Well it's been a long time since the Dolphins won a game this convincingly and it's been a long time since they did what I personally wanted them to do. Sunday's 33-17 victory puts them back over .500 yet no closer to the playoffs. They still need the Jets or Patriots to collapse and lose a lot of games in order to have a chance.
However, After my post last week on what the Dolphins should do for the rest of the season, it was startingly refreshing to see them take my advice, first giving the team back to Chad Henne who had his best game of the season, playing the youth of Nolan Carroll, Marlon Moore, Johnathan Amaya and Chris Baker and other talents like Patrick Cobbs and Tim Dobbins, players who offer something different as well as much needed rest to the starters. And of course they finally returned to the running game, putting up a massive 190 yards on the ground, their best output of the season. In fact, statistically in every category that counts it was their best game of the season. Question is, is it a sign of what's to come, or just one of those anomaly games where a team just clicks while the opposition just folds?
To me, I don't think it's all on the opposition - yes the Raiders are struggling to win games, yet they battled it out quite hard at times in this game and made a lot of plays. But ultimately when the Dolphins had their chances to make plays, they did.
I would like to give out a game ball as well as a leftover Turkey bag of gizzards for this game in honor of Thanksgiving weekend now gone past.
Game Ball - Davone Bess, 6 catches, 111 yards (almost had more but his drop can be forgiven as he got laid out on the play) and a shocking 47 yard punt return from a player who hasn't returned a punt more than 10 yards in 2 years! He showed that he can step up and be the #1 WR when the #1 WR is out of the game. The question is, why doesn't he put up these numbers when Marshall is being double teamed?
Gizzards - Vontae Davis. 5 tackles to lead the team, and at least 3 missed tackles. Davis started the season like a pro-bowler and has in the past 5 games looked like something that got scraped off of the bottom of a horse-trainer's shoe. I don't think I've ever seen such a sharp decline in performance in all my years of watching football. Between Jake Long giving up sack after sack, Jared Odrick being on IR and Davis' recent woes, the SpIreland first rounders are not paying off.
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