Thoughts From the Morning After

A win is a win. That’s what I, and I’m sure a plethora of other Dolphins fans were saying Sunday as we unclenched our knuckles and the color began to return to our faces. I feel like in the NFL you usually get two unlucky losses and a couple of lucky wins. Today would have been Miami’s second such “lucky win” in the last few weeks as the Dolphins did literally everything in their power to lose this game towards the end.

Ronnie Brown Goes Down

Of course we have to start with the injury to Ronnie Brown. Brown left the game in the third quarter with what was reported to be an ankle injury. After the game he had X-Rays and then appeared on crutches. Ronnie Brown doesn’t think it’s too serious, that’s as much information as anyone has as of this writing. The ramifications for this injury are huge. A couple years ago when Brown was lost for the season Miami went from pretty hapless to absolutely wretched. Fortunately this team has Ricky Williams to back Brown up but that doesn’t change the fact the Dolphins cannot afford to lose Ronnie for any extended period of time. I’d go ahead and guess Brown is out for the game against Carolina on Thursday. But after that he’ll have another 10 days to get healthy.

This also is a bit of a concern for a player who could potentially be a free agent at year’s end. Love him or not (and how can you not) Brown has never been the healthiest back in the league. No NFL runner ever stays completely healthy but pending the prognosis on this injury, Ronnie Brown will have missed significant time in three of his four seasons. I broached the subject to a few friends last night and had things thrown at me, but if Brown isn’t healthy and Ricky Williams shows he can shoulder the load, I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Miami lets Brown go after this season and drafts another tailback for financial reasons. In no way shape or form am I condoning that or saying I think Miami should consider doing that (Ronnie is the heart and soul of the offense) but given Bill Parcells’ track record and philosophy with running backs, it wouldn’t be completely shocking. Of course a lot of that depends on the CBA situation and several other situations, but just mentioning it.

Jason Taylor Collects Strangest Interception of Career

Before we get into any actual analysis let’s talk about Jason Taylor’s wacky interception. After the game, official Tony Corrente offered this explanation of the call:

“…the player who was possessing the ball in the air, as he started to come down, was hit. As he is coming down, he is now going to the ground to complete a catch and by rule, if he’s going to the ground to complete a catch, he has to maintain possession of the ball completely through the entire process of hitting the ground and thereafter showing control. As he went to the ground, basically right when he went to the ground, the ball popped out, and went right into the arms of the Miami player. The ball had never touched the ground.”

He also went on to add that because the ball was initially ruled incomplete, the ball could only be awarded to the defense at the spot of the turnover, thus negating another JT touchdown. Here’s what I’ll say, I watched it in a crowded bar surrounded by drunken Bucs fans. They obviously didn’t agree and I even admit, at first blush it looks like an incompletion at best, possibly even a catch where the ground caused a fumble. Here’s my problem with the entire situation, they showed one replay angle the entire time. One. The NFL films from lord knows how many angles and yet Fox chose to show just one where the ball was obscured by the back judge’s head as the player came to the ground. Not to mention we had to listen to Ron Pitts (who is competing with Kenny Albert as the worst commentator in pro sports) and an ex-Buc (John Lynch) dissect the one angle with no clear knowledge of the rules.

Did the officials get the call right? By virtue of the rules yes, though maybe it didn’t feel that way if you saw the play unfold live. But the officials were awful pretty much the entire game. Josh Freeman looked like an incredible scrambler on a number of plays where Dolphins ends and OLB’s were held and at some points tackled. On two plays on the Bucs final drive Cameron Wake was pulled to the ground as he blew past the weak side of the line on pass rushes. I watched JT and Charlie Anderson both pursue Freeman at one point and end up being yanked over backwards, by the jersey. There’s holding in every game but the Bucs at points seemed to confuse blocking with tackling and that was never an issue. The Jason Taylor interception was just the most visible issue with a very poor day of NFL officiating.

Receivers

I’m not going to waste your time talking about how miserable the receivers are. Ted Ginn’s drops, Chad Henne’s inability to find anyone open at the beginning of routes and the fact a practice squad tight end made some of the biggest contributions only goes to reaffirm that this team desperately needs a play-maker at receiver. Devone Bess looked good on the last drive though otherwise seemed to struggle again. Brian Hartline and Greg Camarillo may as well be the same guy because unless you’re six inches from the television or one of their mothers chances are you wait until the camera zooms in after the tackle to see which it was. Miami has two, maybe three receivers worth keeping at this point. In fact how many teams would be just as good if they cut all the players they had drafted at a position and went with a couple of undrafted guys instead? Just Miami, just at receiver.

Quarterback

I’m not trying to be overly negative, I just have to be realistic. I think a lot of us jumped the gun after that first Jets game on Chad Henne. Since that magnificent night Chad Henne has looked… well absolutely abysmal. I’m not ready to give up on him yet and yes I know that he’s already led two game-winning drives and shrugged off that interception to lead us… blah blah blah. Let me tell you something, I don’t count it as a game-winning drive if the only reason we’re making it is because you made a stupid pass in the first place to let the other team back in the game. Yeah Henne may be mentally tough, he may have a cannon back there but I will say right now that I miss Chad Pennington.

