It won't be much of London holiday
After loss to Jets, trip’s top destination to be field.
Year after year these London games keep coming up on the Dolphins’ schedules. Some are called home games, some away, but all are exotic.
For some players, it’s their first trip overseas. For all, it’s a business trip where every detail, from practice to meet- ings to getting around town, requires additional coordina
tion. Then there are the promotional spots with the British media, ever fascinated with
the size of the athletes and the power of the game and ever ready with earnest questioning on the most obvious of topics.
Sometimes a player just needs a slap in the face to remind him that this is a football game, nothing more, and that it will get away quick if any
other thoughts are bouncing around inside that helmet.
In this respect, and this one
only, the Jets did Miami coach Adam Gase a favor.
The Dolphins have already been slapped in the face by a dismal 20-6 loss at MetLife Stadium last week. It takes the wonder out of Wembley Stadium this Sunday. It shrinks all of England down to one patch of turf, and one group of fellow Americans, the New Orleans Saints, trying to make it their own.
“If there’s a time to get it done,” said Dolphins running back Jay Ajayi, “it’s now.
“We got knocked on our butts last week, basically. We played an OK game the first week (a 19-17 win over the Los Angeles Chargers), but we got knocked on our butts last week. Now it’s Week 3 and what are we going to do?”
Optimally, they are going to bounce back strong, doing to the Saints what was just done to them by the Jets. It happened something like that in 2014, when the Dolphins got rolled 35-14 by Kansas City at home, stewed about that for a week, and then lowered the boom in London the following Sunday, beating Oakland 38-14 with what was Miami’s highest-scoring output in five years.
It could go the other way, too, of course, like it did in 2015. A 41-14 blowout loss to Buffalo at home followed by a 27-14 loss to the Jets in London, the game that finally got Joe Philbin fired.
Adam Gase is different, of course. He’s nowhere near losing his players. Neither is he droning on about better execution being the key to making the same, tired plays work in exciting new ways. Thursday he practiced his team hard, with plans to roll them right off the plane and back to the practice field soon after landing in London this morning. Energy is what he’s stressing, and blowing off a little steam.
“I think a lot of this profession is confidence,” Gase said, “When you think you’re good, that’s sometimes all you need.’
Could these Dolphins still have a little strut in them at
1-1, and coming off an utterly lifeless effort against the Jets? Safety Michael Thomas doesn’t doubt it.
“Everybody has responded well,” Thomas said. “There’s more sense of urgency. Probably getting back to that no-excuses, no-complaints attitude we had going into that L.A. game. I think guys had probably lost that but you felt it this week.”
As for the matchup, New Orleans can be counted upon to dent Miami’s defense for a couple or three touchdowns behind the passing and the leadership of Drew Brees.
The Saints’ defense, however, allowed 65 points in opening losses to Minnesota and New England. Surely there are solid plans for new Dolphins quarterback Jay Cutler to pile up some points, too, in combination with the running of Ajayi and the receiving skills of Kenny Stills, DeVante Parker and Jarvis Landry.
That would be an extraordinarily fresh turn to the season, and there’s no reason to think it can’t happen against the 1-2 Saints, who have spent the whole week in London practicing and preparing for this international showcase of a game.
The Dolphins haven taken the opposite route, flying over late in the week, getting all the hard wark done in Davie, trying to bring some kind of natural rhythm to a process that has been altered by a hurricane and a game in the Chargers’ 27,000-seat temporary stadium in California and now a quick commute to Europe.
A trip to New York to play the Jets should have been the simplest step in all of this, and that’s what doesn’t add up.
“Somewhere from Friday until Sunday last week, we lost our edge and we weren’t as sharp,” said Dolphins offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen. “We really had a sharp week of practice. There weren’t a bunch of mental errors and we had what we thought were three really quality practices, and it didn’t translate.”
Enough with all that. There need be no subtext and no subtitles in England. Block and tackle and blow them away. That’s football, American-style, and it plays well anywhere on the planet.