Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Steelers give Dolphins a harsh reality check
PITTSBURGH — Couldn’t run. Couldn’t tackle. Couldn’t take an Uber home.
All the Miami Dolphins could do after a 30-12 AFC wild-card playoff game loss to Pittsburgh was pack their bags for the offseason and say as team owner Steve Ross did in the middle of a quiet locker room, “That’s not the way we wanted this to end.”
This was a bad loss, in any month, against any team. It just felt worse, because it’s the final one for this team that brought winning football back to the Dolphins, and because it didn’t feel representative of that.
“I think we’ve come a long way from where we started, but I’m certainly not happy right now,” Ross said. “I’m happy with the direction we’re going. I think we have the right coach, the right people in place. Everybody’s smelling it. They want it more.”
He looked around the room after a cold day all around.
“But this was disappointing,” he said.
The fun of making their first playoffs since the 2008 season lasted two minutes and 45 seconds. That’s how long it took Pittsburgh to score its first touchdown on a 50-yard catch and run by Antonio Brown. It was 14-0 when Brown took his next pass 62 yards for a touchdown.
“An inch off here or there can make a big difference in games like this — that’s what you learn,” said cornerback Tony Lippett, whom Brown beat on the second touchdown.
Who stood up to change the day? In the end, no one could. The team that found a hero most games on its run to the playoffs didn’t have one on this Sunday in them.
Ndamukong Suh? He was pushed around at times by Pittsburgh guard David DeCastro. Jay Ajayi? He couldn’t find a hole and ran for just 33 yards on 16 carries.
Matt Moore? The back-up quarterback, so good down the stretch, went through a nightmare three series that bridged the halves as his protection faltered and points that could have got the Dolphins back in the game were left on the field. Fumble. Fumble. Interception. “In the playoffs, you can’t have those mistakes, and that’s on me,” he said. “Two fumbles and a pick, that’s not the recipe for success.”
Pittsburgh running back Le’Veon Bell, meanwhile, carried 29 times for 167 yards. The Steelers set a team playoff record running for 179 yards this game. They passed just six times in the second half. No need.
“I think we can be better,” Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said. “I think it is a little bit of a false positive, if you will, because you start out so well. We had a lot of ‘my bads,’ in the second half. You can’t have them.”
That’s how teams with championship hopes talk. And play. And now the Dolphins have to fill in some sizable holes to get there. They will have the 22nd pick in this year’s draft. Pittsburgh linebacker Bud DuPree was the 22nd pick in 2015.
He’s the guy who had Moore checking his teeth after an illegal hit (“He smoked me,” Moore said). He hit Moore another time and had half a sack. That’s the kind of linebacker Miami hopes to find.
In fact, the Steelers linebackers Lawrence Timmons (14 tackles, two sacks) and James Harrison (10 tackles, 1 1/2 sacks) showed what the Dolphins’ defense is missing.
If there was a positive Sunday, it’s that the Dolphins don’t move into the offseason thinking they’re better than they are. They were whipped by two AFC playoff teams the final two weeks. Twenty-one points by New England. Eighteen points by Pittsburgh.
That doesn’t detract from making the playoffs. It just says how much work is left to be done. And they know it.
“You can’t come out and start slow,” Cameron Wake said. “I’ve got to get better,” Lippett said. “Remember the feeling,” Dolphins coach Adam Gase told his players in the locker room after their season ended.
Ross stood there in the first moments of the offseason and kept being asked to frame this good season. It was his first playoff since taking over the team in 2009, after all. But his heart wasn’t in such sentiments.
“I feel good the direction the team is going,” he said. “But I’ll only feel satisfied if we win the Super Bowl."
Sunday showed how far off that hope remains.