How Big is the Dolphins' "Bills Problem"?
After their series of moves in the offseason, the Miami Dolphins not only are hoping to take the next step in 2022 and return to the playoffs but also close the gap — if not eliminate it entirely — with the Buffalo Bills.
That's obviously not going to be an easy task, but it's going to have to happen at some point if the Dolphins want to achieve their ultimate goal.
Good Morning Football host Kyle Brandt put it in a much harsher way Thursday morning:
"So this schedule is gonna come out in a couple of weeks and if you are a Miami Dolphins player, fan, owner or coach, when it comes out, you print it and you scan your finger down to the three letters B-U-F," Brandt began. "When are we playing the Bills? And are we even playing them? Would we consider what we've done over the last few years even playing them? They have the Josh Allen problem for Miami. A huge one.
"If you are Mike McDaniel or Tua (Tagovailoa) or Tyreek (Hill) or anybody, you're like, we've got to take care of this Bills problem quick because what will happen in this division is you get Allen and the Bills become to the Dolphins what (Tom) Brady and the Patriots were to the Bills, what (Aaron) Rodgers and the Packers are to the Bears. If Josh Allen wants to run into the stands at Hard Rock and say I own you, he's on his way there.
"So we can say playoffs wild, card, get there! First things bleeping first, Miami, that guy has to stop terrorizing you. Can you keep it close? Can you beat him? Can you even beat him on your home field? I don't want to believe the Dolphins here. These are just facts. This is objectively a problem. So I can say their expectations are wild card, great, maybe, and I think that's realistic, but first things I don't care if it's week 1 or week 15, when you first play Buffalo you've got show up for that game or we're not gonna talk about ... you're not relevant if you can't handle business in your own division."
Man, that sure was blunt, and we didn't even include his line about Buffalo having given the Dolphins a "pure unadulterated ass whooping" the last several times they've played!
Bills Close to AFC East Mark
But let's examine Brandt's comments.
First off, looking purely at the final scores, it is pretty ugly. Buffalo has won the past seven meetings and, outside of a 31-28 game at Hard Rock Stadium in Week 2 of the 2020 season, the average margin was exactly 22 points.
Yeesh!
And Josh Allen absolutely has been a nightmare for the Dolphins, against whom he produced his highest single-game passer rating (146.7 in that 31-28 game) and five of his top 16.
With one more win, the Bills will match the longest winning streak by an AFC East team against the Dolphins, which was done by the New York Jets twice (including in the first four years of the Miami franchise). Not even the Patriots during their run with Tom Brady beat Miami that many times consecutively.
Good Dolphins Stretches Against Allen
But digging deeper than just the final stats and scores, we'll see that the Dolphins have not been nearly as helpless against Allen as Brandt makes it seem.
Take the two games from last season, for example.
The game at Hard Rock Stadium, in the home opener in Week 2, will be remembered for Tua Tagovailoa being knocked out with the rib injury and the final score (35-0) indeed was ugly. But Allen's passer rating in that game was a poor 75.2.
In the rematch at Buffalo in Week 8, Allen finished with a 100.2 rating in a 26-11 Bills victory, but remember that the score was 3-3 at halftime and Allen had a 70.7 rating through two quarters before the Dolphins defense eventually buckled under the pressure of having to get back onto the field because the offense just couldn't get it done that day.
Even in the 56-26 blowout in the 2020 season finale when the Dolphins were playing to get into the playoffs, the defense shut out Allen in the first quarter before he threw three touchdown passes in the second quarter (to go along with a punt return for a score) to blow the game wide open.
To be sure, the Dolphins needed to get significantly better to be able to challenge the Bills and they did get better in the offseason, particularly on offense where better production would keep the ball away from Allen and the Buffalo offense longer.
Whether it will be enough to solve the Bills problem or the Josh Allen problem, we'll find out sometime after September.
