5-game win streak puts Dolphins in playoff picture
Despite all the turmoil during the 2021 season, the Miami Dolphins find themselves in rare company with Sunday’s 20-9 win over the New York Giants.
Only seven teams — one-fourth of the league — have won at least five consecutive games this season.
The Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers put together seven-game winning streaks earlier this year, and sit at the top of the league’s standings.
The Baltimore Ravens won five in a row in September and October.
The Tennessee Titans and Dallas Cowboys won six straight earlier this season.
The New England Patriots are riding a six-game winning streak headed into Monday night’s game against the Buffalo Bills, and the Kansas City Chiefs could win five straight games with a win late Sunday night.
Those teams are all viewed as the NFL’s best, the elites of the 2021 season, and then there’s the Dolphins (6-7), who just extended their winning streak to five games by limiting an injury-depleted Giants (4-8) roster to three field goals.
It was the type of performance that makes you think about the “what if,” and more importantly, wonder what’s next?
“A tough victory in a 60-minute ball game, and we just try to take it one day at a time and not think about what’s happened in the past, or talk about the future too much,” Dolphins coach Brian Flores warned after Sunday’s game. “We’re just trying to get better every day.”
Just like the earlier wins during this streak against the Houston Texans, New York Jets and Carolina Panthers, the caliber of opponents Miami has beaten isn’t worth bragging about — unlike Miami’s 22-10 upset win over the Ravens— but anyone who turns their nose up to NFL winning streaks doesn’t get how difficult it is to win games in this sport.
This Dolphins team learned that lesson first-hand earlier this season, during its seven-game losing streak, and is focused on riding the wave so much so they don’t want to press pause on the season during next weekend’s bye.
“I’m ready to play the next game right now,” pass rusher Jaelan Phillips said after recording two sacks and setting a franchise rookie record for 8.5 sacks on the season. “Let’s go!”
The Dolphins can really get back into the AFC playoff conversation if they extend the streak to seven games by beating the Jets on Dec. 19 at home, and defeat the New Orleans Saints on the road on Dec. 27.
Those two wins would produce a winning record (8-7), with a road game against Tennessee on Jan. 2, and a regular-season finale against New England that Miami will host on Jan. 9, likely determining this team’s fate this season.
Continued success could give the postseason talk more life, but to get there Miami needs to find a way to consistently complement its the stingy defense, which has allowed four touchdowns during the five-game winning streak.
Miami needs to shift into the next gear on offense and score more than 19.5 points per game (the NFL average is 23.0), and improve on special teams, where the Dolphins return game is non-existent and Jason Sanders has missed six field goals (which included a 52-yard miss against the Giants on Sunday).
Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s steadying hand, which helped him produce his fourth straight game with a 100-plus passer rating (104.1), has helped Miami’s offense become more efficient.
But Miami’s offensive line remains the team’s most troublesome unit (two sacks allowed against the Giants), and the Dolphins run game continues to struggle (2.7 yards per carry on 25 attempts Sunday).
A reliable run game is what the Dolphins need to turn up the volume on their run-pass-option offense considering Miami’s 3.3 yards per carry average is nearly a full yard below the NFL average (4.29).
“I’m glad we won, but I think there’s a lot of things that we left out there on the field,” said Tagovailoa, who completed 30-of-41 passes for 244 yards and two touchdowns. “A lot of plays that we wish we could have back, but then again, it falls down to the execution of us. It starts with me in the center, and then it being communicated out there.”
Receiver DeVante Parker returned Sunday, and his five receptions for 62 yards came in handy against the Giants. But can Miami really count on him being available for the final four games considering his history with injuries?
And it also would be a dream scenario to see Tagovailoa play with receiver Will Fuller, the Dolphins’ big-ticket free agent addition this past offseason, who has played in only two games this season.
Fuller has been sidelined for 10 weeks because of a broken finger, and at this rate it might be wishful thinking that he’ll put on a Dolphins uniform again. But it is possible.
The return of Parker and Fuller would allow us to see Miami’s offense as intended, with more pieces — playmakers who can open-up the field and deliver more than what’s drawn up on the play sheet — and the hope is Miami’s offense would be able to eventually score enough points to help this defense deliver more wins.
Since we’re dreaming about the postseason, why not dream about an offense that can actually score more points getting the Dolphins there.