Pouncey has quickly asserted himself as one of the leaders of the Dolphins offensive line. Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

It’s fair to say that Mike Pouncey’s 2011 arrival in Miami was not greeted with a fervor of excitement by Dolphins fans despite the name recognition brought on by his twin brother Maurkice’s time with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  When a team largely devoid of offensive weapons uses the 15^th overall pick in the NFL draft to select a center, its fair to expect fans to be up in arms.  For a center to be worthy of any first round pick, he would have to be one of, if not the best center in the league, and even then it would still be debatable whether or not such a pick was well spent.  The good news?  Dolphins fans can debate away because Pouncey has lived up to the billing.

Mike Pouncey didn’t make the Pro Bowl this year, nor did he make the All-Pro roster.  Despite being one minute older than his twin brother Maurkice, Mike was beaten into the NFL and thus the minds of the NFL electorate by his brother, and thus Maurkice gets the nods by default.  But, this is not to say that Maurkice was necessarily the better player.

Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com and Matt Williamson of ESPN.com have both regularly written and stated that they felt that Mike was the better player in 2012, and that Maurkice was largely receiving these accolades on reputation.  Furthermore, Mike did make Pro Football Weekly’s Midseason All-Pro team, and also led ProFootballFocus.com’s Center rankings for most of the season before having a drop off in the final quarter of the year.  With any spot on the offensive line, it is always difficult to place any sort of rankings with the absence of significant statistics, but it has become clear that Pouncey is to be considered at least a top five center in the league.

Using my own eyes on the field, you can come to these same conclusions.  To the casual fan watching the game, Pouncey is rarely noticed.  That’s a good thing – most offensive linemen only get noticed when they are on their backsides as their man destroys the quarterback or other ball carrier in the backfield.  Pouncey rarely falls victim to such bull rushes.

On running downs, Pouncey has turned Reggie Bush into a man who can generate yards in the interior running game, something he was previously unable to do in New Orleans.  As he learns the defensive schemes in the NFL, he has proven capable of calling the correct protections to account for various blitzes and defensive formations, an important characteristic when starting a rookie quarterback as the Dolphins did in 2012.

Pouncey has also taken a vocal leadership role with the team, dropping one of the best one liners of the season prior to the Dolphins second matchup with the New York Jets this season.  When asked whether he would respond to Aaron Maybin’s comments that the Jets were looking to “knock out” Bush, Pouncey retorted “I have to be on punt block to say something to him,” referencing the fact that despite his loud mouth, Maybin never actually sees the field.

While the current front office regime’s penchant for drafting offensive lineman high will always be a source of much moaning and groaning, all fans can ask for is those picks to at least live up to their all star billing.  In the case of Mike Pouncey, it certainly appears that will be fulfilled.  Regardless of his actual impact on winning and losing each week, Pouncey has a strong chance to be a plus player at the Center position for the Dolphins in the years to come.

His performance on the field in 2012 was supremely strong in the first half of the season, but as mentioned did begin to tail off as the season wore on.  Hopefully a third year in the NFL will bring better conditioning to perhaps correct this issue in 2013.  It is only the end of season tail that prevents a perfect grade for Pouncey in 2012, but with the slide I award him a B+.

Fasano’s best play of the year came on this diving TD catch against San Francisco in Week 14 Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Miami Dolphins TE Anthony Fasano recently completed his 5^th season in Miami and 7^th overall in the NFL after coming over in a trade with the Dallas Cowboys.  He finished the year with a career high in receptions at 41, however with a career low in yards per catch at only 8.1.  Coming off the final year of a two-year, $7.75 million contract, Fasano enters the offseason as one of the many Dolphins free agents who spent significant time on the field in 2012.  He will be just one of the big decisions for GM Jeff Ireland.

Fasano is the perfect example of the lunch-pail, workman type NFL blue-collar player.  He will rarely do anything flashy, he isn’t going to break a big play downfield, and you won’t be seeing him putting up a 1,000-yard season any time soon.  But he is the type of player that will catch what’s thrown to him, limit his drops, and can be utilized in any formation.  Never was this more evident then when, following an injury to Charles Clay against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Fasano found himself thrust into the backfield playing the hybrid FB/TE role, a role that he later admitted he had never fulfilled before, even in practice.

One area where Fasano is typically above average, and was again this season, is his work around the goal line.  The Notre Dame product contributed 5 TDs, along with two that were amongst the highlight scores of the season, first executing an excellent toe drag for the game clincher against the New York Jets from Matt Moore in Week 8 (Seen Here) and later making a very unlikely diving catch against the San Francisco 49ers to keep the team close in Week 14 (Seen Here).

Unfortunately, where Fasano’s play doesn’t stand up is in Football Outsiders tight end rankings for the 2012 season.  In DYAR (Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement), Fasano ranked 46^th out of 49 TE’s with 25 or more catches in 2012, ahead of only Kellen Davis, Clay Harbor, and surprisingly, Brandon Pettigrew.  He faired only slightly better in DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), ranking 44^th.  Note that both of these statistics only factor in the receiving aspect of tight end play, and thus exclude blocking where Fasano excels.

Equally important to note is that Fasano’s poor performance in these metrics directly relates to his poor YPC average on the season.  It’s pretty obvious to anyone who watches him that Fasano isn’t going to be a big yards after catch receiver, so a low YPC is highly likely to be due to the types of passes Fasano was seeing during the season.  When you factor in that the Dolphins start a rookie QB in Ryan Tannehill, who likely saw his TE as a check-down safety blanket in times of need, this YPC average is a little more understandable.

