3 sneaky keys to keep the Miami Dolphins rolling against the 49ers
By Matt Serniak
It’s a tough game this week. No doubt about it. This is, easily, the toughest team the Miami Dolphins will have played in the last five weeks. The San Francisco 49ers, like the Dolphins, have feasted on mediocre to bad football teams over the last few weeks and now each team gets to see where they stand in relation to the upper-eschaloun of teams in the league.
Does Sunday’s game determine if the Miami Dolphins can go on a playoff run? Not at all. Go check all the teams, such as last year’s Bengals team, that limped into the playoffs only to go on a run all the way to the Super Bowl.
But, I’d rather the Miami Dolphins never lose again. That’s probably not going to happen so how about we just try and keep the five-game winning streak going a little longer?
The 49ers are being hyped up to be an Ivan Drago-type opponent for the Dolphins. They’re getting billed as this unbeatable monster as if we don’t have memories that can remember all the way back to earlier in the season when they lost to the mighty Broncos and Falcons. Oh, but they have Christian McCaffrey now. That automatically means that their offense is unstoppable. They scored 13 points last week against the Saints.
So spare me the whole idea that the 49ers are this rough and tough team that just punishes other teams with all their brute strength. They’re very good and they’re playing solid football but they aren’t the 85 Bears mixed with the greatest show on turf Rams.
Miami has to play well to win this game. I really don’t think a poor performance backdoors you a win this time. The Dolphins need to play their near-A game to come out victorious. The loss of Terron Armstead, if that’s actually going to be the case, is a big deal but not something Mike McDaniel can’t overcome. Plenty of teams have won games without their stud left tackle before. This will, probably, have to be one of those times unless Armstead is like Wolverine and can heal fast.
We know about the familiarity between the Dolphins and 49ers, McDaniel and Shannahan. Who’s smarter and who’s better? I have no idea. I like our guy and they like their guy. Each has a decent idea of what the other guy wants to do but so do most coaches. The hard part is stopping what you know is coming.
If Miami wins this game, then it will be hilarious to see all the bozos in the media try and make sense of it and then inevitably say that we won’t know about this team until they do it in the cold as they struggle to make sense of anything. If Miami loses, well, we know what they’re going to say.
To ensure victory, the Miami Dolphins need to adhere to following these keys to victory. I’m not going to bore you with the obvious such as keeping penalties down, win the turnover battle, establish the run, tackle, don’t get beat deep, block, convert 3rd downs, get off the field on 3rd downs, and a billion other football cliches and jargon. No, these are some sneaky, underrated, Miami Dolphins-centric level keys to this particular game against the 49ers.