thinking about how many Universities got in trouble about a decade ago for providing their players with prostitutes – whether the women were willing or otherwise. And I'm thinking about Deshaun Watson being involved in a prostitution ring that includes at least 22 women. And I'm thinking about how the owner has to be involved or he would get rid of this guy last week, not just today.

And none of that make me think well of Stephen Ross.

Not that I was especially willing to think well of him before.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate this thing we have going. I'll be back soon, I'm sure.