Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Poor roster, coaching, execution explain 1-7 start
Tua Tagovailoa hasn’t lifted the Miami Dolphins to higher heights this season. But he hasn’t failed the franchise either.
If we’re going to be honest, the Dolphins have failed their second-year quarterback, just like they failed every quarterback since Chad Pennington by putting a mediocre support system around him.
General manager Chris Grier and coach Brian Flores built this roster to beat the Buffalo Bills (5-2), not the New England Patriots, and Sunday’s 26-11 loss was the first competitive game Miami has played against Buffalo in three years.
And that opinion only stands if you believe that a 15-point loss, which featured a deficit that got closed to 9-points as a result of Tagovailoa’s 1-yard touchdown run, which concluded an 11-play, 75-yard drive and the 2-point conversion Miami executed to make the score 20-11 with 9:39 left in the game “is competitive.”
If we’re being honest, we’ll admit that there wasn’t a phase of the game Buffalo didn’t win, and that was a byproduct of a bad roster performing poorly, while being led by subpar coaching.
Call it the Trinity of Trouble. The Dolphins (1-7) have a terrible offensive line protecting their quarterback, whether that is Tagovailoa, whose record as an NFL starter dropped to 7-7 Sunday, or Houston’s Deshaun Watson, whom the franchise is reportedly still in talks to acquire before Tuesday’s 4 p.m. trade deadline.
Even though the Bills only managed two sacks and six quarterback hits, Tagovailoa was under constant pressure because Miami’s offensive line, which was built with one first-round pick (Austin Jackson) and two second-round picks (Robert Hunt and Liam Eichenberg).
Eichenberg, Hunt, Jackson
and Jesse Davis took turns letting down the offense, spoiling plays and drives, and that’s been a consistent theme all season. And truthfully, it’s been the norm for Flores’ entire threeyear career.
And even if Miami was able to get a pass off without the quarterback being harassed by a defensive lineman, or blitzer, there is no guarantee the Dolphins receivers and tight ends were lining up right. On too many occasions players were seen directing traffic trying to get teammates lined up properly.
Flores acknowledged the issues, caused by the inability to communicate in a loud stadium, was so bad his play-callers had to remove the shifts and motions out of the plays.
“Not getting lined up right, maybe it was not hearing personnels,” tight end Mike Gesicki said, addressing the offense’s pre-snap problems. “I don’t know what it was honestly. But like I said earlier, it’s not one guy. It’s not two guys. It’s all 11 guys. We’ve all got to take that responsibility, take that accountability.”
If you have to dumb down your offense for your talent are they smart enough to run it in instances where the circumstances are perfect?
That’s a personnel issue, and the Dolphins have had that all season with their injury-decimated receiving corps, which got back Devante Parker Sunday from the hamstring injury that sidelined him three games in the same game they were without Preston Williams for violating a team rule.
But, even if the Dolphins had their full set of receivers
— a healthy Parker, Williams, Jaylen Waddle (who produced 29 receiving yards on 12 targets) and Will Fuller, who is on injured reserve because of a broken finger — let’s not pretend that this offense would be lighting its opponents up.
Not with a passing game that has to dink-and-dunk its way down the field, a run game that’s the second worst in the NFL, tailbacks who can’t pass protect, and tight ends that struggle with blocking.
This roster was poorly built, and it doesn’t help that the team is poorly coached this season.
“I wouldn’t question anything we do throughout practice,” said Tagovailoa, who finished the game with 58.2 passer rating, which ensured that the three worst games of his young career have been against the Bills. “I think we work really, really hard. We work extremely hard. We prepare extremely hard as a team. Unfortunately it hasn’t been going our way and the way we want it to, but just got to keep going.”
The Dolphins offense has scored 21 or more points twice this season, which is crying shame considering the average score for NFL teams this season is 23.5. After Sunday’s game the Dolphins are averaging 17.2 points per game.
That’s nearly a touchdown less than Miami’s opponents, which indicates just how bad this 2021 team is, and has been despite all the talk about how close the Dolphins are from turning the corner and doing the little things that lead to wins.
Flores and the players can talk about being close all they like, but all we’re seeing is poor execution, poor communication, poor play-calling, and putrid performances in 2021.