Ravens allow no rest for weary
Thursday night matchup means quick turnaround.
MIAMI GARDENS — While some Dolphins staffers have been preparing material on the Ravens over the past few days, the coaching staff and players were working exclusively on the Jets.
The quick turnaround between Sunday’s home game and Thursday night’s kickoff at Baltimore will force the Dolphins to cram a week’s worth of preparation and recovery into three days. Miami coach Adam Gase likely began combing through Ravens film within a couple of hours of the 31-28 victory over the Jets.
“A bunch of us just end up coming back to the office and just start working on the next one,” he said. “It’s tough because no matter what happens, win or lose, you’ve got to shake (the Jets game) and move on to the next one. It’s a very short period of time.”
Gase said there’s no point in his staff giving him any advance scouting material because, “I’ll forget everything.”
In a typical game week, Dolphins players are in the building Monday for meetings, get Tuesday off, then practice Wednesday through Friday. The team does a walkthrough on Saturday and travels if necessary.
That’s impossible this week, and Miami is expected to get on the field for practice only Tuesday. Given how little time players will have had to heal from Sunday’s game, that probably will be more of a walk-through than a practice.
One of the reasons the Dolphins don’t practice before Wednesday is because players usually aren’t feeling up to it until they’ve had two full days to recover. Defensive end Cameron Wake said last week it’s impossible for a player to be fully ready physically for a Thursday night game.
“You’re cutting corners all over the place and you try to keep everything as tight as possible,” Gase said. “You just don’t give your players a ton of stuff. You try to narrow it down as best you can. Anytime you play a team like (the Ravens), offensively, it’s tough because they do a lot of stuff and they can get to a lot of things very quickly. They can change up on you.
“Some defenses don’t have to prepare as hard as what we would have to do for next week because maybe an offense is a little bit more cookie cutter, or maybe there’s something that a team’s chameleon all over the place and that’s when it gets tough for your defense.”
The Dolphins have not won a Thursday night game since winning at home against Buffalo in 2014.