What does a 4 win streak mean to a 5-7 Miami Dolphins?
By Juan Vasquez
I never lost belief in this defense if I’m being honest, if you follow me on twitter you’ll know how I went to bat for Dolphins defense during our losing streak almost every day. And my reasoning for it is showing it’s fruits now, one of my main arguments was how the offense was incapable of staying on the field for any significant amount of time and that killed the defense. But it’s not only that.
Although it is the main factor, and you can clearly see it because Miami’s defense would always put up a fight in the first half and then just crumble towards the end. But I mean what other result do you expect if the offense can’t stay on the field, the art of the turnover was something Miami had really mastered on the defensive side of the ball. 26 games straight with a takeaway to be exact, but that streak came to an end due to a regression in performance and a lot of that had to do with fatigue.
But we’ve turned the page on that since the Dolphins defense has come back to life and some would say it is playing right on par to the level that was Miami’s 2020 defense. Part of this rally back to life has been directly impacted by our key players, Xavien Howard, Brandon Jones, and Byron Jones to name a few have been playing exceptional.
And of course we can’t forget the rookies Jaelan Phillips and Jevon Holland who have caught fire as of late, and are already on their way to becoming premier players at their position. But more importantly, let’s see how Miami’s defense is stacking up in the last weeks compared to the rest of the season.
Before playing Baltimore Miami’s Passing defense ranked 30th giving up a whooping 280.9 yards per game, and the rushing defense was very average placed at 17th giving up 111 rush yards per game.
Within the last 3 games the Dolphins currently sit right outside the top 10 in passing defense, giving up 207.3 yards per game (12th), and they hold a rock solid 6th ranking rushing defense giving up only 86.7 yards per game. it’s a day and night difference and something Miami needs to keep building on if they want to have a chance at keeping this in streak going all the way into the playoffs.
The Miami Dolphins playing now are not the same team that started the 2021 season, in fact this might be the team many people including myself expected to see this season. Miami has a big match up this Sunday against the New York Giants, and they’ll be expected to keep up this level of play.