Digging a little deeper, Fasano fared much better in the Football Outsiders metrics in the previous two seasons, ranking 15^th in DYAR in 2011 and 6^th in 2010.  While he will be 29 years of age for the 2013 season, Fasano has always been big and slow, so its unlikely his downgrade in the Football Outsiders metrics is due to age and/or wearing down.  His skill set of blocking, solid hands, and versatility is one that traditionally ages well in the NFL, and thus despite his age it is reasonable to expect Fasano to have a half dozen or so more seasons in the league if he chooses.

The reality is that Fasano is a solid, average player, who posted a solid, average season.  In a career year, it’s unlikely that he could ever achieve better than a C+ grade, but it’s also unlikely that he will ever post a D.  Fasano is a man who will stay on the field, give you what you expect, and little more, just as he did during the 2012 season.  For an average player, I give an average grade of a C for the season.

If Fasano is your starting TE and your only playmaker at the position, you are likely average to below average.  However, if you can pair Fasano with someone who is more of a receiving threat and maybe not quite the blocker that Fasano is, it could potentially produce a dynamic and productive tandem.  Rumors have swirled that Ireland is not keen on bringing Fasano back in 2013, but the price should not be too extravagant, and so while I too would prefer to find someone more explosive at the position, Fasano is one of the best insurance policies a team could hope to have around.  I would certainly be in favor of him being part of an improved tight end duo for the Dolphins in 2013.

Joe Philbin’s biggest task in 2013 will be instilling consistency in the Miami Dolphins across all 16 games.. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

The 2012 rendition of the Miami Dolphins was a surprising and scrappy bunch that continually put forth strong effort each and every week, regardless of the score or the situation.  However, if there was one word that was the defining term of the season it would be inconsistency.  The Dolphins season could be broken down into four distinct segments, and so since we are talking football and for the sake of a clean review, let’s call break the season up into four quarters.

In the ”first quarter,” the Dolphins came out of the gate with a tough battle on the road against the Houston Texans.  While the game was a blowout and everyone remembers the disastrous three turnover in three play stretch, with the exception of the second quarter, the Dolphins actually played quite well.  They followed it up with an impressive victory against the Oakland Raiders at home which established the Dolphins as a team that no longer represented the NFL’s doormat.  Kicker Dan Carpenter struggled against the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals in Weeks 3 and 4, but the overall team performance was strong and plenty capable of winning the games.

The Dolphins carried this momentum into their next three games, putting together their only three game winning streak of the year and ending the “first quarter” of their season at 4-3.  This also marked the only time all season which the team was above.500.  They appeared in position to make a surprise playoff run with solid, consistent football as the prototypical “good bad team,” a squad capable of taking care of business against inferior opponents but whom would struggle against the league’s elite.

But the team opened their “second quarter” with an early season surprise showdown in Indiana against the Indianapolis Colts, whom were also at 4-3.  Most pundits thought the Dolphins were the team more likely to have staying power, but the Dolphins weren’t their solid selves, making small mistakes throughout the game before ultimately falling to the Colts.  They had a chance for redemption and to get their year back on track at home against the Tennessee Titans, but instead laid one of the biggest eggs of any team in the NFL this season, getting walloped by a poor Titans team.

Unfortunately, the team’s bad stretch wasn’t over yet.  With a quick turnaround in Buffalo against the Bills on the subsequent Thursday, the same crappy Dolphins team showed up for the first three quarters, before the solid Phins returned in the fourth quarter of that game, but were too little too late.  This stretch was so uncharacteristic of the “first quarter” of the season, and certainly was a debilitating factor in any playoff hopes.

This version of the Dolphins was not without a little spunk however, as the Seattle Seahawks came to Miami to open our “third quarter” of the season, and they were not met by the same pillow fight the Dolphins had been putting up in our “second quarter.”  The Dolphins hung tough with the Seahawks before putting together what might be their most impressive quarter of the season in the final quarter of the game, culminating in a game winning field goal.  The team followed it up with two difficult matchups against the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers, and while the team lost both, they continued to look solid, remaining within reach of their superior opponents throughout the game.

Following their toughest two game stretch, the Dolphins got to beat up on two of their easier opponents of the year, finishing up the “third quarter” of their year by dishing out as much of a beat down as an offensively challenged team can at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills.  The team had righted the ship, and looked primed to go into their Week 17 showdown against the Patriots capable of putting up another solid fight and possibly giving the team some momentum to head into the off season.

With the Texans losing early in Week 17, the game between the Dolphins and the Patriots was primed as a very meaningful battle for the Patriots’ playoff positioning.  The Dolphins were faced with an opportunity to challenge a league juggernaut at their best.  Instead, they opened the “fourth quarter” of their season by laying another complete egg in New England, putting up a bagel on the scoreboard and never threatening the Patriots on either side of the ball.  While expecting the Dolphins to beat the Patriots is probably a bit overzealous, expecting a better performance is certainly not.

And so the Dolphins completed their season at 7-9 with many promising signs but also frustrations of a season that could have been even more successful with a little more consistency.  Of course, the history books are filled with young teams full of inconsistencies.  What separates the teams who succeed from those whom are in a perpetual state of rebuilding is that the good teams grow out of their inconsistencies.  The Dolphins need to improve their talent in the offseason, and then get to focusing on consistency in season in order to make a playoff run in 2013.