It’s not like Miami was better at receiver last year, the line certainly wasn’t the same caliber last year and yet we didn’t complain each and every week about how miserable the receivers were. We knew it wasn’t good but last year it didn’t seem like a glaring weakness the same as it does this year. After the Thursday game one of the conversations was that Jay Cutler wasn’t a good QB because he’s not making his team better. The thought being that if Peyton Manning or Tom Brady were on the Bears, even with bad receivers, they would make the team better. I know Henne is young, starting his first real season, but Pennington made the receivers on this team better when he played. And as much as we rail on the receivers at some point that needs to be an indictment on Henne as well because with Pennington at least Bess and Camarillo were able to tally solid years in limited time last season. This season the whole passing unit looks fairly clueless.

From a skill set standpoint, yesterday I thought Henne digressed. The blocking yesterday was solid in both the passing and the running phase of the game. Henne had time to set his feet and make good decisions, more than he should have had, and he still seemed to struggle going through his progressions and getting the ball out quickly. That’s not good and frankly Chad Henne seems about as athletic as Sid Bream stomping home in the ’92 NLCS. At this point, after a few games of mediocre passing and taking too long with the ball, would it be crazy to see about Pat White? I’m not calling to out-and-out bench Henne, but it seems like we’re already giving White more responsibility, why not just give him a series or two a game to just run the offense.

To me, I don’t know that White can’t be a solid quarterback for this team. Yes, he needs to work on his accuracy throwing the ball and he’s still a rookie who is a bit smallish. So what? I don’t know if you noticed but Chad Henne just played the one-win Bucs and had a 68 passer rating, he was 54 percent completion percentage on the day and with less than two minutes he threw an absolutely idiotic pass instead of tucking the ball, taking a sack or hell, even just throwing it away. At this point, why wouldn’t I think maybe Pat White could do this. He could certainly do what Henne had just done, and White has the added intangible of speed. He’s elusive, you have to keep a spy on him and take a guy out of coverage or the pass rush so he doesn’t get away from you.

If Ronnie Brown is going to be out for any period of time and Chad Henne plays another lousy game (no matter how you spin it, Henne was lousy yesterday) then I’m going to want to see Pat White. Why not?

Earth to Dan Henning, Part Deux

Dan Henning is going to cause me to have aneurysm. Inside of two minutes with Ricky Williams in the backfield and a solid (if a little battered) offensive line up front, facing a team with no timeouts left you run the ball. I know there’s a sheet with a bunch of situations and what to do out there somewhere but in case Dan Henning couldn’t find it let’s just resort to common sense. RUN THE BALL! Miami could have run the clock down to around a minute, then let Brandon Fields (who is in my book one of the league’s best punters) boom the ball down into their territory. Then you let a rookie quarterback with no timeouts try to score a game-winning touchdown in about a minute. That’s good coaching, that’s the type of stuff that wins you games.

What you don’t do is drop Henne back and let him try to thread a ball into coverage or whatever he was trying to do on that interception. Now this play was two-fold. Henne can’t throw that pass. Henning didn’t pick the receiver or force the throw, he just called a lousy play. So blame falls in two places for that pick, but still, what the hell was Henning thinking? Even if we had converted a first down, I would have questioned that call. It’s a bad decision and indicative of a larger problem.

The injury to Ronnie Brown aside for a second, Miami is one of the few teams in the league that isn’t better served with offensive balance. In fact the more balanced we are the worse off we’re going to be. Yesterday Miami was almost completely evenly split, which superficially sounds intelligent, but doesn’t work out well in the end if you’re the Dolphins. Part of the problem is timing. First of all I don’t want to see another empty backfield set as long as I root for Miami. As soon as any defense sees there is no one in Miami’s backfield the thinking immediately flips to, “pin your ears back and let’s go knock this flat-footed son-of-a-bitch out.” Nobody in the NFL respects the Dolphins pass, so if you remove the threat of the running game you aren’t going to do well on many of those plays.

Then you also have to look at what Henne does well. He’s very good off of play-action. And when you consider the majority of his college experience was comprised of turning around and giving the ball to Mike Hart, it’s pretty obvious why he would be good at that. But Chad Henne is not the type of quarterback that is better off when he throws the ball more than 25 times a game. He wasn’t that guy at Michigan and he isn’t going to be that guy in Miami. In fairness, very few quarterbacks are that guy. But Miami needs to be cognizant of the fact that you can’t use the pass to set up the run. You need to be good at passing to do that. Miami really can only set up the pass off the run and in the last three or four weeks that simply hasn’t happened. Miami seems to be enamored with Henne’s arm and it needs to get back to basics to be successful as a team.

I’ll do a defensive write-up tonight. In the meantime I’ll try to find an update on Ronnie Brown and give you any other news that comes along today…