The two things that stood out the most in Miami Dolphins game
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins played their first game under head coach Brian Flores and two things stood out the most from that pre-season debut.
When the Miami Dolphins took the field Thursday night, there were a few things that I wanted to see. It was, after all, a pre-season game and the first one at that but that doesn’t mean you can’t take something from it.
To me, there was something on offense that stood out that I haven’t seen in recent years. I credit this to Chad O’Shea. Entering the game I wanted to see what he would do with the wide-receivers. In New England, he made the best out of receivers that may not start on other teams. He made them stars.
On Thursday night I saw receivers getting open and running clean routes. The Dolphins were able to take advantage of the Falcons defense by getting receivers quickly into those routes and getting them the ball. Of course, Preston Williams shined but Allen Hurns looked good aside from his fumble.
Overall the Dolphins offense seemed to be crisp despite poor offensive line play. Next, I want to see O’Shea get the tight-ends more involved in the offensive play calling but last night I saw something positive from the receiver group and I want to see that continue.
You can’t have a positive without a negative and my negative takeaway from last night, outside of single-player performance or harping on the offensive line play, was the physicality of the game. Granted it was game one of the pre-season but I expected to see a more physical team.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Last night’s game saw a lot of missed tackles and missed opportunities. Brian Flores said he wanted a “physical and abusive” defense but I didn’t see many hints of that. I think that is something that he and his staff need to work on.
To be fair the defense was extremely vanilla but missed tackles and arm tackle attempts don’t require a lot of scheme changes or play calling. Miami has to better in this area. They need a swarming attack and that should come with more time.