I Have Some Thoughts to Share About the Dolphins

 

The Dolphins looked good. I didn't get to watch that game live. I watched the Condensced version later. They didn't look great. But they looked like a team making progress.

The defense looked great. I know it's Mike Glennon, but Saquon Barkley can take over a game; that's a thing. It wasn't so much the score, though. It was the way players on every level of the defense made plays. It was Xavien Howard with an interception, Jaelan Phillips with back to back sacks; it was Van Ginkel making plays in the backfield and Jevon Holland being a nightmare.

The offense didn't look good except for four drives. Fits and spurts, you might say. But I'm proud of them. The got the job done in the end, and that's what we're looking for if what we're looking for is marked progress each week from the rookie quarterback and his largely developmental cast of pass catchers.

DeVante Parker has officially annoyed me, though. He had maybe six wow catches on Sunday afternoon. Catches where you're like, “That's what a veteran receiver gives to a rookie quarterback.” And now he's hurt again. What the Hell.

I've already seen some chatter about Tua's eyes on the second touchdown throw. His eyes mattered because DeVante Parker sold that he was open so the defensive backs would pull up, expecting the inside throw to Parker – leaving Isaiah Ford open for an easy throw and score.

The offense looks good-actually when three things are all happening: the passing offense works left to right, Jaylen Waddle is the focal point of the passing game; and other guys are getting open and catching the ball. It seems easy and obvious to say that, and I'm almost annoyed with myself for it, but I noticed it on all four scoring drives. When Waddle is moving the chains and the running game is working (even a little bit, because a little bit is all we got this week), and literally anyone but Waddle will make a catch, the offense looks legitimately good and like this team could make some noise heading into January. The problem is that too many drives end of drops.

I'm impressed and a little proud of Tua, though. He gave Albert Wilson at least three third down throws. Attempts where Wilson was open but either didn't adjust properly or just didn't catch the ball. He had another two or three to Gesicki. These are the dudes he's expecting to move the chains. His veterans. But when they were on, and he never gave up on them, they rewarded his faith in returning to them. The scoring drives in the second half were largely the result of Wilson and Gesicki making the easy catches they'd been dropping all day.

I've been saying privately and maybe in these pieces since Flores arrived in Miami that if he and his offensive staff could make something of Isaiah Ford and/or Mack Hollins, I'd trust them to move mountains. Tua Tagavailoa is creeping into that category of dudes who pass my eye test because Isaiah Ford and Mack Hollins are consistently scoring points.

My primary complaint about him was something like he lacked mental toughness and didn't seem to understand how to play in a left-handed offense. He couldn't read the field post-snap, and he wasn't locating the ball in safe spots. None of those things were the case against the Giants. And the Giants have a good defense. It's that very fact that has me lifting my brows and looking a little closer at the screen when Tua and the offense are on it.

Today, Tua was not the reason the offense only scored 20 points.

Moving forward, they've got to figure out how to get the running game going. Which brings me to what I think might be the weakness of this team. The receivers are underachievers who are starting to learn that hard work does pay off in points and victories. That's a good thing. But the running backs....

Salvon Ahmed's weakness is his vision. Even when he has blocking lanes in front of him, he can't read the field well enough to pick his way through them into the second and third levels of the defense. And I don't know what the deficiency in Myles Gaskin's game is. I don't understand. He'll pop off a seven hard tote where he runs with vision and speed and the kind of footwork that allows him to pick his lanes, cut, and reach top speed with burst. You know, those things you want if you want a one-cut back. And then he'll into his linemen and get stopped in the backfield three plays in a row. I can't say why he doesn't work as a bellcow, except that he lacks power. There's no real impact when he runs into dudes.

But that's not what you want from him. So I don't know. I'm displeased with the backfield. That's what I'm trying to say. It's not working, and it could be working if they'd targeted Javonte Williams or Najee Harris. But whatever – Jaelan Philips is starting to pan out in a big way, so I can't really complain so much.

This team leaves me thinking and feeling so many what-ifs. What if only one or two losses was enough for them to get their heads around the ideas of hard work and preparation? Instead of, you know, 7. But I'm also feeling confident that all of this was to plan. Flores, I keep saying it, strikes me as the kind of guy who is scripting the development of this team.

I don't think it's a coincidence that after Tua is essentially benched for performance and for being a whiney bitch about his finger only to come  into the game to “right the ship” so to speak for the “hurt” Jacoby Brisset – I still think his injuries at the end of every preceding drive were convenient and suggest a sort of scriptedness to the whole affair – and the team hasn't lost sense.

In fact, I don't think it's a coincidence at all that as soon as the DeShawn Watson noise died down Tua and the offense got focused and things started working properly. Part of me thinks that all of that noise and all those distractions were on purpose.

When Flores came to Miami, the motto he brought was, “It takes no talent,” or something to that effect. The idea was that, yes, they were jettisoning talent, but it doesn't take talent to play football. Not at the NFL level. You've already got enough talent. It takes hard work, determination, and preparation. Something that Miami has been famously unable to put on the field since Shula left. I think that the way Flores is coaching and managing this season is to get those losses now – since he couldn't get them in the first season.

Not only is he getting this team losses, he's getting these uber-talented players who believed their own hype about being able to win the Division based on their talent alone punches to the nose.

When I was a kid, my father taught me how to box. The first lesson you learn is to keep your gloves up. No matter how heavy they are, you keep your gloves up. If you don't keep your gloves up, you're going to get punched repeatedly in the face. Now, I learned that lesson quickly – my father was a giant of a man and I was a skinny little stick boy; and that's just something about me: I don't like getting punched in the face.

And I don't think Miami's offense likes getting punched in the face, either. It would have been nice if they'd put their gloves up earlier in the season, but I think they had tolearn the second thing you learn as a boxer first: the fight isn't over until it's over.

The way I learned, if you got knocked down, you got back up again. And just letting him hit you wasn't going to make it stop.

The fight wasn't over until it was over.

Miami has had, for at least twenty years, a very serious fight problem. As in, they don't have any once they face off against an opponent that punches back. The mindset which set the foundation for the tradition in which I was raised holds it that if you want to toughen someone up, if someone cant take a punch, you punch them until they get over it. That's kind of what olde schoole guys are talking about when they complain about the lack of physicality in practice, now. You toughened dudes up to the physicality of the NFL game by repeatedly punching them in the face in practice so they aren't as sensitive about it in practice.

Basically, no one is going to hit you as hard as Dad does. 

Ideally the way you change that culture is to teach guys how good it feels to punch harder than the other guy. But if they've never been punched before, you have a real problem on your hands.

No one wants to get punched the first time.

And no one wants to get punched the second time.

It's a real conundrum if your profession is going out there and getting punched in the face repeatedly for three hours or more.

Miami would have lost that game to the Giants in years past. What I saw was a team that was tired of getting punched in the face. A team that wanted to punch someone else in the face for once. They aren't good at it yet – you don't get good at landing punches because you're strong and you know how to throw them. You have to take them. You have to actually land them. In fact, you have to land more than you receive to get good at landing them.

Which means that first you have to learn how to put your gloves between their punches and your face. Then you can figure out how not to get punched in the face when you throw a punch. Lol.

But Miami have won five in a row by landing more punches than their opponents. That's only two fewer than their losses. Can they go ten in a row and make a run at the Playoffs?

I don't know. But I do know I would love it if they tried.