Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Defense folds when asked to deliver win
MIAMI GARDENS — It was everything the Miami Dolphins could have asked for entering the final minutes of a closely fought contest.
The offense stepped up and delivered a fourth-quarter lead with 2:27 left in the game, and all the Miami Dolphins defense — the better side of the team, the more talented and more reliable unit — had to do was keep the Atlanta Falcons from getting into field goal range.
Is that too much to ask for from a unit that carried the franchise last season, and the past two decades, and had propped this floundering team up during its early struggles this season?
Apparently, it was, because all Matt Ryan needed was two passes to Kyle Pitts to get the Falcons in position for Younghoo Koo to make a game-winning 36-yard field goal during Sunday’s 30-28 loss, which delivered Miami’s sixth straight loss.
There was the 23-yarder to Pitts that put the Falcons on Atlanta’s 48-yard line before the two-minute warning.
Maybe the Dolphins weren’t in the right coverage that time? The two-minute warning break should give defensive coordinator Josh Boyer a chance to put his unit in better position to keep Atlanta out of scoring territory, right?
Miami just needed to tighten the screws, right? Put Pro Bowl cornerback Xavien Howard on the rookie.
The very next play Pitts, who finished the game with 163 yards on seven receptions, beat Howard on a perfectly placed deep ball from Ryan along the right sideline, and didn’t drop the reception after rookie safety Jevon Holland blasted him with a perfectly timed hit in the midsection.
“It was a great play. Great throw,” Howard said of that critical play. “In this league guys make great plays on the ball. [I was] trying to make a play on the ball. Obviously, he got the ball.”
Atlanta’s rookie playmaker made a dynamic play on Miami’s biggest star (Howard), and its future standout (Holland).
“They were tight man-toman coverage, taking away a lot of what we were doing underneath,” said the Falcons’ Ryan, who completed 25-of-40 passes and finished the game with 336 passing yards and one touchdown. “A great call by coach [Arthur] Smith in that part of the game to trust Kyle going down the sideline. I thought Kyle ran a great route and made a great catch.”
Miami sent their best against Atlanta’s best, and it wasn’t good enough.
The unit that has propped this franchise up over the past decade folded like a lawn chair when the team needed them.
That pretty much sums up the 2021 Dolphins season, no matter what game, what loss you choose to analyze.
Everyone seems to be coming up short.
That indicates that there isn’t enough talent on this year’s 1-6 team, which has regressed in every area of the game but quarterbacking this season.
The Dolphins have only scored more than 20 points twice this season, and both those games — an overtime loss to the Raiders, and Sunday’s fourth-quarter loss to the Falcons — proved the talent isn’t good enough.
We can split hairs all we want about the offenses’ struggles, the mystery about who’s calling plays, the offensive line’s ineptitude, and the defense’s inability to stop the run and get off the field on third downs. But the bottom line is Miami’s talent isn’t good enough to overcome the team’s penalty-prone and error-filled play.
The offense can’t put opponents away considering the Dolphins are averaging a meager 18.1 points per game, and the defense can’t close out games when in possession of a lead.
Miami has been outscored, 70-46, in the fourth quarter, and that doesn’t even compare to the team’s second-quarter scoring deficit (64-9), which is embarrassing.
The opposing quarterbacks’ passer rating for this season, which is 104.1, has Miami ranked among the league’s worst at passing defense.
Part of the secondary’s problem is Miami’s troublesome pass rushing. The Dolphins have 12 sacks on the season, which breaks down to 1.7 per game. Twenty teams average at least two sacks per game this season.
And that doesn’t even get into the Dolphins below average linebacker play, which is a problem that was carried over from the 2020 season and gotten worse. And that was before Jerome Baker suffered a knee injury and left the game Sunday.
Can you image the Dolphins defense without Baker, the team’s leading tackler the past three seasons?
“It’s tough. Football is a team game, you know? When the offense is down, we got to pick them up, and when we’re down, they got to pick us up,” said pass rusher Emmanuel Ogbah, who finished Sunday’s game with one tackle, two quarterback hits, one pass deflection and one forced fumble.
“[I] still love the fight of this team. I know we just got to get over that hump. We’re almost there.”