Parker gets into groove with Fitzpatrick as starting QB
DeVante Parker wasn’t made available to reporters after yet another monster game Sunday, so we don’t know for certain his thoughts on current events.
But you could forgive Parker if he smiled, at least a little in a quiet moment, when he heard that Ryan Fitzpatrick would start at quarterback instead of Tua Tagovailoa on Sunday against the Jets.
Put simply, Parker looks spectacular when Fitzpatrick throws him the ball, and pretty average when Tagovailoa is under center.
Parker went for a season-high 119 yards and eight catches on 14 targets in the 20-3 win Sunday, proving once again to New York coach Adam Gase that he should have been featured more when Gase was Miami’s coach.
Parker, who has 642 yards and four touchdowns on the year, needs to average 72 receiving yards over the season’s final five games to eclipse 1,000 for the second straight season.
If Fitzpatrick — who knows how to throw Parker open and is excellent at offering up jump balls — were to start the rest of the season, that would be a near lock.
But Tagovailoa will get his job back whenever he returns from the thumb injury that kept him out of Sunday’s game. And when he does, he needs to learn how to best utilize the
Dolphins’ best offensive weapon.
“DeVante’s very special with the 50-50 ball and some of those tough catches,” Fitzpatrick said. “For us, and really for me as a quarterback, if teams are going to give us the opportunity to do that, then I’m going to give DeVante the opportunity to make that play more often than not. People can say sometimes that’s not the right move and whatever else, but if I’ve got a guy that I trust, that I’ve seen do it over and over and over again, then I’m going to give him every opportunity to make a play.
“And he did a great job of making some of those today. It was just a lot of man coverage out there and a pretty classic DeVante Parker game when you play him in man coverage.”
SANDERS EXTENDS 50-PLUS STREAK
The Miami Dolphins’ secret weapon is becoming less and less of a secret every week.
Jason Sanders drilled two more field goals Sunday in the Dolphins’ 20-3 win against the New York Jets and both kicks were longer than 50 yards.
While his franchiserecord streak for consecutive field goals made ended earlier this year, Sanders extended another NFL-best streak this weekend. He’s now 8 for 8 on field goals longer than 50 yards this season and his 10 straight makes from 50-plus — dating back to
last year — is the best active streak in the league.
In his career, the star kicker is 12 of 14 on kicks from 50 yards or longer. At 85.7 percent, Sanders’ mark is the best in the league since at least 1991, and no one else is even at 80 percent since then.
With the Dolphins’ offense inconsistent this year, Sanders’ Pro Bowlworthy season has been critical, and his makes
from 54 and 51 helped Miami take a 13-3 lead into halftime, despite only having one first-half drive in East Rutherford, New Jersey, go for more than 36 yards.
DOLPHINS MOVE INTO PLAYOFF POSITION
A whole lot that needed to go right for the Dolphins’ playoff hopes did Sunday, beginning with their 17-point drubbing of
the Jets.
While they remain a game behind the Bills in the AFC East — the two teams play in Week 17 — the Dolphins (7-4) leapfrogged teams competing for the Wild Card thanks to the Tennessee Titans and Atlanta Falcons.
The Titans destroyed the Colts (7-4), while the Falcons embarrassed the Raiders (6-5). Those results catapulted the Dolphins into the AFC’s sixth seed through Sunday’s games.
Both Indianapolis and Las Vegas now trail Miami in the standings. The Colts lose the tiebreaker at this point because the Dolphins have a superior conference record.
The other team fighting for one of those three Wild Card spots?
The Baltimore Ravens, who might not even play this week after a COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged their locker room.
The Dolphins have one more game against the dregs of the NFL — Cincinnati, at home, next week — before a grueling stretch run that features games against three likely playoff teams in the last four weeks.
No surprise, then, that they have the NFL’s ninthhardest remaining schedule at a .565 cumulative winning percentage — and by far the hardest of the AFC’s Wild Card contenders.
That’s a big reason why FiveThirtyEight still only gives Miami a 47 percent chance to reach the postseason and a one-ineight shot of edging out Buffalo for the division crown.
The most important date down the stretch: Dolphins-Raiders in Las Vegas on Dec. 26. The way it’s looking now, it will probably be an elimination game.