Dolphins don’t blame loss on penalties
PHILADELPHIA - On a fourth down in the third quarter, with the Dolphins trailing the Eagles by a touchdown, Tua Tagovailoa threw a pass to Cedrick Wilson.
The attempt was incomplete, but it sure looked like an Eagles defensive back turned Wilson’s facemask, for what would have been a key penalty.
“There was no thinking about it, it definitely was,” Wilson said after Miami’s 31-17 loss at Philadelphia on Sunday night. “But I mean, that’s not in my control. I gotta try to fight through and catch the ball.”
Bizarrely, the Dolphins were flagged 10 times for 70 yards on Sunday.
And the Eagles were flagged zero times for zero yards.
A perfect game! Sort of. We suppose. “I don’t really want to speak on that, to be honest,” Dolphins edge rusher Jaelan Phillips said. “It is what it is, at the end of the day. We’ve got to overcome things like that. But I mean, you all can take that how you may. You all probably feel the same way. But it is what it is.”
Among the Miami players penalized were Christian Wilkins (twice), Lester Cotton (twice), Zach Sieler, Eli Apple, Austin Jackson (twice), Julian Hill and Elijah Campbell.
Among the Eagles penalized were, well, none.
“We’ve just got to clean up things,” Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert said. “On our part, you know, they are a sound football team, obviously, because they didn’t get any penalties. But, you know, we could bicker and fight about, you know, what call should have been called, or what plays you know, would have been called, but at the end of the day, it’s all football. You’ve just got to go out there and execute.”
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said: “You can’t be minus 10 in penalties. So you look at, what’s the commonalities for it? Is there a pattern? You have to look at it case by case and look at it hard. You can’t just point a finger and say that’s not fair. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s more about looking at ourselves.”
A key play was an interception by Tua Tagovailoa on a pass intended for Mostert near the Eagles’ end zone.
“I was hoping Raheem could step back and make a play on the ball,” McDaniel said. “He had an issue doing so with apparently what was legal contact down the field, so you know that those ... that’s definitely not why we lost the game for sure, that play.”
Tagovailoa said the Dolphins won’t use the penalty discrepancy as an excuse.
It surely was jarring, but Miami knows that wasn’t the only reason it lost.
“The refs, they do a great job, man,” Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill said. “Each and every week, man. So it’s our job to win games. You know, like, we just can’t leave it in the referees hand and I mean, as a ballplayer as a competitor.
“And at the end of the day, they’re human and they miss calls. They make bad calls and guess what, I’m not going to sit here and say that tonight. They did a great job.”
Joe Schad is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jschad@pbpost.com and follow him on social media platforms @schadjoe. Sign up for Joe’s free weekly Dolphins Pulse Newsletter. Help support our work by subscribing.