Can McDaniel, Thompson win against all odds?
Skylar Thompson had not talked anyone with the Miami Dolphins before the draft when general manager Chris Grier called during the final round last April. Several teams were calling Thompson by then, wanting to sign him as the most disposable of commodities, the undrafted free agent.
“I figured that’s what going on as we talked, then [Grier] said they were taking me,” Thompson said. “That’s how I found out I’d be here.”
If Thompson was surprised then, imagine how he feels starting Sunday’s playoff game in Buffalo. Imagine how the Dolphins feel. It’s the same way everyone feels in a game where the depth of analysis begins and ends with the simple line:
Skylar Thompson vs. Josh Allen.
Who gives the Dolphins a chance?
“This just in — no one expected me personally to do anything that I’ve ever done, really,” coach Mike McDaniel said. “I think a journey of an NFL player is very similar with the amount of competition there is and how the parity is what it is. I think most guys on NFL teams have been told they couldn’t.”
McDaniel smartly struck that mindset for his team this past week. It’s the right one for a team led by the oddest pairing in NFL playoff history, a rookie coach who interviewed with just one team and a seventh-round rookie quarterback.
It’s gives the Dolphins their best chance, a slim chance, without starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Buffalo is a 13 ½-point favorite in this game on merit. But McDaniel’s quirky thinking can help here. How many NFL coaches refer to the movie “Zoolander” during a playoff week?
“The first and foremost for me is overthinking,” McDaniel said of his challenge this game. “You can play the game of chess — or maybe it should be a game of checkers and sometimes you try to make it chess and it shouldn’t be. You can overthink things.”
What does checkers mean here?
Maybe it means running the ball like the Dolphins did for 188 yards last month against Buffalo in a 32-29 loss. Maybe with running back Raheem Mostert out it means some designed runs for a mobile quarterback like Thompson, too.
It surely means McDaniel needs to tell defensive coordinator Josh Boyer to blitz less. Allen has feasted against the Dolphins on that. In their last meeting, he had a 92.1 grade when blitzed compared to a 70.9 grade when not blitzed, according to ProFootballFocus.com. It
was the same in their September meeting: 76.4 when blitzed and 38.4 when not blitzed.
Against all Sunday’s odds, the Dolphins can take comfort in one truth: They inexplicably beat Buffalo in a way they’ll need to repeat. Remember? In September, Buffalo had the ball for 40 minutes and 40 seconds, the most of any game this NFL
season. It had 497 yards to the Dolphins’ 212, and 31 first downs to the Dolphins’ 15.
“Those are winning numbers,” said Allen, who passed for 400 yards and two touchdowns to Tagovailoa’s 186 yards and one touchdown.
Throw in the Dolphins “butt punt,” where Thomas Morstead kicked the ball into a too-close
Trent Sherfield for a resulting safety and the question is how the Dolphins won that day?
They won because Melvin Ingram had a strip-sack of Allen that set up a 6-yard touchdown drive. They won because Buffalo had three red-zone trips where they scored three points. The defense will need a few moments like that Sunday.
“We know what we have to do,” linebacker Jerome Baker said. “We know how good they are and what they can do.”
If it’s a game of quarterbacks, Buffalo wins.
If it’s a clean game with no turnovers, Buffalo wins.
If it’s the game everyone’s thinks, Buffalo wins.
It’s been 70 years since a seventh-round rookie quarterback started a playoff game. Two do this weekend with San Francisco’s Brock Purdy on Saturday and Thompson on Sunday.
”The good thing for me, I feel like I got a pretty good feel for what a playoff game kind of would look like just last week,” Thompson said.
That 11-6 win over the New York Jets wasn’t anything like this one in Buffalo. Playing against Joe Flacco isn’t like matching Allen, point for point. Thompson, like McDaniel, beat all odds reaching this moment. They can beat them all again in winning Sunday.