Three horrendous plays cost us this loss. Huge plays. The part that gets me most angry is that we could have overcome two gigantic mistakes, but three was one too many.

First, honorable mention goes to guard Jonah Savaiianea, who ruined a nice first down by being downfield illegally. That stuff happens. But it was particularly grievous on this play because it was a pass to Julian Hill on the far right of the field. Savaiianea was 30 yards away, running up and toward his left to go chase after a defender who was not involved in the play whatsoever.

I could understand if he were out in front of Hill on the right side, but no. He decided to go chase an irrelevant defender.

Now onto the worse, loss-causing gaffes.

  1. Tyreek Hill dropped a pass right between his hands. He went up to get the ball. Initially I thought he mis-timed his jump. No. He simply missed the ball. That drop blew up a nice Dolphins drive and ruined a well-placed pass by Tua.
  2. Tua’s terrible, terrible interception. This was the final straw. A pass that should not have been thrown. A QB with his experience has to spot that LB. Absolutely cannot throw the ball there, yet he did. Mike McDaniel gets a small portion of the blame here for an odd play call. On that same drive, we hit Waddle on several OUT patterns near the sidelines. So why was Waddle running a different route there? Why were our RBs ignored on that play? McD tampered with success, and he ended up confusing Tua. Gut-wrenching way to end a game.
  3. Zach Sieler’s roughing the punter. Momentum is a real thing. Unfortunately, so is a sudden deflation of all momentum. That is exactly what Sieler did to the team. Our defense had not made three stops all year long, and yet Thursday night, they managed to stop the Bills THREE TIMES IN A ROW. Momentums was huge in our favor. But the third time was the charm. Sieler decided to bull rush the punter, and lost control of his body. It was embarrassing. He was driving the longsnapper backwards (which is normally great), except the snapper was intelligent enough to simply move aside, letting Sieler’s momentum take him right into the punter. Sieler wasn’t gonna get there anyway, and should have just sat back.

    McDaniel said later that “Sieler wasn’t even supposed to try to block the punt on the play. Only supposed to rush the kick with some push up the middle.” Lack of discipline. Players not doing what the coach tells them to do.

    As soon as that flag was thrown, you could just see the life sucked out of our Dolphins.

    Thank you Zach. Enjoy your new contract that you held out for.

5 Comments

  1. While I agree that these mistakes clearly affected momentum and the outcome, the Dolphins simpy have poor coaching. McD may be liked by the players, but he has no business being a head coach. He is enamored with play calling, and not strategy, motivation, or game planning. We may win the next few games versus weak opponents, but our Supre Bowl aspirations will not happen with him.

  2. Basically, we are in football purgatory.

  3. The QB’s in the games I was able to see and games on Red Zone leave me with a few thoughts.
    1. How is it that the young QB’s (2 yrs. and less) are making progress…sharp passes; run like their hair is on fire when they must; didn’t see any “confusion” where Tua doesn’t fully understand what he needs to do and when ne needs to and if he needs to change the play. This is another waste of the Dolphin fan’s ticket money where it could have gone to getting a far better QB. So they are giving Tua $52+MM–think about that! $52MM and what does the team have to show for itself? This falls squarely on Grier…McD had nothing to do with Tua being the QB when he got here. He redesigned the offense (dumbed it down) for Tua-when your QB can’t learn it after this many years, he’s not a smart enough for any team. We have the Jets this week and they always, always play us like its a playoff game. Biggest rival for Dolphins, always was, always will be. Why didn’t the Dolphins take Rodgers for a year? Gives them a chance to win, for Rodgers to mentor the backups and when you start winning, it becomes infectious and the entire team feels the adrenaline and takes that to practice, and the next opponent. They need to “learn” how and what it takes to win!
    If that means pushing until you don’t think you can go any further. But not with the Dolphins. They have been way too soft for a very long time. NE’s head coach Vrabel is priming up his team with how he played and learned. I cannot put all the onus on McD-He’s not out there passing the ball. Tua passes too many times too high! He’s throwing to LeBron out there bec. Hill has to vertically leap to that height! Hill is not LeBron! That is all on Tua. Thoughts are always welcomed.

  5. I was thankful we were competing and moving the ball. Waddle had a good game. So much more enjoyable than first two games.

    The first drive of the game was beautiful – 6 rushes, 4 passes. I got my hopes up that McDaniel might have figured what to do (rush rush rush), but then he tampered with success, as McDaniel likes to do and as Admin frequently calls out.

    I agree McDaniel gets part of the blame for the play call on that Tua interception, but Tua should not have made that pass, dang it.

    Bring on the Jets!

Leave a Reply