WORST TOFIRST
Defense has vastly improved from just one season ago, but Flores is urging his players to maintain their focus
Brian Flores and the Miami Dolphins defense have come a long way since their first season together a year ago. The Flores era started with the Dolphins allowing Baltimore Ravensmar Jackson and former New England Patriots star Tom Brady to seemingly score at will, and finishing the2019 season dead last in points per game allowed (30.9), surrendering nearly 400 yards per game.
Now, the Dolphins (4-3) are now looking down at the rest of the NFL eightweeks into the 2020 season: Flores’ defense leads the NFL, allowing opposing teams to score just 18.6 points per game this season.
Don’t let that statistic fool you. Flores surely doesn’t want his players to buy into it for the wrong reasons.
The Dolphins defense still bends, ranking 20th with 376.0 yards per game allowed — including a season-high 471 yards of offense they gave up in Sunday’s 28-17 win over the Los Angeles Rams, which saw Miami rely on a punt return and nearly two fumble recoveries returned for touchdowns.
But the Dolphins defense certainly doesn’t break as much as they used to.
And that bodes well for the Dolphins, who sit second in the AFC East behind the Buffalo Bills, two spots out of a wild-card play off spot at ninth inAFCstandings, andwill continue to ac climate rookie qu arte rb ac k Tua Tag ovai lo a on offense in the final nine games this season.
“This morning, I’m very leery on statistics right now ,” Flores said humbly on Monday .“I look at the stats from [Sunday’s] game and we gave up this many yards passing and this many yards rushing. When you look at it, it felt like we got dominated and I didn’t feel that way during the game.
“Look, this is a week-to-week league,” he continued. “We have to focus on improving today and focus getting better in practice this week, and notworry about the statistics. Just worry about the next play and the next practice. I think hopefully our guys understand that.”
“As these things pop up, we have to be able to move forward, next man up, all these things we’ve talked about throughout the season. I think the guys have a good understanding of how we’ll handle this, how we’ll move forward, and we can’t let it affect our mentality or how we approach next week’s game.”
It is possible that the Cardinals could be forced to shut down their facility and hold meetings remotely if more Cardinals players or employees begin to test positive for COVID-19.
The league is monitoring Arizona’s situation.
The NFL has moved a few games from Sunday to Monday or Tuesday this season to ensure player safety.
“We’re just going to do business as we normally do it. Prepare the way we normally prepare. Prepare to travel as we normally have,” said Dolphins coach Brian Flores, who said Monday he’s been in contact with the NFL. “They will let us know if there are any changes and postponements. As of right now we’re scheduled to play Sunday. ... If they want us to play on Saturday, Monday, tomorrow, that’s what we’ll do.”
The Dolphins had their entire 2020 schedule reshuffled three weeks ago to accommodate some of the scheduling conflicts that arose due to the New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans C OVID -19 outbreaks last month.
Miami faced the New York Jets two weeks ago instead of the Denver Broncos with that game being moved to Nov .22, and the Dolphins’ bye week was moved up from week 11 to week 7.
Daily COVID-19 testing has been in place since the start of NFL training camps for people in two groups — Tier 1 (“players and essential football personnel whose job function requires direct access to players for more than 10 minutes at a time on a regular basis”) and Tier 2 (“other essential personnel who may need to be in close proximity to players and other
Tier 1 individuals and who may need to access restricted areas periodically”).
All NFL players who test positive for COVID-19 go through the same protocols. First, they are immediately isolated. They are forbidden to access team facilities and are not allowed to have any direct contact with fellow players or team personnel. They immediately are placed on the Reserve / COVID-19 list.
Players can return from the COVID-19 reserve list after 10 days have passed since their initial test if they are asymptomatic, or five days have passed since the initial positive test and they receive two consecutive negative PCR virus tests within a five-day period.