The Day After: What We Learned About the Miami Dolphins in Week 13
As was the case against the New York Jets a week before, the Miami Dolphins didn't necessarily have a brilliant performance against the Cincinnati Bengals but still won comfortably.
That, as much as anything, is a sign of the growth of this Dolphins team, that it doesn't have to be at its best to handle inferior opponents.
Sure, it was disappointing to see the Dolphins trailing at halftime against a really bad Cincinnati team, but they also never were really threatened in the second half after they took the lead following a brilliant opening third-quarter drive.
The bad news from that standpoint is that the Dolphins don't have any more soft games left, with a final-month schedule of Kansas City, New England, Las Vegas and Buffalo.
But the Dolphins have put themselves in prime position to earn a playoff spot by taking care of their business — and handily —against the bad teams on their schedule to this point. In their four games against the Jaguars, Jets and Bengals, the Dolphins won by 18, 24, 17 and 12.
That's part of becoming a good team.
Here's what else we learned from the Cincinnati game:
-- Tua Tagovailoa is perfectly capable of bouncing back after a tough start. The offense failed to get into the end zone in the first half and Tagovailoa took the blame for that after the game, though it clearly wasn't all on him. Regardless, he clearly was better in the second half when he looked like the guy we saw against Arizona. And, for the record, I didn't think for a second the Dolphins should have pulled him at halftime — I bring this up because Flores was asked whether he thought about making that move. This was a totally different situation than the Denver game when Tua clearly was off and the Dolphins needed to give themselves a chance. But, no, the Dolphins shouldn't pull Tua every time he gets off to a slow or less-than-ideal start because he's certainly got the ability to get it going, as he showed against the Bengals.
-- The running game did show improvement against Cincinnati with the return of Myles Gaskin from injured reserve, though it was a shame he fumbled at the end of his longest run of the season. What we really liked, though, was that 11-yard run by Lynn Bowden Jr., who showed with that play and with a couple of receptions he needs to get more action on offense. The Dolphins running game likely will never be dangerous this season, but it does need to be serviceable.
-- We mentioned Bowden in the running game, but he also needs to become a bigger factor in the passing game as well because the Dolphins currently don't have a consistent second option at wide receiver beyond DeVante Parker. Jakeem Grant continues to get the most snaps of any non-Parker wide receiver, but he had only two receptions on six targets against the Bengals. And those two receptions came on shovel passes, which really are running plays but are classified as passes for statistical purposes. Grant had the worst play on offense against Cincinnati when he dropped a perfect Tagovailoa deep ball to blow what should have been a 91-yard touchdown.
-- We should say, thought, that the lack of a consistent second wide receiver won't be nearly as damaging if Mike Gesicki has many games like he had against the Bengals. And that one-handed reach-out grab in the middle of the field was just ridiculous — and, yes, it brought back memories of that insane catch by Oronde Gadsden against the Jets some 20 years ago.
-- Kudos to the offensive line and the three rookies for keeping Tagovailoa from getting sacked and from generally having to face little pressure. In fact, the biggest hit Tagovailoa took came from blitzing safety Vonn Bell when he failed to see him coming even though it was not from the blind side. Of course, we do have to mention, again, that this was the Bengals the Dolphins were facing, but it still was a good performance.
-- Defensively, the number that stood out was six, as in the six sacks. But, at the risk of being called a party Poupart (get it?), it's fair to point out that four of them came in the fourth quarter when the Dolphins were up by two scores and that three of them came after starting left tackle Jonah Williams left the game with an injury. And Cincinnati came in having allowed 38 sacks in 11 games. This is not meant to minimize what the Dolphins did, but rather to explain the circumstances, which go back to the concept of a good team taking care of business against an inferior opponent.
-- The Dolphins actually had a pretty flawless defensive performance other, of course, than the 72-yard touchdown pass, which appeared to come as the result of Byron Jones playing too far off the line of scrimmage on a third-and-2. That made it an easy conversion for the Bengals when Brandon Allen threw a quick out to Tyler Boyd. But then things got worse because Jones was so far off that he had a lot of ground to make up to get to Boyd and on his way there he got himself blocked out by Bengals tight end Drew Sample engaged with Dolphins safety Brandon Jones. That allowed Boyd to avoid Jones and race down the sideline for the touchdown. It was the longest pass play given up by the Dolphins this season. Outside of that play, though, the Dolphins gave up only 124 total yards, and that's a pretty dominant performance.
-- Finally, we have to say something about the altercations that took place during the game. Not a huge issue here with both Mack Hollins and DeVante Parker sticking up for Jakeem Grant, especially at that point in the game, and loved seeing Brian Flores stick up for his players, even if he said afterward he wished he had kept his poise. Don't agree with that. That was the right move on his part. Now, when it comes to Xavien Howard getting ejected for throwing a punch, that's just dumb — even if the replays didn't show much that should have warranted an ejection from either Howard or Boyd. Howard is much too valuable to do something that foolish. And since my attempt at humor on Twitter got misinterpreted, let me make it clear: Just because the Dolphins shut out the Bengals in the second half and had better statistical numbers without Howard in those final two quarters, that does NOT mean they're better off without him. Again, that was a joke. Clearly, they need him. And in case it already wasn't obvious enough, he's the best player on the team. He proved it again yesterday with yet another pick.
