Miami Dolphins need to lean on their Patriots veteran players

The Miami Dolphins will host the Patriots on Sunday with their playoff lives on the line.

If the Miami Dolphins want to beat the Patriots on Sunday, they are going to need everything they can get from the Patriot veterans on the roster.

This year’s Miami Dolphins team looks a lot like the New England Patriots teams that Miami has tried to beat the last four years. Kyle Van Noy, Ted Karras, Eric Rowe, Elandon Roberts, Kamu Grugier-Hill, and a few others know how the Patriots prepare for a football game. So does Brian Flores.

The Patriots have little to play for outside of hope but if there is hope, then Bill Belichick is coaching his team to know that there is hope. If the Dolphins players look at New England as a game they can easily get by, they would be wrong.

Brian Flores changed the culture in Miami by bringing in players from his former team who know that a “team-first” mentality is what wins football games. That knows preparation and film study wins football games. That simply doing their job, wins football games.

Miami has a lot of youth on their roster and that is all the more reason to lean on the Patriot veterans who make up Miami’s roster. All the more reasons to stay a little longer in the film room and pick their brains. The Patriots roster may not be what it was last year or the year before, but Bill Belichick is still pulling the strings behind the scenes.

If Miami is going to make the playoffs this year they first have to end the playoff chances of a division rival who has not missed the playoffs since 2008, a year they went 11-5 and lost on tie-breaking procedures.

This week, the best preparation is knowledge and the Dolphins have a lot of players, and coaches, who have that knowledge.