Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Can we skip the last week of the season?

I hope everyone had a wonderful and busy week, too busy to watch Sunday's embarrassing collapse by the Dolphins vs the Detroit Lions.  The Lions scored 17 points in the last 5 minutes to secure a 34-27 victory.

The collapse was a full-team effort, including Miami's receivers Davone Bess and Brandon Marshall suddenly being unable to stay on their feet, as both slipped and slid in the final minutes as Chad Henne tried to force the ball to them through very strong winds.  Of course, the fact that, with the lead and just a few minutes of clock to kill, that the Dolphins chose to throw the ball into the strong winds against the Lions is just bonkers.  The fact that when they had a final chance to score a TD, and they put out a 4-wide set, and I screamed at the TV for them to roll Henne out to the right with the 3 WR side and pull an easy misdirection play, throwing to the left, they just had a simple drop back and read play called, which of course failed miserably.

The Dolphins offensive line is complete SHITE, there's no working around that.  And Chad Henne obviously doesn't have the balls to tell his coaching staff to F*** Off and change the plays at the Line of Scrimmage.  

The Dolphins coaching is the problem here, though.  The fact that they don't recognize that the O-Line is so bad they can't run the plays they call, just about says it all.  Even when the Dolphins were winning this game, it was painfully obvious to me that the big guys up front simply don't have the desire to block anyone or anything, especially at the 'second level'.  

The fans and media won't focus on these mundane things though.  They will focus only on Chad Henne.  This is a situation that will simply play itself out, folks.  Henne isn't going anywhere.  At the moment, he's no Dan Marino.  However, he is a QB with 3 seasons under his belt and a lot of starts.  No team, even one that may have an entirely new front office next year, is going to discard such a player.  

However, one thing is clear from watching the Dolphins this season.  The Defense is good, the Offense sucks.  Who is to blame for this?  Is it the front office for dismantling a very good O-line?  But they assembled the D-line didn't they?  Well, sort of.  The Miami D is so different than the one they chose it's hard to tell.   No one planned to start Paul Soliai, and a lot of effort was put into moving Randy Starks to NT.  A huge contract was given to Will Allen.  The cornerback situation has been all over the place.  We have been taking 5 or 6 safeties to every game.  Linebacker - let's not forget they chose Bobby Carpenter to start the season.  They used their # 1 draft pick on a DE that played about 10 snaps. before going on IR.

Personally, I don't think the front office should get much credit for the defensive play of the rag-tag bunch out there.  I think they play with pride and effort and good coaching from Mike Nolan.

The offense on the other hand was much more deliberately hand-picked, including a center who couldn't block, and rookie guard who simply isn't that good (and wasn't that good in college), a troubled player who the Rams didn't want, a penalty-prone player in McQuistan, and absolutely no depth at tackle....hence the problems when both starting Tackles got injured.  There are several other wacky decisions that they made but none more wacky than their decision to keep the current offensive coordinator in place.  Ultimately this decision will be their downfall.  

I do not expect Miami to beat New England next week and I do not expect SpIreland and crew to still be in control come February.


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